Companies, small and large, have learned at an accelerated pace what remote collaboration means to them. Video communication has shown us how useful it can be to bridge distances. And the modern collaboration applications have proven their added value.
The home workplace
The combination of online collaboration and physical office work is certainly here to stay. 60% of the working Dutch people miss colleagues around them. With all those brilliant solutions online, working from home also changes. The place at the kitchen table changes (if possible) to a more permanent place in the house. In addition to a good ergonomic office chair, of course, there is also an extra large computer display and a good headset. You make your home workplace your own with all the tools that are needed for this.
Virtually involved Effective remote collaboration
With the introduction of the 1.5-meter measures, desks in the office become flexible workplaces. The number of physical workplaces has drastically decreased. Employees who go to the office must register in advance or keep a fixed work schedule. Full is full.
Back in the office, the now familiar collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Webex Teams, Pexip, Google, Zoom… also want to be taken along in the meeting room. This presents the challenge for many organizations to accelerate the connection environment in the office. Effective meetings remain very important to organizations. Many organizations come to us with questions about choosing the right technology for upgrading the meeting room. Everything aimed at smoothly connecting home workers and office workers. In the new normal, it is always assumed that a number of employees are physically present and that the rest are virtually involved. And they want the same meeting experience at home and at the office.
Upscaling and downsizing
Due to the 1.5 meter measures, meeting rooms with fewer people can also be used. For this purpose, other (office) spaces are also being used as an extra flexible meeting room. We see that companies provide these spaces with mobile video conference systems. A large display with camera for video communication on a mobile trolley offers a flexible solution. Companies want to quickly upscale and downsize when needed. More flexibility is the magic word.
But what have we actually learned from the past period? Forced by the current situation and the rapid adoption of working from home, people learn to appreciate the possibilities of technologies the fastest. Provided, of course, that the correct means for working from home are available. But also the social gathering and the chat at the coffee machine is appreciated again The conclusion is therefore that the combination of physical and virtual collaboration will always remain. A keeper.
