The role of the shared meeting space
The way we work has experienced a significant transformation, and there is no turning back. The preference for hybrid and remote work arrangements continues to grow year-over-year, with 53% of respondents from our global workforce survey saying they will consider shifting to a hybrid model in the year ahead. Employees everywhere are rethinking their work “worth it” equation what people want from work and what they’re willing to give in return, and they are voting with their feet to find work that better aligns with their priorities. As more people experience the upsides of flexible work, the more it factors into the equation and the greater the urgency for companies to meet employees where they are.
To address employees’ expectations around workplace flexibility, organizations must implement reliable collaboration tools that help people feel empowered to collaborate no matter where they sit. The technology at many organizations does not meet the bar today. More than 43% of remote attendees say they don’t feel included in meetings, while less than 8% of rooms worldwide are video enabled.
Microsoft has a plan to evolve the hybrid meeting experience with Microsoft Teams Rooms so everyone feels included, represented, and can collaborate freely. With Teams Rooms, connections between people joining meetings from the office and at home are richer and feel more natural.
Developing hybrid-ready meeting spaces
As we consider what work was like before the pandemic, those who were together in the office had the advantage.
Remote work was generally the exception, not the rule, so most meeting spaces weren’t equipped to deliver inclusive hybrid meetings. Those joining from home were left to feel disconnected, less empowered, and less a part of the meeting.
Now, organizations around the world are confronting complex choices around how to modernize their spaces to keep up in the hybrid era and bridge this experience gap. How do leaders know what solutions they need for their shared spaces that will deliver on this inclusivity and further enable productivity? With a growing array of device types and deployment models, making sense of the best solution for your needs has never been more challenging.
The good news is hybrid readiness can be achieved along a continuum of intervention and cost, from low-touch strategies like software and hardware updates, to high-touch intervention like altering room infrastructure. Where an organization falls on the continuum depends on a range of factors unique to its situation. Organizations can also scale up investment over time and move a room along the continuum to achieve better hybrid meeting experiences as resources become available.
The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of factors to consider when developing, implementing, and sustaining your hybrid meeting experience. Hybrid-optimized meetings are more immersive and can bridge the digital and physical to improve productivity and increase engagement.
Teams Rooms vs. BYOD
Connecting disparate teams and helping them collaborate as if they are in the same room is no small feat. Simply connecting your PC to a room display or enabling audio and video in a space seems like it might be enough, but much more is required for a productive, hassle-free, and delightful hybrid meeting experience. It takes a solution that considers the experience of both in-person and remote attendees and can be used in a variety of spaces. In other words, it takes a solution that is designed for the job.
A meeting solution designed for the future of work.
- Hybrid meeting experiences for all participants.
- Shared spaces of all types.
- Providing the best experience for Teams users
(with the ability to connect to other meeting platforms as well).
Teams Rooms is a dedicated solution that supports any meeting type and space, and delivers immersive and natural experiences so no one is left behind.
Meetings that rely on bring your own device (BYOD) scenarios that depend on a PC connected to a display for audio and video are sub-optimal experiences because PC microphones and cameras aren’t designed to support the dimensions of a meeting space, people sitting out of frame, or voices coming from different distances. BYOD is not purpose-built for hybrid meetings and requires solid planning to prevent challenges.
Unreliable audio connections and lack of inclusivity can put a strain on end users and the IT team managing the infrastructure.
What is Teams Rooms?
Microsoft Teams Rooms is a modern meeting space solution that brings together the power of the Teams platform with dedicated first-party or third-party audio and video devices, certified by Microsoft. Teams Rooms removes the barriers between spaces, places, and people, delivering the best Teams meeting experience in any space.
Inclusive Teams Rooms meeting experiences are powered by an intuitive, purpose-built app from Microsoft. Through a rich ecosystem of devices certified for Teams, premium audio and video ensure everyone can be seen and heard clearly. Interactive features help remote participants establish their presence in the room, and dynamic meeting layouts allow people in the room to see remote colleagues and content at the same time. With enterprise-grade security and auto-enrollment options, Teams Rooms helps IT admins save time and costs. Teams Rooms turns any meeting room into an easy-to-manage and inclusive collaboration space where everyone has a seat at the table, regardless of where they sit.
What is the value of a native, purpose-built solution?
The native app experience
Teams Rooms runs native software that is built on top of the powerful Teams platform and designed to deliver a consistent Teams experience that many users are familiar with. Collaboration is easy and hassle-free on Teams Rooms devices and in shared hybrid meeting scenarios. Native apps work with the device’s OS in ways that enable them to perform faster and more flexibly than alternative application types. Teams Rooms Basic and Pro enable this native software
Devices that are purpose-built and Certified for Teams
These are first-party or third-party audio and video devices certified by Microsoft and dedicated to powering the meeting space. Microsoft Teams certification is a badge of quality for select audio and video devices. It tells you that Microsoft and its partners have worked together to optimize these devices for use with Microsoft Teams and that both Microsoft and the device manufacturer stand behind your solution.
A purpose-built solution can’t be matched
Non-native and self-built systems that rely on external services or a BYOD connection can’t equal the ease of use or integration with Microsoft 365 services built into a native Teams Room. Teams Rooms is designed for participants to be able to start a meeting within seconds, without the hassle of connecting cables, finding the right meeting, or using a separate computer to run the meeting.
Hardware components of a Teams room
End user benefits
- Regardless of the type of meeting space, a meeting’s overall goals are always the same: to be as productive as possible and build stronger connections between people. After all, think about how much salary is tied up in a five-person meeting. In meeting rooms with a mix of disparate hardware and software solutions, connectivity issues can cause meetings to start an average of 8 minutes late.
- Additionally, inclusive collaboration experiences are largely nonexistent—making it harder for your teams to feel connected.
- BYOD across both meeting productivity and building strong team connections.
- BYOD environments put the burden on the end user to start and run the meeting. Participants must plug in a cable or use an adapter dongle, plug in at least one USB peripheral, and sometimes two if they are separate devices.
- They may need device driver software installed on their laptop to enable all the features of the camera or mic and must also tell their operating system and conferencing software which microphone, camera, speakers, and display to use.
- The more steps needed to sort out problems, the greater the chance of disrupting the meeting, starting late, and affecting productivity.
- Having multiple employees sitting around waiting for such issues to be addressed wastes their time and their employer’s money.
- On the other hand, Teams Rooms is a dedicated system that is fixed to the room.
- Users can start the meeting with the touch of a button and share content wirelessly.
- The reliability and ease of use of Teams Rooms helps boost meeting productivity for all attendees, across all types of spaces.
- If you have customers waiting on the other end of the call, it could also create poor first impressions, damage your business reputation, and cost you revenue.
- Over time, that can add up to millions of dollars in lost productivity and employee turnover due to dissatisfaction with meeting experiences. Let’s take a closer look at the ways Teams Rooms end-user experiences outperform.
Build stronger connections
When you have both remote and hybrid workers, it can be a struggle to stay connected, bond with teammates, and create a sense of company culture. Forty-three percent of remote employees and 44% of hybrid employees say they do not feel included in meetings, yet only 27% of organizations have established new hybrid work meeting etiquette.
Building stronger connections can be achieved through driving three core user experiences:
• Inclusive experiences for all
• Real-time meeting interactions
• Ability to be heard and seen with personal presence across the meeting
Let’s look at how Teams Rooms outperforms BYOD to foster stronger connections and further enhance personal presence across hybrid meetings.
IT team benefits
The experience of your IT teams is just as critical as that of your end users when it comes to the success of your organization in a hybrid work model.
The effectiveness of IT’s management and operation affects the end-user experience, as well as business costs and security posture.
The ability to scale rooms to all your space types, manage your space estate from one central location, and ensure security for your meetings and data are essential to hybrid readiness.
Teams Rooms provides your IT teams the ability to do all this and more, whereas BYOD environments fail to provide any standardized or centralized mechanism for management and reporting.
Let’s take a closer look at the ways Teams Rooms IT management and reporting capabilities outperform BYOD across security, management time, cost savings, and space optimization with reporting.
