Flawless Audio Boosts Effective Collaboration and Equal Opportunity in Hybrid Work

In today’s hybrid work environment, businesses are increasingly evolving meeting formats to accommodate people working from various locations worldwide. Underscoring this trend, Frost & Sullivan and Shure’s latest white paper reveals that teams are less accepting of audio disruptions that derail their meeting agenda, make them less productive or appear unprofessional. Consequently, businesses must invest in audio technologies that seamlessly connect teams and give everyone an equal opportunity to contribute and participate.

This white paper emphasizes challenges for AV and IT leaders who readjust their budgets to implement the right technology for hybrid work. Work-from-anywhere experiences are often clouded with poor audio quality and disruptions, resulting in frustrated teams and lost productivity. New data suggests that companies investing in audio and collaborative tools will be more equipped to manage teams’ morale and retention, among other benefits that directly impact the bottom line.

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Some of the other notable findings in the white paper include:

• 98% of employees believe future meetings will include remote participants.
• 56% of employees report low morale and engagement with increased remote work.
• 97% of employees want changes to make the office safer before they return.

Frost & Sullivan’s latest white paper, Flawless Audio for Effective Collaboration in a Hybrid World—4 Ways to Make It Happen, points out the importance of high-quality audio and discusses how corporations can outfit workspaces to accommodate hybrid work while ensuring effective collaboration. It offers four practical steps to guide AV and IT leaders looking to leverage audio as a foundational tool for teams’ engagement and success, empowering everyone to hear and communicate effectively. It also emphasizes audio as a tool to create a collaborative and people-centric working environment for all team members.

“Video conferencing’s ability to support rich collaboration across distributed teams has kept businesses running throughout the prolonged period of pervasive home-based working. Still, video conferencing alone does not solve the challenges associated with the new hybrid work model,” said Robert Arnold, Principal Analyst of Connected Work research at Frost & Sullivan. “The effect of poor audio experiences on staff well-being negatively impacts productivity, which has significant cost repercussions on the organization. Businesses must prevent avoidable disruptions and ensure resources are appropriated to technologies that make the most impact. Successful hybrid work initiatives require businesses to prioritize solving the many audio challenges team members face today.”

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“As hybrid work has become the new global norm, companies need to ensure that their workforce has the right collaborative tools to remain as productive as always, and this includes high-audio technology,” said Robin Hamerlinck, Senior Vice President IT and CIO at Shure. “By investing in the right equipment, AV and IT leaders are not only enhancing the workplace but also providing their teams with an environment where everyone feels involved, collaboration is effortless, and productivity is maximized, eventually increasing the well-being of the teams.”

Based on this latest research, organizations can increase the value of their audio-video conferencing by following these practices:

• Think Beyond Video to Embrace Flawless Audio: Videoconferencing has kept businesses running throughout the prolonged period of home-based working by supporting rich collaboration. However, when audio is suboptimal, it impairs everyone’s concentration and productivity. It also hinders the team from reaching the actual goal of the meeting because the main message cannot be delivered.
• Deploy Technology that Strengthens Collaboration: Conference room and desktop (at home and in-office) communication technologies must equally serve in-person and remote participants. Audio solutions should seamlessly integrate with modern conferencing and collaboration platforms that are high-quality, reliable, and user-friendly, such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex by Cisco, and Google Meet.
• Integrate Remote and In-room Meeting Participants with Flawless Audio: Remote and in-room meeting participants must be integrated into a single, seamless connected experience. This can only happen when high-quality audio technologies and collaborative tools are in place.
• Choose a Flexible Product Portfolio that Works Together: Deploying flawless audio requires integrated solutions, not point products. AV technologies should work together to deliver a unified experience for users and administrators. Hybrid work initiatives that pivot on cloud video conferencing require powerful audio and video devices that enhance those services.

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