Open workspaces are great for collaboration, innovation and encouraging team members to work together. Unfortunately, they can get noisy, fast. The solution to open concept offices is Huddle Rooms!
What is a huddle room?
A huddle room is a small, private meeting area where team members can collaborate with minimal distractions. Open offices do not provide a great deal of privacy and some projects do not require everyone’s input. A huddle room provides the perfect escape to get your creative juices flowing.
What does a huddle room have?
There are many ways to decorate your huddle room. You can keep it basic with a table and chairs or vamp up the style with a couch and floating desks. The way to decorate your huddle room is up to you. But it should have a hosted unified communications solution.
Unprompted meetings happen all the time, pulling employees away from their desks. An employee would feel less guilty of leaving their desk if they were equipped with a mobile UC application. Providing a mobile application will allow users to have their calls directed to their mobile device.
A huddle room should also be equipped with a computer with a UC desktop application installed. Users can communicate with other employees from the huddle room and set the presence to let other employees know the room is in use. Providing a computer will also minimise the number of devices needed for the meeting.
Employees must be able to interact with remote workers, clients or users outside of the organisation. Video conferencing is a way to connect external participants and make them feel like they are physically part of the conversation. While video conferencing, users can screen share, send files and more.
If your huddle rooms are equipped with unified communications solutions, it will enhance collaboration between on-site and remote users, maximise productivity and modernise your office. Other items your huddle room should have:
A Screen and Camera
It is not ideal to have all meeting participants sit behind one laptop webcam and, just like you need to see them, they need to see you. Huddle rooms should be equipped with a large screen that will fit all attendees.
A Whiteboard/Smart board
Even though we rely on technology for basically everything, sometimes it is nice to write stuff down. Having a visual to look at can speed up the problem-solving process. Most smart boards can act as a screen, camera, and whiteboard combined.
VoIP Phone with Hot Desking Feature
Your employees may use the Huddle Room for peace and quiet. The phone in the Huddle Room should have the Hot Desking feature. Hot Desking will allow employees to log into any phone in the office with their own phone number and Caller ID. This is beneficial for remote workers who come to the office for the day. They can set up their ‘office’ in a huddle room and make and receive phone calls as usual.
A Conference Phone
Huddle Rooms are smaller than boardrooms, therefore are less likely to echo. Your organisation will save money by only needing to purchase a reliable audio conferencing phone, rather than an ‘echo cancelling’ conference phone.
Why not just use the boardroom?
Spontaneous collaboration isn’t possible when you need to make an appointment just to meet. In large organisations, a boardroom could be booked for over a week! A boardroom is also more expensive to equip with technology. You need more chairs, larger furniture, a bigger screen, a proper conference phone that is for larger spaces and more.
Do more with less!
Depending on the size of an organisation, you can have several huddle rooms instead of one large unconventional conference room. They can be designed specifically for the need of each department or generic and on-brand with the company. Huddle rooms are a more budget-friendly option and provide a more flexible approach to getting work done.
Today’s workforce is mobile, global, and connected. Huddle rooms are part of making that possible.
Guest Blog by Patrice Bramat, Business Success Manager at Bicom Systems
Patrice has over 20 years of experience in sales, marketing, and management. Upon recently joining the Bicom Systems team, he came from large corporations like Akzo Nobel, Rexel, and Xerox. As Bicom Systems Business Success Manager, Patrice is tasked with providing partners with resources in sales and marketing to further their business needs. Bicom Systems is the only unified communications provider with all of the pieces to start and grow a telephony company. They offer seven highly-featured products integrated seamlessly to boost sales, growth, and profit.
