As a return to the office appears on the horizon for many organisations, that office will look very different to the one many left behind in March 2020. The pandemic has altered the way we work with many employees benefitting from flexible working, and who now intend to split their working week between their office and home.
Because of this shift, employers need to start looking at making their office a truly hybrid, collaborative space where employees can collaborate efficiently, regardless of where they are located.
We spoke with four industry experts on creating safe working spaces in offices, the most sought-after meeting room technology and what the post-COVID meeting room will look like. Our panelists are from Konftel, Poly, Crestron and Pexip.
How are you helping customers create safe working spaces for the office return?
Many people returning to the office will understandably be wary of sharing items and physical space with many others again.
This wariness means that companies should be rapidly transforming their office space to deliver safer working conditions to boost employee confidence about an office return, according to Jeff May, Sales Director at Konftel.
“Offices are being reorganised to create more space, more meeting rooms and more video conferencing,” he elaborated.
“It’s important to fully prepare for the next phase of COVID recovery, combining a mix of home working and phased office life – the hybrid workplace. The first steps to a phased return to the office are now underway – and video and audio technology will continue to play a frontline line role wherever people are working”
Sofocles Socratous, Poly’s Vice President of Sales, Northern Europe cited research from Metrigy that indicated employees considered antimicrobial treatment as their most necessary feature among a list of office-safe solutions, due to their wariness of touching devices in shared environments. However, he added that for certain workplaces, such as warehouses and hospitals, devices – including deskphones or wireless DECT phones – will have to continue to be shared.
“That’s why Poly has partnered with Microban® to design the first wireless deskphone with built-in antimicrobial product protection,” he stated.
“This inhibits the growth of bacteria for the lifespan of the device, so employees can communicate with total peace of mind.”
Andrew Gross, Director of Sales, UC Enterprise at Crestron, agreed with the importance of a properly sanitised office, stating that it is assisting customers to develop a touch-free workplace.
“For instance, using scheduling panels that not only show the cleaning status of different rooms and emergency notifications, but also help avoid unintentional interactions,” he explained.
“For example, the panel shows that a room is cleaned and vacant, so I enter. The motion sensor automatically detects me and books me a Teams meeting in that room, without me having to touch anything. The display turns on, shades lower, lights get raised. If you want to change the temperature in the room, you can do so through your smartphone. You can then use your own laptop to join or host the meeting.
“You can have the complete meeting room experience without having to touch any communal touch devices.”
Pexip is also helping customers implement an office with reduced touchpoints, according to Karl Hantho, President of the Americas. Meeting participants can walk into a room and join the meeting
“We also support hybrid workplaces by seamlessly connecting remote and in-office workers,” he continued.
“Users get easy-to-join meetings from any device, whether a standards-based video system in the conference room or a laptop at home, as well as the ability to join meetings hosted on different collaboration platforms, when invited by someone outside your company”
What meeting room technology is most in-demand?
Meeting room solutions that boast flexibility, agility and high performance are in high demand and will continue to be do “long into the future”, according to Konftel’s May, who said that it has developed a series of video kits to cater to this demand.
“We’ve also launched a new business class webcam, the Cam10 for personal use,” he stated.
“It’s been designed for today’s hybrid working trends where more and more business–critical meetings take place online.”
Pexip’s Hantho agreed that technology that can deliver flexibility, simplicity and security is in high demand at the moment, but that this can be overwhelming for managers re-designing their office spaces.
“As organisations return to the office, they will find themselves challenged to join a multitude of meeting services from devices that are designed for a single meeting solution,” he said, adding that the vendor has developed Pexip Room to deliver one platform for rooms of all sizes”
“Users can join any meeting hosted on any platform from the touch of a single button. The room will connect and enter any PIN or security metric appropriate to join into that meeting automatically.”
Poly’s Socratous is seeing clients clamouring for videoconferencing bars tht have in-built software, such as Zoom and Teams.
“We’re seeing a rise in demand for videoconferencing bars with built-in native software experiences,” he elaborated.
“These offer a fluid, pro-grade quality and consumer-like simplicity, with proximity join functionality that means that meetings can be started from a personal laptop or smartphone, as well as the in room native controller.”
Personal collaboration devices, such as intelligent deskphones, are also in high demand among customers, according to Crestron’s Gross, adding that organisations are seeking out solutions that streamline collaboration among employees.
“More meetings are happening than ever before – in the last year, meeting time has more than doubled for Microsoft Teams users to 148 per cent and continues to rise,” he stated.
“As companies explore permanent hybrid models, there is a growing need to streamline remote collaboration and introduce dedicated devices. Juggling calls, scheduling calendars and sharing content across multiple devices has proven inefficient and unsuccessful.”
How will the post-COVID meeting room experience be different to what we’ve been used to?
All of our panelists agreed that the meeting room will look completely different post-COVID, and that technology, such as video and collaboration, will become prominent, permanent additions to the space.
Pexip’s Hantho expects that video-enabled rooms that connect distributed teams will become regular fixtures in offices and that there will be a greater need for interoperability between meeting solutions to accommodate organisations’ mixed communications environments.
“We also expect more demand for low-touch options to join meetings, and a fresh look at office space design to accommodate social distancing and the new role of the office as a place for collaboration and connection,” he elaborated.
“Video meetings are now a regular part of our daily lives, and as employees return to the office, they’ll expect to be able to join the same meetings with colleagues just as easily as they did at home. Organisations will make sure their meeting rooms are equipped for video calls.”
Crestron’s Gross added remote meeting participants can no longer be regarded as “second-class” to their in-office colleagues. If anything, they are under more scrutiny due to being on-video.
“When you get cropped by an intelligent camera that zooms in on your face, you are more present than the six other people that are physically in the meeting room,” he explained.
“Your body language is more visible instead of less, and usually the display showing the remote participant(s) is in the centre of the room. Soon, we will be able to streamline the experience and your presence – no matter where you are.”
Offices will become even more important as places to collaborate and create ideas in a hybrid world, said Poly’s Socratous. Asa result, people will expect “intuitive” technologies to help them collaborate internally and externally as soon as they enter a meeting room.
Organisations will redesign office spaces with multiple different purposeful workspaces centred around consistent experiences,” he said.
“Meetings are no longer just about talking, but sharing documents, screens and working on ideas as a team. Once on a call, participants want to be able to collaborate and be able to view and annotate the same files together in real-time, so it’s vital that businesses have the right technology in place to meet these needs”
Physical space between employees will be paramount in re-designed meeting rooms, said Konftel’s May.
When designing their new meeting rooms, managers should consider limiting capacity of office spaces, converting existing meeting rooms into video-enabled conferencing, installing touchless device technologiesd and increasing general cleaning and sanitation, he advised.
“Less people are likely to be in the same room, at least initially and they will be more spaced apart, so video technology with a wide field of view and longer audio pick up range will be crucial,” he added.
