Hybrid working is the phrase on everyone’s lips at the moment as employers prepare for the wholesale return of their staff to the office.
But IT decision-makers and managers must consider that employees have become used to having greater flexibility and technology resources at their disposal over the last 15 months and they expect to return to an office that offers them a similar experience as what they get working from home.
According to Microsoft’s annual Work Trend Index, “extreme flexibility and hybrid work will define the post-pandemic workplace”. Microsoft’s research revealed that over 70 percent of workers want flexible remote work options to continue. To prepare for this, two-thirds of business decision-makers are considering redesigning physical spaces to better accommodate hybrid work environments.
The report recommended that through high-quality audio and video experiences are important to have in these revised workspaces, multiple, interactive screens in the office are just as important to facilitate hybrid working.
Jon Knight, Managing Director of Ascentae, explained to UC Today that managers must start treating the office like a “five-star hotel”, meaning that the office must entice people to want to come in, and to do so it must offer a comparable experience to working from home.
“That five-star treatment means that they're able to run their UC calls, and the experience in the meeting rooms with their colleagues needs to be good enough. The Microsoft report highlighted the fact that organisations need to aspire to be better than just having high-quality video and audio tech,” he elaborated.
“The screens that people are using to connect with remote participants need to be a much more immersive experience where the remote participants aren’t treated as second class citizens and that there's a strong focus on their presence being there in the room. That then leads to a general uplift in the quality of the technology within an office environment.”
