2020: the year that reshaped how we do business and work remotely
The turbulent and unprecedented onset of COVID-19 has accelerated business and workplace changes. Remote working was adopted overnight for many organisations, with employees uprooted from their office workspaces to working from home. The global pandemic has given organisations the opportunity to rethink and re-evaluate how they run their business.
More focus has been placed on communication amongst the team, increased video conferencing and introducing automated processes. Not only will businesses need to maintain these improvements during the global pandemic, but it’s expected that these changes will reshape the way that we do business and work going forward post COVID-19.
Remote Working Tools
With this in mind, business leaders need to adapt to the remote working revolution and invest in technology that allows employees to thrive. For most companies, this means adopting tools that allow them to meet with customers and colleagues virtually and securely. As a result, remote meetings are now commonplace for businesses across a range of digital platforms. It’s understandable that teams are holding remote meetings more frequently during this turbulent period, in an attempt to achieve alignment and offset the disconnect associated with working from home.
Traditional desktop collaboration tools like MS Teams and Zoom have proven to be sufficient during this unprecedented time, but frequently employees are left frustrated, stressed and exhausted from the limitations of the asynchronous tools. Also known as “Zoom Fatigue”, these unnatural media are unable to deliver communicative stimuli in a rich way, requiring increased cognitive effort in order to absorb and retain information. This will often result in burnout associated with overusing virtual platforms of communication, especially when tackling further distractions and the need for visual breaks. There is now an urgent demand for tools that simulate face-to-face interactions, enabling employees to work effectively without any cognitive constraints.
Introducing Virtual Meetings
Businesses should consider implementing tools that enable virtual meetings to simulate face-to-face interactions, rather than just showing faces on a screen which can be slow, rigid and often unproductive. These media are now becoming available and their effect is to create a very wide “cognitive bandwidth”, close to that achieved by face to face meetings with artifacts, which is especially important during these unprecedented times and beyond. Combining people’s interaction and enabling thinking in an environment designed to recreate a ‘round table’ natural meeting will create a virtual space to work on complex tasks synchronously, allowing for improved team alignment and better productivity.
The developing virtual meeting media ensures employees are able to adapt to working remotely in the longer term in a way that will not affect business continuity. When using tools that mirror face-to-face, natural meetings, the team will benefit from increased flexibility which is vital during the global pandemic as in-person interaction and collaboration are no longer possible. By implementing virtual meetings, employees can also be brought together to coordinate goals, leading to team-wide thinking and increased productivity for true alignment. Combining people’s interaction with a virtual space to work not only boosts productivity, but aids knowledge sharing and problem-solving.
What's more, these richer meeting environments allow employees to call on their colleagues for help and will have a better understanding of the processes and methods to streamline projects. They also have the opportunity to brainstorm together and utilise each other’s capabilities to find a solution to the problem. These media also enable cross-team collaboration, bringing people together from various departments to combine their knowledge, experience and expertise.
Reshaping Business Operations
With the ‘new normal’ on the horizon, companies that want to make the most of remote working moving forward will need to consider utilising tools that allow virtual meetings to replicate office environments. Not only will these media ensure that employees are equipped to remain productive and collaborate with others in the long term, but they will also help reduce the effects of “Zoom Fatigue” by building a very wide “cognitive bandwidth”. This is critical as many companies plan to maintain a partial work-from-home structure even after COVID-19 lockdown measures have eased. By utilising these virtual meeting tools, the workforce will experience benefits from increased team alignment and better productivity, to improved efficiency and quicker decision making.
