What is a Hybrid Meeting? An Introduction

The Future of Meetings is Hybrid, So what are Hybrid Meetings?

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What is a Hybrid Meeting? An Introduction
CollaborationMeeting Rooms and DevicesInsights

Published: December 13, 2022

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

As of 2022, over three-quarters (78%) of all workplaces now offer “hybrid work strategies.” A staple of the modern workplace, “hybrid” employment allows team members to distribute their time between the traditional office and external environments.

In some cases, a portion of staff work from home, while others operate exclusively within the office. In others, every employee can spend a portion of their time working “anywhere.”

For modern companies, hybrid work has emerged as a powerful tool for combining the benefits of remote employment (cost savings, employee engagement, and productivity) with the advantages of traditional work environments. However, enabling these flexible working schedules requires business leaders to invest in the right tools to align, synchronize, and connect their teams.

The “hybrid meeting” is just one of the key components of a successful hybrid collaboration and communication strategy. But what is a hybrid meeting?

What is a Hybrid Meeting? Defining Hybrid Meetings

Hybrid meetings are conferencing and collaboration sessions designed to connect in-office employees with distributed workers. Using software and hardware, such as meeting room kits, video bars, speakerphones, cameras, and microphones, remote and in-office employees can collaborate as though they were talking face-to-face.

Hybrid meetings aim to place remote and physical workers on equal footing, ensuring everyone has a sense of presence in the meeting environment. Remote attendees join the conversation via a platform like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Cisco Webex individually, while in-person attendees often sit together in a shared meeting room.

Hybrid meetings can feature all of the components of a traditional meeting, from whiteboards (digitized for remote workers), shared files, and hand-raising.

Many hybrid meetings can be more productive than formal meetings thanks to modern meeting rooms and collaborative software. Many tools include features like real-time translation and transcription, automated meeting notes, and AI enhancements.

What are the Benefits of Hybrid Meetings?

Enabling hybrid meetings has advantages for both employees and their employers. Effective hybrid meetings preserve consistent collaboration and communication between distributed staff members, ensuring employees can share their input when addressing business projects and challenges.

With hybrid meetings, companies can save money by reducing the number of people who have to travel to an office and the size of the boardrooms for conferencing instances.

The focus of a successful hybrid meeting isn’t just providing users with the right tools to communicate, such as video, chat, and audio.

Instead, the best hybrid solutions use innovative techniques to ensure every meeting member feels they have an equal voice in the conversation. After all, in the hybrid workplace, people working outside of the office can feel isolated and disconnected from their teams.

While 44% of professionals believe in the benefits of hybrid work, 20% say they’re concerned being outside of the office means they’ll miss out on opportunities. A further 25% of employees also say they’re more likely to ask for insights and opinions from people they work with physically than those working remotely with their team.

Hybrid meetings preserve company culture, enhance communication and collaboration, and ensure every member of the team remains engaged in the workplace.

What are the Components of a Good Hybrid Meeting?

While hybrid meetings can deliver many benefits, they need to be carefully planned, optimized, and configured to suit the needs of all remote and in-office employees. The modern “hybrid meeting” room requires more technology and innovation than a traditional meeting space.

Although the exact features of each meeting room may vary, most solutions include the following:

  • Software: Hybrid meeting room software enables everything from file and video sharing to screen sharing, presentations, real-time translation, and scheduling. Tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex empower staff members to connect using various tools and resources to enhance the quality of every conversation.
  • Artificial Intelligence: To improve the quality of the meeting experience for both in-person and remote employees, many hybrid meetings leverage AI. These tools can help reduce echo in audio, position speakers on video cameras, and even helping to boost understanding and engagement between each staff member.
  • Hardware: Hardware for hybrid meeting rooms can range from all-in-one Rooms devices built for huddle and mid-sized meeting rooms to simple cameras, microphones, and speakers. Some solutions may include whiteboards and displays set up for online content sharing. Many products today are designed with plug-and-play functionality to make set-up and configuration as simple as possible.
  • Apps and add-ons: To make meetings more effective, many meeting room tools now include integrations, apps, and add-ons, designed to align the meeting software with other crucial tools. For instance, some meetings have hybrid assistants capable of capturing content from different resources and bringing it into the meeting. There are also tools available for recording and compliance purposes.

Are They the Future of Meetings?

As the workplace grows increasingly distributed and strategies like remote and hybrid working become more popular, hybrid meetings will likely continue to grow in volume. After all, every business relies on regular meetings to keep team members on the same page.

However, companies will need to work hard to ensure their meeting solutions meet employee expectations. It won’t be enough to provide users with the tools they need to communicate. Business leaders must ensure every staff member feels equally supported and engaged in each meeting session.

Fortunately, meeting software and hardware vendors are already on the case, producing tools designed to align staff members, improve company culture, and boost the results of every workplace conversation.

 

 

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