Working remotely has been a concept that has been around for years. Ever since author Tim Ferris published his book ‘The 4 hour work week’ people have been fascinated about this modern way of working. Fast forward to 2021 where a large portion of workplaces, particularly office based, have decided that they are willing to adopt a fully remote working style or a hybrid system which would require some workers to work in a designated office a few days a week.
A recent study done by McKinsey surveyed 504 C-suite executives and three-quarters of them stated they expected the typical “core” employee to be back in the office three or more days a week.
Virtual Meetings have quickly become a massive part of remote working culture and many employees are now experts in how to set up and participate in these virtual meetings but it’s also important that these meetings are optimized for hybrid systems so that all participants can receive the full benefits of what the meeting entails.
Let’s now take a look at how to set up for an optimal hybrid meeting.
Make sure to have a great audio setup
Audio is key when taking hybrid meetings into consideration. If your video link knocks offline and is unavailable, then the meeting can probably still continue using audio alone. That’s why it is so important that you have a high quality audio setup, so you can avoid participants saying things like “Can you speak a bit louder please? We can barely hear you”.
When choosing the correct audio equipment you want to consider the size of the room your meetings are being held in, and how many people will be in attendance.
Larger rooms with 4+ people can use a product such as the AC-360-Z V2. With it’s 360 degree audio pick up it should be more than adequate for producing a high quality sound. If the meeting is set in a smaller meeting room, such as the home office or huddle room, then the AC-44 would be more than suitable due to its compact size and portability.
Keep up with the latest technology
With all that has happened in the last 18 months it is no surprise that technology companies have literally invested billions of dollars into designing the latest communication software. Companies such as Zoom, Microsoft and Slack have all seen a huge surge in users during this time and are always needing to constantly innovate so they can keep up with customer satisfaction. Hybrid meetings aren’t going away anytime soon and these providers are always trying to enhance user experience.
A good example of these latest innovations can be seen from Microsoft’s communication platform ‘Teams’. When you turn on the recording feature while giving a presentation, Teams will automatically start transcripting the video. This feature will be hugely beneficial for users as it offers a high level of convenience and captures that extra detail of what is being spoken about within a meeting, making sure key details are not missed.
Another example can be seen from the collaboration platform Slack. Slack offers their new ‘Slack Huddles’ feature which allows users to have quick, informal conversations with their colleagues. Using the audio feature only, anyone in the conversation can join, and once the huddle has started you can then have the option to share your screen and turn on live captions.
It’s always useful to try and keep up with these latest technology trends yourself so you can make sure you are getting to full benefits of these platforms.
Consider your remote participants
When setting up a hybrid meeting initially, it is easy to forget about the individual needs of the participants attending the meeting.
‘Can we all see each other clearly?’
‘Is the whiteboard in the background visible on screen?’
It’s these types of questions that need to be asked so that each participant can have the best experience possible. As well as asking these questions you can also enhance participant experience using the latest technology. The ACVC-360-Z provides a complete audio and video conferencing bundle consisting of a complete plug-and-play package for easily integrating popular web conferencing applications into meeting rooms and huddle rooms.
Another way to get your participants more involved in meetings is to try and give them a greater presence. A way of doing this is to set up two additional monitors on each side of the main monitor in the centre of the room. These two additional monitors will portray ‘life size’ images of all the other remote participants that are involved in the meeting. When participants are involved in a meeting using this type of set-up it can help involve them more into the conversation as they seem to have a bigger presence.
Test the technology
Technology has advanced a long way and it can be mind blowing at times seeing the things it can do, however there is always that chance of some sort of glitch interrupting your experience no matter how advanced it is. This is no different to video conferencing technology.
A good habit to get into, is to test your audio and visual set up by performing a dummy test run before the actual meeting commences. If there are any bugs you need to fix then this should show up on the test run and it can allow you time to get it fixed so your meeting can go ahead on schedule.
Provide strong facilitation
Keeping a hybrid meeting on track can be a difficult task, much harder than if the whole team were in person or online. That’s why it is important to assign someone as a key facilitator.
A facilitator will be able to keep participants engaged and ensure that people within the meeting can be heard, as their voices can be lost at times due to colleagues talking over one another.
Having a person who is a facilitator in the meeting not only keeps everyone engaged in the meeting, it also stops other attendees becoming more dominant in the discussion. Stopping this can be hugely beneficial as it will keep the main topic of the meeting on everyone’s focus.