As enterprises rapidly adopt digital meeting and workstream collaboration solutions in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Gartner points out three steps for IT leaders to improve current operations for a newly remote workforce.
“The rise in virtual meetings since the Covid-19 pandemic began is putting pressure on enterprise leaders to ensure employees have the right technological capabilities to maintain consistent, high-quality connections with colleagues, customers and partners while working remotely,” the analyst says.
The first step is to ensure reliable and consistent virtual meeting experiences. While many enterprises have acquired and deployed a suitable video meeting and collaboration solution, they need to keep in mind sufficient bandwidth and network reliability are critical to enable productivity and a consistent user experience. High-quality group video calls need at an internet service capable of pushing download and upload speeds of "at least" 1.5Mbps, something some locations lack.
For employees living in such internet dead spots, Gartner suggests the leveraging of the messaging capabilities in collaboration solutions. These allow such employees to work with colleagues asynchronously, or join meetings using dial-in audio options. In addition, they can connect to online meetings using 4G-enabled smartphones, as opposed to the PC.
Meeting security is, of course, key. End user organisations should keep administrator settings, meeting host controls and end user behaviour in mind with simple steps such as separate host passcodes, randomised meeting IDs and ensuring participants register for the meeting service before joining a call. Such things might seem simple, but they go a long way to ensure private online meetings.
Finally, meeting culture should be reshaped to promote productivity. The current work from home environment only exacerbates meeting overload, and as such managers should experiment with one or two interventions focused on type, quality, formality or cadence to improve meeting experiences.
