Your Meeting Room or Mine?

How to choose the right meeting room

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Your Meeting Room or Mine?
Collaboration

Published: March 24, 2021

Rob Scott

Rob Scott

Publisher

Meetings are crucial to business success.  

We connect to discuss strategies, explore ideas, and make valuable decisions. Today, of course, the meeting space is a little different to what we’re used.  

Entering a meeting space in the past used to be a simple experience. You’d file into a conference room at a specific time, sit down, and discuss things with your colleagues. Though this approach wasn’t always the most productive strategy, it was one we were all familiar with, and it also had the advantage of real, human interaction.  

Now, the events of 2020 have pushed the workforce to consider a new kind of meeting experience. To avoid the threats of face-to-face contact, we’re all meeting online, through video and collaboration software. Most experts agree that this new virtual environment will be the norm in the years to come. Virtual meetings will empower the hybrid and remote workspace of the future.  

So, how do you decide which meeting room environment you should be using?  

Choosing a Meeting Environment for Teams 

Figuring out “where to meet” in the new age of collaboration isn’t just about checking which rooms are free anymore. Companies need to think about where their attendees are connecting from. Remote employees could be jumping into a meeting from anywhere. In-office staff might want to get involved through a traditional meeting room or office desk.  

Enabling excellent collaboration also means ensuring that everyone feels comfortable using the technology required for a meeting. Business leaders will need to ask themselves whether everyone might be able to get involved with their preferred hardware device. What’s more, what’s going to happen if someone turns up with poor audio, blurry video, and bad background noise? 

In an environment where employees are “logging in” to the meeting room environment from different spaces, can the company maintain secure conversations while giving teams flexibility? Or will employees be relegated to using specific software and devices? 

The Post-Pandemic Meeting 

There are a lot of questions to answer before any company can claim to have a full meeting room strategy in place. Aside from deciding which kind of meeting solutions employees should be permitted to use, companies will also need to ask themselves which “COVID safe” measures they’re going to implement for hybrid meetings.  

Are the meeting spaces in your office going to be equipped with computer vision technology to detect capacity and heat in a meeting room space? Can you use virtual assistants to make the room as contactless as possible, and will wide-lens cameras capture all attendees in a larger space? 

What about recording the meeting? Should all of your participants have a say in what’s recorded and what isn’t, and how can you ensure that you’re storing data correctly from all environments? Can your users share files without worrying about losing track of data, or stumbling into problems with compliance? 

It’s difficult enough to get multiple people outside of an organisation to agree to a date and time for a meeting. The most popular calendar and email systems do a basic job of simplifying this, but there’s still work to be done. Add in the issue of having to figure out which meeting room technology is needed for the event, and things become even more complex.  

Exploring the Future of Meetings 

Inter-company collaboration and virtual workspaces are on the rise. We’ve been rapidly investing in these solutions since the initial arrival of the pandemic in 2020. However, now that companies are beginning to put more long-term strategies in place, they’re asking whether all the technology available is fit for purpose.  

What can tech vendors do in the months and years ahead to ensure that meeting scheduling, preparation, and participation are as effective as possible for users. Can AIpowered virtual assistants make our work lives easier? For instance, Zoom.ai offers businesses access to a meeting scheduling bot that can help to reduce some of the issues with bringing people face-to-face at the right times. 

Alternatively, is it more likely that we’ll be relying on new calendar and email features from market leaders like Google and Microsoft to further transform the way we work. These giants have already had a huge impact on the way we define collaboration and productivity.  

Organising online meetings, even in today’s virtual landscape, can be a difficult experience, particularly as companies continue to work with talent from different time zones. Going forward, we’ll need to tackle a range of challenges, from figuring out which platform staff members should use, to determining how we can interact with guests.  

Will the stress and security concerns gradually get easier, or are we in for a tough transition? 

 

 

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