^{Nov 24, 2020}

How can technology help engage employees in hybrid meetings

CLICKSHARE - HYBRID MEETINGS 4 min read

It comes as no surprise that a working from home fatigue has kicked in after months of quarantine. And as employees are keen to return to the office, businesses are on the lookout for exactly those technologies that will enable a safe and productive work environment. Even if the actual return for all is not nigh in all parts of the world, enterprises are implementing creative solutions like hybrid ways of working. They try to find the right balance between employees working partly remote and partly in-office and a new model hybrid meeting takes the lead in current workplace collaboration, greatly driven by high-end video technology. Companies start preparing offices for this demanding meeting culture centred around video conferencing to create hybrid and remote meetings that are as engaging and collaborative as face-to-face meetings.

1 in 3 employees think video conferencing is the #1 investment priority for employers

Video conferencing, your number one priority

Bringing remote and in-office workers together in business meetings is simple when you invest in good video conferencing tech. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers have done exactly that and massively adopted popular Unified Communications platforms. No less than 14 different conference systems have been used frequently by employees over the past 6 months, with 3 big players that dominate the market. The number of Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Skype users went up in hundreds of millions. One day last March the Zoom app was downloaded 2.13 million times and Microsoft Teams has about 75 million daily active users by now. Video conferencing has become an inseparable part of our daily work routines.

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Especially when you’re back in the office...

For many months and even years to come, hybrid meeting will be one of the preferred ways to get workforce collaborating together. It’s the next best alternative and natural successor for meetings you can’t attend in person. And upon re-entering the offices, new investments will be needed to equip meeting spaces with SWAPs like camera’s, mics, speakers, soundbars for good audio and video quality, decent display and visualization solutions and wireless content sharing, collaboration and conferencing for more engagement. Discover 3 simple steps to equip hybrid meeting rooms

After standard meeting rooms, video conferencing rooms are the most commonly used spaces in the office. 77% of employees use video conferencing rooms at least once a week, with 28% using them every day on average.

And yet, video-enabled meetings are not as engaging as they should be....

Despite this, views on video conference are still very mixed. Nearly 1 in 2 feels remote collaboration does not come naturally. And 48% of people indicate that low engagement from meeting participants leads to bad quality meetings. There are clear frustrations in setting up videocalls in meeting rooms. The system does not allow external guests to participate as the most commonly cited frustration. Followed by inability to share content or to share your screen incompatibility of preferred conferencing platforms and being unable to connect to meeting rooms. Check the most common issues in remote meetings.

But workforce also feels that video conferencing brings improvements to meetings. 52% believe people come more prepared to meetings now, 47% think there is less time wasting at the start of a meeting, and 39% value the fact that there is less small talk when using video conferencing.

What do you need to make videoconferencing intuitive and productive?

Without a doubt, video conferencing plays a fundamental role in collaboration, comunication and productivity in the current hybrid workplace. The main tool of our digitally driven workforce is the laptop. 56% of employees prefer to host video calls from their laptop, compared to an in-room system (19%) or their smartphone (18%). They use their own device to reach out to colleagues, suppliers and customers in daily video meetings. Also on the workfloor they expect the same. They want to use their own device to start meetings with their preferred online conferencing solution, which is called BYOM or Bring Your Own Meeting. Users don’t want complex or closed room set-ups, they expect intuitive and easy connection with the high-quality AV tools in the room, from their laptop.

Moving away from the traditional room-centric approach and creating user-centric setups in meeting rooms, helps employers to turn any space into a collaborative hybrid meeting room where content is shared easily. These so-called open rooms fully maximize BYOM in enterprises: they are meeting rooms that are equipped with video conferencing technology that team members can easily connect to. In essence: every meeting room needs to work as a video conference room and should be ‘open’ to all users throughout the entire enterprise. It allows team members to actively jump into meetings and conferences with the devices, solutions, and video meeting software they are familiar with.

Flexible wireless conferencing solutions like ClickShare Conference enable this approach. They are vendor-agnostic, scalable (because they work with your existing AV solutions) and most of all intuitive to use. They share the apps from your laptop wirelessly to the room display, connect them seamlessly to the camera, mic and speakers in the meeting room for better hybrid meetings for both in-room and remote participants. Tailored to the user’s device, workflow and preferences, ClickShare Conference lifts video conferencing to the most engaging level of collaboration there is today.