The modern workplace looks a lot different compared to what it did just five years ago as many organisations make the shift to a hybrid working environment.

The boom of the unified communications and collaboration industry means that employees are no longer bound to having to travel into an office for work.

Instead, they can log on at home, in their favourite coffee shop, or even in a different country and work effectively with their colleagues.

This is evident in Zoom’s end-of-year stats for 2022, which found that employees are regularly meeting from places other than their desks, including coffee shops, airports, and cars.

A Zoom study published in August 2022 found that more than four in five company leaders (86 percent) agreed that “the future of work is hybrid,” while only four percent disagreed.

The survey also found that company leaders prefer a hybrid or remote working environment, with more than 90 percent stating it is better than just in-person only.

With more companies shifting to hybrid work, it’s more important than ever to create an organisational setting that gives employees the tools they need to succeed in a hybrid format.

Here are three ways any company can empower hybrid working, according to Zoom:

1. Give Employees the Right Tools

Organisations that make the switch to hybrid work need to ensure that their employees can maintain the same level of productivity as they would have in the office when working remotely.

It is no secret that successful hybrid working comes from giving your employees the right tools to do their job.

Companies must invest in both hardware and software to ensure that their hybrid workers are able to work in any environment.

Zoom has acknowledged this and recently launched its Zoom curated Essential Apps offering, designed to allow businesses to quickly find the solutions they need to improve the communication and collaboration elements of their company.

Ross Mayfield, Group Product Manager, Zoom Apps, said: “By introducing Zoom curated Essential Apps with Zoom One online, we’re bringing the most helpful apps to the forefront, so you can focus on managing and growing your business.

“From automating tasks, enhancing collaboration, and generating insights in Zoom Meetings, this collection of apps gives you everything you need to run your business right at your fingertips.”

Essential Apps gives users access to the premium versions of a selection of apps as part of a customer’s Zoom One Pro, Business, and Business Plus online plans.

Some of the Essential Apps offerings include Coda, Kahoot!, Virtual Business Cards by Warmly, Funtivity, and more.

2. Help Employees to Connect from Any Location

Hybrid working means that employees can work from anywhere and are not restricted to the confines of an office.

However, organisations that adopt this style of working environment still need their employees to communicate and collaborate efficiently and effectively with each other.

Hybrid working will be doomed to fail if an organisation does not provide its employees with the right platform for communication.

Zoom is helping its customers shift to hybrid working by providing several tools and solutions to smoothen the transition.

For example, Zoom’s Workspace Reservation allows teams to reserve flexible workspaces ahead of time or when they arrive at the office.

The company even allows organisations to make workspaces something as simple as an open desk or a workspace that is personalised with a Zoom device.

Zoom Meetings is more than just a place where colleagues and customers can meet remotely; it empowers hybrid and remote workers by allowing them to meet face-to-face from any device.

Zoom Meetings are quick and easy to start, schedule, and join from any location, making it one of the most powerful collaboration tools that Zoom offers.

Users can also find peace of mind because Zoom Meetings have robust security settings to help ensure that meetings can be encrypted when sharing sensitive information with hybrid or remote colleagues.

Chatting with colleagues is integral to any organisation that adopts hybrid working and at Zoom, it is no different.

The company’s Team Chat offering allows users to communicate effectively, with Zoom using the experience of its own employees to tailor the feature for hybrid working environments.

Sharvari Nerurkar, Head of Zoom Team Chat, commented: “My team is a mix of hybrid and remote.

“We used our own experiences to help reimagine Zoom Team Chat as that connective tissue linking all the pieces of the Zoom platform. It keeps us organized and on the same page, even when we’re not in the same place.”

Zoom continues to improve its ability to empower connections between employees regardless of their working location as it introduces Zoom Spots in early 2023.

The feature is Zoom’s virtual coworking space designed to foster inclusive discussions and bring the typical interactions of in-person work to the hybrid environment.

According to the company, Zoom Spots replicates the “working alongside” aspect of an open office for workers by encouraging free-form video-first conversations.

3. Put Employees on the Same Playing Field

It is very likely that meetings in the modern workplace will be a mixture of in-person and remote participants.

The remote participants maybe working from home or even another office; however, their contribution to the meeting still matters.

As a result, all employees need to feel like they are on the same playing field when it comes to participating in meetings, with remote workers needing access to the same tools that in-person workers have.

Zoom developed Zoom Rooms in 2015 to bring HD video collaboration into any meeting space to enable in-person and remote participants to interact in real-time.

Within Zoom Rooms, the company included a Smart Gallery feature to leverage AI to take a single-camera view of multiple people in a Zoom Room and make everyone “the same size”.

It then sends up to three video streams of the individuals to remote meeting attendees so they have a better display of the in-room participants.

Zoom has designed the feature to give remote attendees an improved face-to-face experience rather than having just one webcam viewing the whole room.

It isn’t just face-to-face meetings where hybrid employees need to be on the same playing field as in-person colleagues.

Ensuring there is a productive and collaborate environment in the hybrid workplace is critical to its success as employees need a space to work on ideas outside of face-to-face meetings.

In order to overcome this issue, Zoom designed the Zoom Whiteboard to allow employees the chance to collaborate whenever and wherever they want by using a number of advanced tools.

Zoom Whiteboards ensures that hybrid employees can access physical whiteboards in the office, while remaining connected to their remote colleagues.

Employees can access and edit Zoom Whiteboards with physical hardware, remotely in a Zoom Meeting, or even outside of a meeting.

Whiteboards can also be shared with anyone with a Zoom account, meaning users can collaborate with anyone they want.

As we head through 2023 and beyond, the hybrid working environment will continue to expand as more companies make the change to their working style.

Technology organisations will also continue to evolve the hybrid workplace with new products and platforms to help empower employees, and Zoom will be no exception to this.

The company is set to do this through its existing platforms and its roadmap for new innovations in the future.

You can get a glimpse of this as the company showcases its technology it the Zoom Work Transformation Summit (WTS) on Wednesday, January 18. You can attend the summit by clicking here.

The company has stated that the theme for the WTS will be “how leading organisations are using technology to drive growth in every economic climate”.

 

 



from UC Today https://ift.tt/9i3DKcf