Perhaps the most disruptive revolution to the workforce for decades, “hybrid work”, has officially taken the world by storm.
According to Microsoft, 70% of the employees introduced to “flexible” working conditions during the pandemic want them to continue in the years ahead. As a result, around 65% of business decision-makers say they’re redesigning physical spaces to accommodate a future of hybrid employment.
The hybrid meeting room kit is just one example of the various tools companies may need to embrace to prepare for a new age of work. This all-in-one, plug-and-play solution or hybrid meetings promises a more straightforward solution for bringing team members together for more meaningful work.
Already, the room kit landscape is growing rapidly, as business leaders demand more agile, flexible solutions for meetings.
The question is, which trends will drive this environment in the years ahead?
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The Return to the Office and Covid-Safe Environments
Hybrid room kits are simple, easy-to-access solutions allowing employees in the office to collaborate more consistently with people from a range of different environments. These kits are valuable because they often consider not just the technical needs of employees in meetings but their needs when it comes to office safety.
Like the “return to the office” continues, and companies search for the best possible way to enable a revolving door of in-house employees, implementing the proper safety measures will be essential. The majority of leading meeting room kits come with a focus on contactless collaboration.
Central monitors and control systems allow users to connect to the software they need for a meeting using their smartphone, so teams don’t have to use shared screens. What’s more, the use of computer vision in cameras, natural language processing, and sensors means we can interact with machines in many contactless ways, from gestures to voice commands.
There are even room kits on the market today which come with sensors specifically designed to track the number of people in a room, and the temperature in the space, for safety reasons.
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Employee Wellbeing and Equity
Employee wellbeing is a significant trend all companies need to be aware of heading into the new age of hybrid work. Today’s employees demand a better level of care from the companies they work with. If your staff can’t trust you to consider their best interests, you’ll have high levels of turnover and disengagement.
To keep staff happy and productive, companies need to think more comprehensively about the idea of “well-being”. Contactless hybrid room kits are a good start, but these tools also need to be connected with software solutions and processes intended to improve employee satisfaction.
For instance, for employees to feel happy in the hybrid workforce, everyone in the team needs to feel like they have an equal voice at the table, regardless of whether they’re working remotely or in-office. Intelligent solutions built into the hybrid room kit can help to create a sense of inclusion in this changing workplace.
We’ve already seen companies like Microsoft implementing computer vision into their room kit technology to help recreate the experience of eye contact with intelligent video stream positioning. At the same time, tools like Viva allow teams to track their meeting schedules and make sure they’re not exposing themselves to risks of video fatigue.
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Technology Personalisation
In recent years, time spent working from home has given the majority of modern employees a taste of what it feels like to use their preferred tools and technology for collaboration. As the world of hybrid work emerges, we’re likely to see many staff members demanding the same simple, customisable, and personalised experiences they had at home.
Hybrid meeting room kits can open the door for more personalised experiences in different ways. For instance, intelligent assistants built into a hybrid meeting room can use biometrics to recognise an employee when they enter a room and immediately load their preferred collaboration software, their calendar, and a list of any contacts they need access to.
Bringing your own meeting solutions also mean software agnostic technology can give users more freedom about the kind of software and tools they use to interact with their colleagues. Many hybrid meeting room kits can even be extended with various additional tools from partner vendors to create a more flexible and unique meeting experience.
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Augmented Meetings
As the world of work becomes increasingly distributed and diverse, we’re relying more heavily on technology to enhance the quality of our conversations and improve efficiency. Augmented experiences built into hybrid meeting room kits pave the way for a metaverse-style future for meetings. We can enjoy the benefits of a more embodied internet in our discussions.
The term “augmented meetings” can refer to using a wide range of new and enhanced forms of AI and innovation in the meeting room. For instance, with ambient computing, we can step into a meeting room where the technology feels almost invisible but allows us to control various aspects of a conference with voice, gestures, and movements.
Augmented meeting rooms can also involve bringing smart assistants and intelligent tools into the meeting room environment to help with things like automatically translating and transcribing language or immediately surfacing information relevant to a conversation.
These tools will help make meetings in the virtual world feel just as natural and streamlined as the discussions we have in person.
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Extended Reality in Room Kits
As meeting rooms become increasingly intelligent, and our conversations in the hybrid world grow more complex, we’re seeing countless new technologies entering the hybrid room kit environment. Already, there are advanced room kits offering access to things like digital whiteboards and virtual assistants as part of the package. The next step for many companies will be implementing more “immersive” meeting experiences.
Virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality offerings are making their way into the meeting room rapidly. Virtual reality tools like Meta’s Oculus can help teams collaborate in a shared virtual environment, interacting with digital versions of products and systems.
Mixed reality solutions like Microsoft HoloLens can create a more collaborative experience for teams looking to mix the real and virtual worlds for better creativity and innovation. In the future, XR solutions could be a standard part of the hybrid room kit, just like a webcam or a microphone.
from UC Today https://ift.tt/Jqz3KWE
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