Huddle rooms, hot desks, open plan collaboration spaces: today’s modern offices have changed.
Gone are the disconnected, siloed, and often-isolating rooms and corridors which once made up hundreds of millions of square metres of the world’s corporate and commercial real estate.
Instead, a growing emphasis on flatter structural hierarchies, collaboration, and comfort has influenced a reimagining of the typical office space; supported, of course, by an ever-evolving technological revolution.
However, that gradual and agreeable reimagination has been rudely interrupted by a once-in-a-generation shock – namely the pandemic – which has forced it to tweak its progress and respond to the resultant explosion in remote and hybrid working.
Some people are in the office; some people are not.
But they all must continue to interact with each other as if nothing had happened.
As a result, the ‘meeting room’ is now a thing.
Separate but at the same time integrated within the new, flowing, open office design, these are the quieter ‘spaces within a space’ where virtual meetings can take place in a more private setting.
And – as they require the smartest kit in order to provide the best user experience – opportunities abound for the vendors and their reseller partners who understand this rapidly expanding market.
“The modern workplace must encourage innovation, creativity and collaboration – high-quality virtual meeting experiences have to be at the heart of all of that and so the meeting room must be equipped to deliver,” says Joseph Debold, Vice President of Sales, Americas, at leading global premium audio and video solutions provider EPOS, which is innovating hugely in this area.
“The changing nature of workstyles, an increasingly globalized and remote workforce, and technological advancements in internet speeds and stability are all contributing to the evolution of the modern workplace.
“However, meetings in and of themselves will always be the day-to-day operational beating heart of any enterprise. People will always need to come together in an office environment and meet with others - it’s just that now many of those others are joining from elsewhere.
“All of that makes the dedicated meeting room an increasingly-vital resource and one which must be equipped in ways which provide the best possible user experience whilst simultaneously driving efficiency and productivity.”
Crucially, that equipment is also going through something of an evolution.
To date, organisations have often deployed video cameras, screens, microphones and speakers that are separate from each other and which require clunky integration with legacy conferencing software.
