What are hybrid meetings? key benefits, and importance for your business

What are hybrid meetings? Definition

A hybrid meeting is a meeting where a part of the audience joins from the office and another part joins remote, enabled by audio and video conferencing technology with a strong focus on content sharing.

Why your business need hybrid meetings?

When businesses opt to enable hybrid meeting in the workplace, they have several reasons, often related to time constraints, reducing budgets and their carbon footprint. But mostly these companies realize that they want to enable true collaboration and foster innovation even when not everyone is present in the office.

• True innovation and collaboration 
  happens when people meet, in one and the same space. When everyone is stuck at home or remote, it’s hard for a company to thrive, innovate and progress. It’s clear that the meeting room will make a comeback to enable exactly those meetings where physical presence in a room is required. Hybrid meetings bring at least part of the workforce together physically and enable easier virtual collaboration with remote team members. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s the next best thing
• Working with global project teams located all over the world and consequently in different time zones and working schedules, makes live meetings impossible.
• The introduction of efficient, low-cost hybrid meetings in the new company culture are a great solution to tackle travel restrictions and answer the need for going green and improving sustainability.
• More recently, lockdowns and quarantine measures during the COVID-19 pandemic have forced people to look for new ways of collaborating like home office, and more recently, in some regions, a shift towards hybrid work which makes social distancing easier to organize.
  

Today, over 50% of all meetings is fully remote, which is twice as many as last year. Taking local regulations for the COVID-19 pandemic in mind, many enterprises have gone for a full WFH policy wherever possible at the beginning of the crisis. Today some parts of the world are planning to get (and even getting) employees to return to the office in a mixed work model. So, it comes as no surprise that already 23% of meetings today are hybrid meetings. A number that is more than likely to go up in future, when restrictions are lifted and more normal work regimes can be taken up again. We’ll probably see a shift to a better balance of remote, face-to-face and hybrid meetings.

5 key benefits of hybrid working

1. Safe of infection
   In the first place, hybrid models are a means to keep employees safe from catching and spreading the coronavirus. With fewer people in one and the same office space or meeting room, following social distancing rules is easier and the potential infection risk at the office is minimized
2. Productive thanks to the right tech
   Company offices have video conferencing possibilities, room displays, decent audio and video capabilities and an IT-department at your beck and call. The struggle with tech at home is real: you only have your laptop with its web cam and limited audio and when you can’t have decent videocalls, In the hybrid work model you can make the best advantage of your office days by using the best use of these tech capabilities in the office for your important customer calls, decision-making board meetings
3. Collaborating naturally and easily
   Office-based work and face-to-face interaction that comes along with that, make collaboration easier. You get the chance to socialize with co-workers, have chats at coffee corners and pick up on useful information through informal conversations in person.
4. Happy with a healthy work-life balance
   When offering the option for hybrid working and meeting, enterprises are showing their concern about the well-being of their workforce and investing in a strong company culture. Relieving stress and enabling people to maintain a healthy work-life balance makes them happy and productive.
5. Focused & saving time
   People lose time every day, when they’re in the car or train commuting to work. When enabling partial working from home in a hybrid work model, you instantly make up for that lost time. Employees then have the ability to work whenever and wherever suits them best.
   
   

   Related Reading

   Are you Ready for Remote Working?

   How To Prepare Your Business For The Next Wave Of COVID-19 ?

   How enterprises can reach successful Unified Communications

   10 tips for a successful video conference call

   Have a need to improve your collaboration and communication tools?

   Ask about Arkan free solution design services.
   
   Source
   https://www.barco.com/en/news/2020-11-03-what-are-hybrid-meetings
   https://www.barco.com/en/news/2020-10-20-key-benefits-of-hybrid-working