New research has found a link between higher camera enablement in hybrid meetings and higher worker retention.
Hybrid analytics organisation Vyopta has released its findings on return-to-office (RTO) trends and office space utilisation. Vyopta emphasises its analysis highlights significant trends in collaboration patterns, uncovering innovative ways for organisations to harness collaboration data to boost efficiency, engagement, and productivity.
Perhaps its most eye-catching finding was the strong correlation between camera usage and employee retention. Employees in the attrition group who left the organisation within a year of the study enabled their cameras in only 18.4 percent of small group meetings. In contrast, the retention group, employees who stayed with the company, used their cameras in 32.5 percent of their meetings.
This was connected to another finding that participants have been enabling their cameras less frequently, marking the first downward trend in camera usage that Vyopta has observed since early 2020.
Alfredo Ramirez, CEO and co-founder of Vyopta, said:
At Vyopta, we’re committed to helping organizations harness the power of their data to transform their meeting practices and achieve sustainable success. By understanding and acting on collaboration metrics, we can enhance efficiency, boost employee engagement, and ultimately drive better retention rates.”
Among the other key findings was that, despite significant RTO trends since the pandemic, the volume of virtual meetings has remained steady over the past two to three years, while in-person meetings have more than doubled.
The research also uncovered a trend of increasing “no-participation” rates in small group meetings, proving costly for organisations. In 2023, the rate of attendees who remained muted throughout the entirety of a meeting rose to 7.2 percent, a significant increase from the 4.8 percent observed in 2022. This pattern suggests a growing disengagement in meetings, which could have substantial financial implications for businesses.
The study analysed over 40 million meetings involving more than 450,000 unique employees. It encompassed two six-week periods from the first quarters of 2022 and 2023, focusing on remote or hybrid meetings conducted through online platforms like Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, and Zoom.
Vyopta’s Recommended Best Practices
After conducting its analysis, Vyopta engaged a select group of customers to explore and apply actionable insights from collaboration data. Leaders from these organisations, upon reviewing their data, recognised the high cost of inefficient meetings and the necessity for clear directives on meeting protocols to cultivate a productive and economical meeting culture.
They concluded that treating meeting culture as a core facet of the company’s ethos, establishing best practices, defining clear roles and responsibilities, supporting influential individuals, and providing training for skilled meeting hosts are pivotal.
Additionally, Vyopta says these leaders saw the importance of leveraging data for continuous improvement and providing executive oversight, considering collaboration data as an integral part of the broader business intelligence array. For companies that are committed to this endeavour, Vyopta insists adopting a data-driven strategy is crucial for success.
As hybrid work models evolve and office spaces are designed to accommodate in-person collaboration, individual tasks, and meetings, Vyopta stresses they will increasingly benefit from technological innovations and data analysis and that organisations that effectively utilise collaboration data will gain a competitive advantage.
Other Recent Compelling Hybrid Work Studies
In April, an Owl Labs study found that almost two-thirds of hybrid workers (61 percent) have felt pressured by a cyclical RTO mandate during specific periods of the year.
Owl Labs found that employers are increasingly pushing for on-site work during the fall and winter months, aligning with the back-to-school season. September has emerged as the peak month for RTO campaigns, impacting 17 percent of hybrid workers. Similarly, the New Year marks another significant period for RTO, with 13 percent of hybrid workers facing heightened pressure to return to the office in January.
Meanwhile, previous Owl Labs research found that over two-thirds of managers surveyed allowed team members to work from home more regularly than required by company RTO mandates.
Owl Labs’ survey found that 70 percent of UK-based managers have permitted team members to work from home in ways that deviate from official company RTO policies. This trend suggests a shift toward “stealth management”, where managers quietly implement a more flexible approach to retain top talent despite stricter RTO mandates.
Additionally, about 87 percent of UK workers believe that an unofficial, flexible RTO policy boosts team morale. This indicates that while employees recognise the advantages of returning to the office, they also value the flexibility to decide when and how they work from the office.
from UC Today https://ift.tt/hVLvBc0
0 Comments