What is activity based working?

how to

create inclusive hybrid meetings

The transition from traditional working to hybrid working has been an ongoing challenge. Have you ever felt left out of the conversation during your hybrid meetings? You’re not alone. According to Jabra’s 2022 Hybrid Ways of Working Global report, 37% of employees feel the same. This attitude highlights the need for businesses to make hybrid meetings more inclusive and efficient.

For remote employees, they may feel isolated from in-office workers as they’re not part of the office buzz as social and professional conversations are done through Teams or Zoom. It's not as easy as to just walk over to a colleague's desk for a quick catch up.

Plus, it’s common for in-office employees to have a chat before the meeting starts and everyone has joined but this can lead to feelings of exclusion for remote colleagues that join later. Building relationships can also be harder to navigate digitally, especially if someone leaves their camera off or the Wi-Fi drops off.

On the other hand, in-office employees may experience video call burnout and prefer to collaborate in person. One of the main pain points of hybrid meetings is tackling virtual etiquette. This includes knowing when to interrupt a speaker, reading gestures and facial expressions, audio echo and not being able to hear or see everyone accurately. The in-office employee may lose engagement if they are focusing on reading gestures the entire time.

All these factors relate to inclusivity. Traditionally, in-person meetings were seated around a table where everyone could contribute equally. Hybrid working has removed the level playing field and we rely on the likes of Microsoft Teams and Zoom to facilitate collaboration. But video calls aren’t equal if members do not have the same screen space. If remote employees strain to see their colleagues and in-person team members aren’t represented the same in the virtual field, it creates a subpar experience for all.

These factors consequently lead to lack of engagement, gaps in communication and less productivity – essential for a thriving workplace.

Businesses are searching for solutions that improve virtual meeting rooms to ensure meetings are seamless no matter where employees are joining from. The technology should facilitate collaboration, inclusion and equality so that both remote and in-office employees can perform at their full potential.

All these concerns can be addressed with an array of intelligent video experiences offered by the Jabra PanaCast 50, bringing remote participants into the meeting room to make hybrid working work.

Intelligent Zoom

Uses powerful AI to continuously adjust your picture in real time, to keep everyone optimally framed in just the right field of view. Dynamic Composition

Delivers a close-up view of up to four of the most recent speakers in a meeting room for a natural, inclusive experience for the meeting participants, Virtual Director

Intelligently follows the flow of conversation naturally and easily with a curated audiovideo stream which automatically zooms into active speakers, and manages speaker transitions gracefully, Live Whiteboard Streaming

Seamlessly brings your whiteboard content to life, displaying both whiteboard content and meeting participants simultaneously.

The PanaCast 50 was first introduced in April 2021 as the first newnormal-ready intelligent video bar, and it has continued to develop ever since. For more information about these features or the Jabra PanaCast range visit www.midwich.com/campaign/jabra or contact a member of our team.