Hybrid working means meeting via platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet. How do you make that inclusive? Finally, we also look at the security aspect of hybrid working.
Camera on or off? On! The four participants of the roundtable organized by ITdaily clearly agree. Stefaan Arryn, VP People at Silverfin: “you can’t have inclusive meetings without video. For meetings in large groups with one speaker, it’s different, but any meeting that requires interaction, that’s where video comes in.”
Sven Den Uijl, Channel Manager Benelux Smart Collaboration at Lenovo, Willem Magerman, CTO at Dilaco and Andreas Van Puyenbroeck, Category Manager North West Europe at HP nod their heads clearly. All find the word “inclusivity” incredibly important.
“The face is an incredibly important part of the story,” says Den Uijl.
Technology is far enough along
Fortunately, technology is evolving rapidly and a smart conference room or a high-resolution webcam in the laptop is the norm today. “A good picture is important, but so is sound. The whole total package has to be right. Organizations need to invest in hardware for employees so that dialing in from home is no longer a disadvantage,” says Van Uijl.
A good picture is important in a video call, but so is sound. The whole total package has to be right.
Sven Den Uijl, Channel Manager Benelux Smart Collaboration at Lenovo
A decent webcam and headset works wonders, but the meeting room itself is often the limiting factor. One drawback: the employees who come to the office are not affected. It’s the home workers who bear the consequences.
“Technology today is far enough along that, thanks to smart innovations and AI, it’s possible to picture everyone perfectly for an inclusive conversation. If you don’t invest in that, you’ll get a great picture for everyone in the office while home workers see one big space without being able to notice details like facial expressions.”
The only drawback, according to Den Uijl, is that organizations today do not invest enough in this. “It is often the more expensive solutions that ensure that someone who works from home can interact optimally with everyone who is in the office.”
What is the right solution?
So what is the right solution? According to Van Puyenbroeck, it is a setup where people working from home feel comfortable enough to actively participate in the conversation. “Is there only a limited budget? Then you have to make the most of that to make that threshold as low as possible.”
Both Van Puyenbroeck and Den Uijl also both point to the possibilities of “measuring” a meeting room. Thanks to telemetry data via camera, the IT team gets a clear overview per room how often they are used and what the average occupancy is,” says Den Uijl.
“How well is the hardware being used? That’s valuable data to optimize your spaces and provide the right budget for future investments. “
Theory and practice
Magerman likes to weigh in on the debate by noting that technology does not always work flawlessly. “At our office, we have smart meeting rooms that use video to track the speaker. This is inclusive, but it also sometimes creates frustrations. Say someone opposite you is coughing, the camera detects sound and changes focus. Result: the person comes into focus and is embarrassed.”
Arryn thinks technology is important, but likes to point again to the inclusive. “Say a team meets in the office on Tuesdays every time, but one employee is operating out of London and always has to dial in. That person can then start to feel excluded. We break that by giving several people on the team the option to dial in from elsewhere, rather than necessarily being expected in the office. That, too, is important to notice in time.”
Expensive technology is not always necessary for inclusive meetings.
Stefaan Arryn, VP People at Silverfin
“Expensive technology isn’t always necessary for inclusive meetings, either,” Arryn says. Everyone in a conference room dials in separately and turns on their camera. That’s much more inclusive for home workers. Make sure everyone in the room presses mute. One person does not put themselves on mute and connects to the meeting room’s central microphone. That often works fine.”
Agenda Planning
How long can meetings last? “45 minutes,” says Den Uijl. “The remaining 15 minutes you can use for a pit stop or go through your e-mails briefly.” Magerman agrees. “With us it’s 50 minutes, no more is allowed.”
Are physical meetings always better than virtual ones? “I don’t think so,” Arryn says. “Virtual meetings are more punctual. They almost never run out.”
Den Uijl also points to the flexibility of virtual meetings. “Today you can follow a meeting while walking or in the supermarket. You can hardly take notes then, but an AI assistant like Copilot in Microsoft Teams helps you there. In a way, that also helps in terms of inclusiveness.”
Security in a hybrid world
From cameras and meeting rooms to securing IT hardware at home or on the road. Has that become much more difficult today? “Working from anywhere is not so much the challenge,” Magerman says. Your cloud environment and bring your own device (BYOD) is much more defining. So we focus more on what they call data centric security. Security follows the data. Trying to secure an endpoint, that doesn’t work optimally today anyway.”
Working from anywhere is not so much the challenge. Your cloud environment and bring your own device (BYOD) is much more decisive.
Willem Magerman, CTO at Dilaco
Today, the home network or working from the Wi-Fi of a coffeehouse or McDonald’s poses no problem for organizations that embrace zero trust. “We always assume it’s an untrusted network,” Magerman says. “It’s untrusted until it’s verified. The level of access depends on how well we can verify that the workplace is secure.”
Man as Achilles’ heel
Van Puyenbroeck notes that a lot of customers today take endpoint security for granted. “However, a lot has to happen in the factory and in terms of development to get to a level where we are today.”
He applauds that zero trust is increasingly becoming the norm. “It is incredibly rare for a hack to happen via pure penetration of hardware. 99 percent of successful hacks are the result of human error. Phishing remains a significant problem and continued training and awareness is necessary.”
Magerman follows that view, but insists on useful training. “Does someone insert a USB stick into his or her laptop that has never been used within the company before? Then a pop-up automatically appears to warn around the dangers around it.”
It is incredibly rare for a hack to happen via pure penetration of hardware.
Andreas Van Puyenbroeck, Category Manager North West Europe at HP
“Our most popular notification is one in Outlook that alerts you when you want to send a trusted document outside the work environment. I have maybe 24 people named Bart, only a few of whom are colleagues. If I accidentally send to the wrong Bart, it can be a disaster. Such a pop-up is then a good learning opportunity, in addition to traditional training rounds around security and phishing.”
Conclusion
Hybrid working has put the IT team on edge to review its security tools. At the same time, these must always be on point, whether you are in the office, at home or on the move. Zero trust is the standard. You are always unsafe, until proven otherwise.
In terms of hybrid meetings, there is more work ahead. The technology to conduct inclusive meetings is there today, but limited budgets often limit proper implementation. Inclusivity is the most important word to remember in a hybrid work environment. Lower the barrier to interactivity and make the most of every budget.
This is the second editorial in a series of three on the topic of hybrid working. Click on our theme page to see all the articles from the roundtable, the video and our partners.