COVID-19 has altered the way we work with remote work becoming increasingly popular. Many industry experts believe that hybrid/remote working is the future of work, and that as organisations adopt it, they will benefit from it. We reached out to Ankur Goel, Managing Director for Poly India & SAARC, to talk about why businesses should reconsider their collaboration strategy for remote and hybrid workers.
What are your observations on remote working and how employee expectations have changed regarding workspaces? What are your views on the future of work?
Employee expectations when it comes to workspaces have certainly changed over the last year. Today, work is no longer a place we go to but what we do.
Remote working is widely accepted now, and employees are more accustomed to working from home as they find that they have a better work-life balance. So, there is a large segment of the working population that prefers to continue with remote working. But, on the other hand, another segment of workers are finding it difficult to continue with the work from the home arrangement as they miss the in-person interaction and brainstorming, and find that they are more productive in the office.
Looking at these trends and varied expectations from employees, I truly believe that hybrid working is the future. Employees will want to split their time between home (office) and office, and collaboration technology will be at the heart of their workplace experience.
And for organizations, no matter the employees’ location, at home or in the office, they need to provide their workforce with the tools and technologies required for a great collaboration and work experience.
What are some best practices for business leaders while thinking about the future of work – how should they redesign, implement to enable hybrid workforce?
Across all workspaces, the focus for business and IT leaders should be on creating environments that motivate and empower workers to be productive and do their best work no matter their location.
A few tips on how organizations can enable a good hybrid work environment include –
- Rethink work patterns – Hybrid working brings flexibility on location, times, and days that work is carried out. Review and revise work-from-home policies and focus on what employees need to be productive in their roles.
- Foster better collaboration – Encourage inclusive and productive work as teams become more virtual in nature. Create engaging virtual workspaces, using noise-cancelling and intelligent acoustic solutions in dynamic headsets and video soundbars.
- Optimize investment – Banish under-utilized office spaces that bring little return on real estate costs. Prioritize investment beyond the office walls to create flexible, collaborative, technology-enabled personal workspaces everywhere.
What are some of the trends you see in the collaboration industry?
Some of the trends include –
- Hybrid working – Going forward, we expect to see more organizations adopting the new hybrid work model and a more consistent work experience no matter where they are, whether in the office, at home, or anywhere in between. Work is no longer defined by the hours put in but on the outcomes of the work.
- The rise of the prosumer- Employees are realizing that consumer-grade gear simply cannot deliver, are demanding that home workspaces be upgraded with technology that allows for seamless collaboration, whether fiber internet connectivity, noise-blocking headsets, or even audio and video conferencing solutions which allow them to join video meetings with the click of a button.
- The transformation of the office – Offices will become a central gathering point for employees to meet, while the majority of work will continue to be done remotely. Workspaces will become collaborative and technology-enabled to accommodate the work style of every employee.
- Video is the way forward- Video is now more common than ever for meetings, and thanks to technological advances in the past few years, has enabled collaboration on a whole new level as an increasingly critical part of business-as-usual, as organizations in industries like telemedicine and education adapt to a whole new way of doing business.
- Implementation of multi-cloud – Companies are investing in back up of back up (multi-cloud) solutions to cater to different workstyles and are looking for vendors that are platform agnostic and user friendly.
[quote font=”tahoma” font_size=”13″ font_style=”italic” color=”#262626″ bgcolor=”#f9f9f9″]
Employee expectations when it comes to workspaces have certainly changed over the last year. Today, work is no longer a place we go to but what we do.
Ankur Goel,
Managing Director,
Poly India and SAARC
[/quote]
Has Poly’s product portfolio changed with the shift towards hybrid working? Have you introduced any new products?
Yes, we certainly have. Our product roadmap has evolved significantly over the last year.
We know that remote and hybrid work will continue well into 2021 and beyond and the applications that connect our workforce require improved audio and video solutions to collaborate more effectively, whether at home or in the office.
We recently launched Poly Studio P series, a new line of professional-grade personal video devices engineered for remote and hybrid workers.
The new Poly Studio P Series includes the Poly Studio P5 Webcam, Poly Studio P15 Personal sVideo Bar, and Poly Studio P21 Personal Conferencing Display.
- Poly Studio P5 Webcam – The Poly Studi P5 is a personal webcam with camera optics optimized for video conferencing.
- Poly Studio P15 Personal Video Bar – This is a Zoom and Microsoft Teams certified personal video bar with powerful 4K clarity, automatic camera framing, and a powerful integrated speaker and microphone array with advanced NoiseBlockAI technology to block outside noise.
- Poly Studio P21 Personal Meeting Display – Poly Studio P21 is a video conferencing display that includes everything a user needs for a premium video conferencing experience, including a 21” display, camera, and audio all-in-one.
How important is the Indian market for you? What are your market expansion plans?
We see tremendous opportunity in the Indian market and have customers across all sectors – government, manufacturing, healthcare, IT/ITeS using our audio, video conferencing solutions and headsets.
For 2021 and beyond, our focus will be to educate and help our customers navigate in the new world of work i.e. hybrid working.
We want to provide best-in-class conferencing experience for users from all segments, whether working from home, in-office, or client locations.
With respect to segments, we see many opportunities in the healthcare and education sector– the way these customers are using collaboration technology is exciting. The pandemic has propelled these customers to disrupt the way they use technology to serve their clients, and we see a lot of opportunities for Poly to be the collaboration partner for them in this digital disruption journey.
