Before the pandemic, workers were spending between 31-60 minutes per meeting across 220 million meetings per year in the US alone, according to research from Attentiv. However, Covid-19 has radically changed ways of working with many people now working from home. Some will remain there permanently, while others will make only a partial return to the traditional office.
This shift has an inevitable and substantial impact because traditional meeting and conferencing system usage are no longer options. In fact, 74% of employees have increased their use of video conferencing after going remote, and this number will steadily rise beyond the pandemic, reports an Altman Vilandrie & Company survey. This leaves traditional meeting room infrastructure out of sync with workers’ needs and new approaches are needed.
A new whitepaper, titled ‘Meeting Room Makeover: Is Your Collaboration Space Ready for the New Normal?’ and published by LogMeIn, explores the issues this transformation in the world of work presents and profiles three key reasons why existing infrastructure is failing to address the new normal effectively.
The first reason is that companies have been forced to adopt remote working fast and have had to or are having to make decisions way faster than normal because of COVID. They will get decisions on IT spend wrong sometimes because of this, but there are companies out there, like LogMeIn, that can help them. Digital transformation plans have also accelerated, pushing organisations to question the need for large office spaces. With business reopening, it’s likely that pre-pandemic practices won’t return as organisations embrace the new and flexible remote working style for a better future. Office spaces can be utilized for team meetings, get-togethers or any other face-to-face collaborations rather than housing desks for individual, day-to-day work
The second reason is that meeting rooms are high-touch environments and as such, in the current situation, represent risks to employee health. As some offices re-open, meeting room equipment falls under the shared resources category, making it a high–risk zone for contamination. Touchless technology and self-service have emerged as consumer must-haves, so organisations must prepare to reduce dependence on shared services and touch-based control.
Finally, every employee has become a videoconferencing power user and expects rich experiences. However, lack of synchronization between calendars, sub-par audio quality, and a weak camera can deter employees from digital collaboration.
Meeting rooms are a space where we have traditionally spent a sizable portion of our workday. Keeping these spaces safe, while taking account of employees’ emerging needs, is critical if companies are to keep up their productivity levels in the short-term, employee retention in the mid-term, and the employer brand reputation in the long–term. This requires a meeting room makeover, which the whitepaper details with a checklist to ensure readiness is achieved. The gap between future needs and what meeting rooms look like today is substantial and this needs to change.
GoToRoom by LogMeIn is an out of the box meeting room solution that is purpose-built for customers’ needs. It scales up or down to meet huddle room, home office, conference room, or board room configurations and delivers on the need for simplicity. GoToRoom offers turnkey solutions that require just four simple components: a monitor, an ethernet cable, an HDMI cable and a power outlet. These can host up to 250 participants and up to 25 simultaneous webcams.
