Mastering Hybrid Work

Challenge

Improving work experiences for your teams while simplifying your technology stack and reducing costs.

When going into the office wasn’t possible, many organizations made hasty decisions to maintain productivity. While these stop-gap measures provided a vital business lifeline at the time, companies were left with a disjointed collection of platforms for meetings, messaging, and calling. For IT, these measures have become increasingly difficult to deploy and manage, and make it difficult to get the visibility they need when issues occur.

Now, we face a new challenge: As hybrid work has evolved and people return to the office, their needs have changed—from video conferencing equipment available only in select meeting rooms to almost every meeting having at least one remote participant. In fact, 98% of knowledge workers say remote participants will be part of their meetings⁹. And the equipment needs to support more than just your in-house conferencing or collaboration platform. On any given day, a worker might have to hop from Webex to Zoom and then Microsoft Teams. If they’re in a meeting room with video conferencing equipment that doesn’t support all conferencing platforms, they may end up joining the meeting from a device that doesn’t deliver the same quality meeting experience, resulting in a subpar experience for everyone.

Solution

Go from fragmented to consistent experiences by moving to a single provider offering an integrated suite of software and intelligent devices that support any conferencing platform.

Look for a hybrid work solution that provides:

• A suite of products designed to support hybrid work with everything your teams need to excel, including calling, meetings, whiteboarding, polling, webinars, events, and asynchronous video.
• The ability to easily join any meeting platform and connect to any app within their workflow.
• Cloud-based services to reduce maintenance overhead and deliver the latest and most modern experiences.

Challenge

Modernizing your business and investing in hybrid work with tightening budgets and resource constraints.

Developing a strategy for hybrid work takes more than a single department. It requires IT, real estate, and human resources need to come together and decide what’s best for employees and the business. You now have an opportunity to re-evaluate how you’re spending your budget and allocating resources. That means optimizing IT tools and software licensing agreements, and eliminating underused office space. That means freeing up resources to invest in more productive and engaging experiences.

For employees, it’s critical to make sure the experience is secure, consistent, and reliable, no matter their workspace. Using different devices and interfaces in changing locations can harm productivity and cause frustration. For IT, siloed or stand-alone tools and software cause nightmares for management, maintenance, and issue resolution.

Solution

Gather cross-functional teams to evaluate how hybrid work changes the way you approach IT management, your real estate strategy, and the employee experience, no matter where people work.

Look for a hybrid work solution that provides:

• Centralized, insight-driven deployment and management of network, security, and collaboration tools and services.
• Flexible options for video-and collaboration-enabled spaces that can often use the technology and investments you’ve already got.
• Intelligent management of room and device utilization so you can keep optimizing your real estate footprint and hybrid work experiences.

Challenge

Equipping your remote workers with tools and technology to webwork and collaborate effectively.

It’s important to make the home or anywhere office an extension of your headquarters.

Today, 77% of executives, real estate, and IT leaders say their organization views the home office as part of their real estate strategy¹⁰, but less than 50% of employees say they have the technology they need to work and collaborate when working remotely¹¹.

People working from home need access to tools that support productivity and collaboration. Attending back-to-back meetings on laptops causes fatigue from the nagging issues of poor audio pickup, background noises, and low-quality cameras disrupting the collaboration experience.

Connecting and collaborating should create natural, authentic interactions, just like meeting in person. Research reveals that people who turn on video in virtual meetings are happier with their employer, feel more engaged at work, and find it easier to collaborate with others. What people genuinely want is fewer meetings, not less time connecting face-to-face.

Solution

Provide employees with the tech they need to excel when they’re working—a solution that removes distractions and integrates seamlessly into their workflow.

Look for a hybrid work solution that provides:

• High-quality audio and video experience that adjusts to variable bandwidth conditions.
• Devices that improve the experience for every job type (webcams, video conferencing devices, headsets, phones, digital whiteboards, etc.).
• Devices that reduce fatigue and improve the quality of meetings.
• Flexibility with collaboration services you use.

Challenge

Providing intelligent and intuitive experiences to support your teams in the office.

The ability to work from anywhere fundamentally shifts how we think about the office and the capabilities employees need when workers are in the building.

The purpose of the office has evolved. Once a place where workers were expected to be, the office is now a central hub for people to have rich collaborative experiences, build rapport with colleagues, and attend training and education that enhance their skills as a worker.

But along with a new purpose, the office also needs new capabilities to support hybrid workers. You need technology that helps them find a space to work or collaborate. And you need to equip your spaces with the technology and spaces with the right network foundation, software, and solutions to connect distributed teams. These technologies don’t just play a large role in the collaboration process but also provide intelligent capabilities that can remove friction and optimize each environment for health and safety.

Solution

Reevaluate your real estate footprint, technology, and equipment to identify opportunities where you can provide hybrid working capabilities.

Look for a hybrid work solution that provides:

• Devices that equalize the experience between in-office and remote workers.
• Wayfinding and hot desk capabilities.
• Intelligent sensors and usage data so you can optimize every space.
• Safety features like digital signage, room capacity alerts, and cleaning notifications.
• The ability to easily join any meeting service at the touch of a button.
• Whiteboarding and content annotation for creative collaboration.

Challenge

Providing tools and technology that support your teams’ well-being and enhance their work experiences.

Prioritizing employee well-being and modernizing the work experience is central to retaining and ultimately attracting top talent to your business.

But how do you overcome some technologies’ reputation for contributing to that “always on” burnout culture? The combination of responsible and intentional use of technology with a people-focused work culture could be the answer. 

Technology can help ease stress and mitigate burnout by providing employees with insights into their working habits, integrating well-being features into their workflow, and supporting them with top-level initiatives aimed at reducing meeting fatigue.

Solution

Set a company-wide initiative to support your hybrid workers with tools and intelligent technology to collaborate. Technology can help ease stress and get their work done.

Look for a hybrid work solution that provides:

• Workers and leaders with insights and tips into how they’re working so they can keep on top of their well-being and productivity.
• Tools that allow people to personalize their experiences, provide data on the environmental health of workspaces, and support better working conditions.
• Intelligent features that mitigate virtual work friction, such as removing background noise and voices, auto-focus cameras, and virtual backgrounds.

Challenge

Ensuring that employees in a distributed workforce feel engaged and included.

Improving company culture and keeping teams engaged are about communication. With more people working remotely or from different locations, town halls, training, collaboration, and networking shift from in-office to virtual-first.

Most people working from home are worried they’ll be left out of important meetings and suffer work-from-home discrimination. While they may want to work remotely, the fear of proximity bias, missing out, or being overlooked can frustrate remote workers and create other challenges. It can overwhelm the productivity, efficiency, and well-being they might otherwise get from working remotely. You need effective tools to collectively engage your remote teams and make sure their voices are heard.

To unlock equitable experiences, you need to adopt technology that allows everyone to participate. And technology that provides equal experiences for office and remote workers goes a long way in making people feel comfortable collaborating and working remotely.

Solution

Leverage technology that supports engaging virtual meeting and event experiences, including high-quality collaboration and multiple ways to participate.

Look for a hybrid work solution that provides:

• Engaging experiences in small to large meetings that bring everyone together in town halls and company events.
• Dedicated devices that remove distractions and improve the quality of meetings.
• Equitable and inclusive experiences, ensuring your teams can participate and collaborate how they want.
• Digital experiences that extend conversations and engagement beyond audio or video.
• Accessibility features that include everyone in the conversation.

Challenge

Protecting digital assets and privacy while global cyber threats are on the rise.

Security is more important than ever. Securing data, systems, and privacy has become even more complex with hybrid work. As your teams work from a multitude of office and remote locations, threats show up on more fronts as the attack surface increases across networks, devices, and software.

When most people went remote, many companies made choices to keep their businesses running. In hindsight, these may not have been security-first choices. It’s time to address those stopgaps with strategic, long-term approaches that secure hybrid work everywhere.

Solution

Work with industry leaders that can boost your security and provide you with a platform to protect your digital assets and elevate your hybrid work capabilities.

Look for a hybrid work solution that provides:

• A zero-trust security posture.
• End-to-end encryption of every interaction.
• Advanced policy controls for data retention and file sharing.
• Centralized management and intelligent oversight of systems and services.