Alfredo Ramirez is CEO of Vyopta. His expertise includes optimization of virtual team work and employee/customer engagement.
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In 2020, businesses entered a new era where remote work ruled and virtual team collaboration became the lifeblood of innovation, sales and customer services. Since then, organizations have increased their investment in technologies for their teams to automate and accelerate virtual team collaborative work. The global workforce proved it could quickly adopt a new work model. However, most organizations believe that they have not tapped into the full potential of their virtual workforce.
Most organizations that are moving forward with a hybrid work model are investing in new collaboration technology, including endpoints for the office, increasing the effectiveness of virtual collaboration. Virtual collaborative teamwork is here to stay, and leadership teams at most organizations are unsure whether they have selected the proper technologies for their needs. Thus, they continue to evaluate processes and technology to improve virtual workforce collaborative work, engagement, productivity and well-being/happiness.
Background
The need to support remote work accelerated the rapid adoption and use of collaboration technologies for business continuity.
These technologies are part of a large universe of products across multiple vendors encompassing videoconferencing, immersive collaboration (including the use of virtual reality [VR], augmented reality [AR] and the metaverse), chat/messaging, document management, electronic whiteboarding, touch-activated and voice-activated audio-visual controls, digital signage/content streaming, contact center, networks and virtual private networks, PC/laptop devices and more.
Collaboration technology continues to evolve at a fast pace. There are significantly more solution options to support virtual team collaborative work today than ever before.
User experience is paramount.
Organizations are evaluating the use of technology and training to deliver exceptional workforce user experiences, which are crucial to optimizing workforce engagement, productivity and well-being. Regarding virtual team collaboration, IT has been using collaboration technology performance management to improve digital user experiences by assuring the performance of collaboration endpoints and on-premise infrastructure.
With the massive shift to cloud applications, specifically for collaborative work, collaboration technology performance management needs to be amended. Implementing effective virtual collaboration starts with the user having an exceptional experience beyond just the technology in use. People cannot engage, collaborate or work well together if they do not have exceptional user experiences.
User experience is complex to manage and optimize by IT and users for a number of reasons.
1. The number of applications and devices (PC/laptop, tablet, phone, conference room endpoint, AR/VR headsets and glasses) being used at home, in the office and remotely anywhere has exploded.
2. Workers are more nomadic than ever by continually changing their location of work on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, and they use varied networks from corporate-wide and local area networks, home networks and public networks.
3. The amount of communication (instant messages, video meetings, voice calls and emails) throughout each and every day has increased worker stress and anxiety.
4. Research by Dr. Steven Rogelberg, professor of Organizational Science, Management and Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, uncovered that poor user experiences from varied disruptions in meetings waste 50% of total meeting time. In addition, our analytics uncovered that information workers spend an average of 25% of their work time in virtual one-to-one and multiperson meetings, while management can spend up to 75% of their work time in meetings. That loss in productivity is very expensive.
Transitioning To A Collaboration Intelligence Strategy
Managing user experience with most technology used in business has become a high-priority need to improve workforce engagement, productivity and well-being.
B. Joseph Pine II, the co-author of The Experience Economy and a management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial startups, said it best: "It's your employees who create all the economic value for your enterprise. You need, therefore, to stage a remarkable employee experience."
Regarding the marketplace, there is a big shift in collaboration "crossing the chasm" from IT performance management of collaboration technology to user experience management from technology, workspace and people when teams are virtually collaborating from anywhere.
In order to manage and improve user experience and engagement, organizations can begin their journey in adopting a collaboration intelligence-first strategy by focusing on three critical areas.
1. People. To ensure workforce engagement, productivity and wellness, it is crucial to provide users with contextual intelligence that empowers them to eliminate (1) disruptive collaboration practices, (2) the lack of engagement during meetings with other users and (3) meeting inequity within and across teams.
2. Technology. To optimize quality, reliability and ROI of collaboration technology assets used for employee and customer engagement, organizations should provide IT and users with contextual intelligence that can empower them to prevent and remove technical issues that negatively affect user experience with the collaboration technologies used in remote environments and in the office.
3. Space. To drive efficient and safe use of workspace, organizations need to make insights available to IT, facilities and users in order to eliminate non-functional meeting space, underutilized/overutilized space (occupied hours per day and number of occupants relative to room capacity and social distance guidelines) and suboptimal room experiences (lighting, air quality/CO2, temperature, safe distance between people).
Outlook
The stakes over the next two to three years could not be higher, and we are starting to see the strategic chessboard shift among collaboration technology vendors. The best evidence of this is M&A moves being made as a reaction to the shifting collaboration landscape.
For the foreseeable future, virtual collaboration and hybrid work are here to stay—which means the demand for collaboration technology will remain high. This demand creates a crucial need for user experience management for organizations to optimize virtual collaborative work effectiveness. Thus, in order to remain fully competitive and respond to the needs of the market, collaboration technology vendors will be compelled to organically build, partner or acquire the required collaboration functionality.
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