Still holding out on applying video conferencing solutions to your day to day operations? Here are ten ways video conferencing is transforming organizations around the world. Given the chance, it could change yours too:
Higher Levels of Productivity
According to B2B Marketing, video conferencing helps increase efficiency and productivity among employees by as much as 94 percent. That’s because video conference meetings often have a schedule. So if yours is set for an hour, then it’ll start exactly, on time and on schedule and end the same way. That helps keep delays in the meetings at bay. It also eliminates idle chatter since participants aren’t going to be online earlier than they have to and thus, waste time on participating in small talk.
Employee Retention
Remote teams often have to work without seeing their team for weeks, even months and years on end. According to a post on the Cisco Blog, 87 percent of remote staff feel a greater connection to their teams with video conferencing. They also develop a sense of ownership over their tasks and business processes, which makes them less likely to resign.
Less Travel Time
An article on Inc. cites reduced travel expenses as one of the major advantages of video conferencing for businesses. For companies with multiple sites, this is exceptionally convenient. Whether it’s a management meeting or training, companies can save up on a lot on travel costs, along with other expenses associate with it, like food and lodgings for company employees or senior management.
Reduced Employee Stress
Reduced travel also means less stress on employees. In some cases, an expert consultant would have to endure 12-hour long flights to and from the site, but only spend, at most, an hour or two doing a training presentation or fixing a problem in the production cycle. That’s a huge amount of wasted hours on traveling alone. Not to mention the downtime on productivity it incurs. Also, for the consultant, it can’t be easy going from one site to another. It’s stressful and exhausting. Too much of it could compel the employee to simply rethink his employment options, or worse, outright resign. With video conferencing, there’s a way to achieve more training with less resources and stress.
Faster Decision-Making
Video conferencing also makes it possible for teams to arrive at decisions faster. For instance, if a marketing team had to finalize a product design, instead of having to wait for the back-and-forth reply through email or wait until the offsite team gets to the HQ, they could simply schedule a video conference and hash out the details, then and there. Simple, convenient and easy, the technology allows offsite teams to connect without wasting time on travel. To start an online video conference, Blue Jeans—a company that delivers cloud-based video solutions—is one of the many ideal choices out there. Equipped with an HD video conferencing camera, meetings can go off without a hitch, unhindered by shaky images or a blurry video.
Greater Engagement
While email and chat are adequate communication channels for business, face to face contact often fosters deeper engagement. That’s because it lends a human touch to the interaction. People always work better when they work with someone they know. By seeing the other people in a video conference, participants often feel more involved and engaged in the experience. It encourages a great deal more connection than, say, an email that might come off as terse and impersonal, no matter how much the sender intended it to be otherwise. According to Chron, about 65 to 75 percent of our daily communication is nonverbal. By using video conferencing tools—especially those equipped with HD cameras—participants will find it easy to read each other’s body language or see signs of genuine interest and earnest attention. This could be tough to convey through email or chat.
Higher Attendance
Because video conferencing makes it possible for teams to come together without having to leave their offices or buildings, people find it easy to attend the meetings. Since there’s no need to spend hours traveling just to get to the meeting place or deal with vicious traffic or commuting woes to get there, attendance is high, which translates to a bigger employee reach. This is especially great for managers who wish to update all their teams—both onsite and off—together.
Real-time Collaboration and Response
Face to face interactions mean instant responses. So if two teams need to work on a project, with video conferencing, they could share and send files, documents and images and basically work together in real time, even if they’re under different time zones. So long as the meeting’s time slot works for both, they can get things done.
These are just some of the ways video conferencing solutions can make a huge difference in your business results. So if you haven’t tried to apply this to your business, this is the perfect time as any to give it a shot.
