Anand Lakshmanan is the Head of Video Collaboration (VC), India, and Southwest Asia at Logitech. He drives localized GTM models in the region to ensure wider availability of Logitech’s innovative VC solutions, bringing people together and changing the way teams collaborate with video. Anand leads and coaches a growing high-performance team to help customers adapt and stay connected in the new hybrid workplace. Fostering a culture of collaboration, Anand works with his team to bring new products to the market and identify early adopters and achieve results at scale.
A key topic of discussion today, it’s interesting to note, is how the future of work closely follows Covid-19 search trends on Google. Contextualise this to a pre covid world where working and socialising from home was a notional proposition. Today it’s a reality, a transformative shift that has redefined the world of work, challenging precedents around collaboration, productivity, engagement and more importantly employee experience!
A disruption overnight, today hybrid or remote working is the mainstay of corporate corridors primarily because of the flexibility it offers and the many advantages of choosing to work from anywhere as opposed to work from office. In fact, the experience of remote workers in the past two years have taught them that digital communication technologies that connect everyone in today’s business are as dynamic as the workplace itself.
Technologies such as cloud computing, video conferencing, telecommuting, workflow collaboration tools, and messaging platforms have decoupled cooperation from the physical world of desks and water coolers, allowing employees at all levels to realise their most effective manner of working. Therefore, it is evident that hybrid or remote work is set to stay a part of the new normal, not because of circumstances, but because employees have chosen to do so.
Furthermore, virtual communication and collaboration that underpins the possibility of this new world of work, will accelerate manifold with the roll out of 5G. 5G technology will bring to life new immersive experiences, real time interfaces, with AR/ VR redefining virtual workstations and workflows.
The Phygital Workspace
As a result of the hybrid or phygital work model, the emergence of video has been the most significant development among others. During the pandemic, office employees suddenly found themselves relying heavily on video meetings to continue working and collaborating. Many believe, video calls will eventually replace voice calls as video is more active, develops and strengthens connections, enhances communication quality leading to overall team success.
Remote Work and Productivity
According to Stanford University Research, telecommuting gives a productivity gain equivalent to a full workday per week and results in a 50% reduction in employee turnover. This increase was ascribed to remote employees starting and finishing work on time (whereas on-site colleagues were frequently late or departed early) and being less distracted. Indeed, telecommuting is a workplace trend that will continue in the foreseeable future.
With people having more frequent encounters with individuals in different locations, a source of tension is when remote participants have a different experience than in-person/in-office participants in meetings. This is where technology comes in. High-quality meeting room systems have become imperative to make meetings equal for all, regardless of location. For instance, Logitech RightSight 2 makes hybrid meetings more equitable for remote participants by presenting both a close-up view of the individual speaker and a view of the entire meeting room during video calls. Remote participants no longer feel left out in group meetings.
Organisations must start to discuss implementation of collaboration technology strategically to ensure business continuity, team efficiency and productivity. Ensuring their employees have the same work experience from anywhere, collaboration technology such as audio and visual solutions must be tailored for the size, usage needs and architecture of the facility.
The concept of hybrid and remote working has opened up plethora of avenues and prospects for employees across the globe, providing them with new opportunities. This has further, resulted in a greater reliance on asynchronous communication. Async communication allows team members to operate at their own time, giving them greater flexibility over their workflow especially when teams are spread across several time zones. Better communication can reduce stress and enhance time-zone equality.
Future is constant innovation and adoption
Meta and Web 3.0 technologies today foretell our future! Businesses of the future may use the Metaverse to conduct meetings with employees from all around the world in a single virtual space, instead of depending on traditional techniques.
By then, videoconferencing will become even more immersive, boosting the capabilities and capacity of virtual meetings, eventually increasing corporate productivity. The world of work is ready to embrace this new reality and harness its full potential, as a business, are you?