Over the past eighteen months, Poly Experience Centers (PECs) around the world have been refreshed and reopened in cities like Shanghai, Beijing and London. This week we were proud to officially open the doors of our newest PEC in New York City! Over the course of two days, we welcomed industry press, analysts, customers and partners to join us for an official ribbon-cutting ceremony and a chance to experience the difference that Poly’s solutions can make to enable today’s modern hybrid workforce. 

What is a Poly Experience Center? 

Poly’s experience centers are special because we take a holistic approach to demonstrating how our products integrate into workspaces. For many other companies, briefing centers are designed as showrooms to display and demonstrate solutions in a simulated environment. At Poly, our experience centers are actual workspaces! This allows our visitors to experience collaborative solutions in action in a way that can be easily reproduced by customers in their own office locations. 

In our PECs, you can meet face to face with our solution experts as they walk you through Poly solutions that are tailored to your business’s specific needs. You can see demonstrations of Poly’s products and experience the tools designed to empower and connect workforce – whether they are in an office, working from home or someplace in between. 

The decision to refresh our PECs allowed us to rethink the design of our centers and update them to reflect the most pressing business needs today. Our former centers built almost 10 years ago were great for a “present to” style of briefing program; however, they needed to be updated to accommodate our current “experience” methodology.  

The Experience 

The goal of the Poly Experience Program is to create tailored briefing experiences for our customers to showcase how Poly’s professional-grade voice and video gear can solve their organization’s specific collaboration needs. So, we start by getting to know our guests, their business and what they are going through. We want to have a firm grasp on the day-to-day reality of their employees. Where are they working and how? Are they set up to be productive given their work style and workplace? Is the layout of the office welcoming and conducive to employee productivity? Then we begin to tailor our presentation for the exact needs of each business and employee persona.  

Matching Solutions with Workstyles 

At Poly we advocate for physical spaces that are designed to accommodate different workstyles as well as the importance of outfitting every employee with the right tools for their job function and locations. Over the past decade, we’ve done extensive persona research to understand the various workstyles that make up the typical organization from office collaborators to on-the-go executives. This user-driven approach to technology decisions is more critical than ever as so many of our customers are planning for a future of work that is increasingly hybrid and flexible. Our PEC staff can walk you through how to match the correct technology for the various personas in your workforce to keep them productive and connected throughout the day. 

We look forward to sharing the Poly experience with our visitors in NYC. To learn more about our Poly Experience Program or to schedule your experience, contact your Poly account representative! 

Jennifer Adams leads Global Sales Experience and Enablement Programs at Poly. 

Earlier this year, we introduced our latest personas research findings and talked about some of the macro trends we’ve seen over nearly a decade of workstyle research.

I have spent the last several months sharing this research with our customers, many of whom are currently planning or implementing a return to office strategy for their workforce. The pandemic drove major shifts to the way people worked and although there is almost universal agreement that the way people work will be fundamentally changed, there is little agreement to what extent and how to plan for this new way of working. Poly uses our workstyle persona research to help provide a framework for companies to use to inform some of this planning.

Today, I want to explain why we have separate personas, and how understanding the key differences of each persona can help you improve your technology spending plans for the months and years ahead, ultimately saving time, money and increasing overall employee productivity.

For IT equipment rollouts, progressive organizations often realize they need to map out employee workflows or needs to inform some of the decisions that will need to be made. A lot of companies I have spoken to will focus on gaining a qualitative understanding regarding the needs of a department or job role. Yet our quantitative research has uncovered that in many organizations, there are people who work in the same department, in the same role, sometimes even with the same job title, yet these employees may have different behavioral workstyles that affect how and when they use technology. And the magic of our personas research is that it reveals the lesser understood or quantitatively researched behavioral attributes that are the key to planning for a workforce in transition.

In our research we deployed a survey to 5,000 knowledge workers across eight countries. We took those responses and applied a segmentation-based nine key dimensions or attributes (e.g., work location, communication intensity, mobility, technology savviness, etc.). That segmentation profiling uncovered six collaborative personas that make up 92%* of a typical enterprise.  This data set was captured during the pandemic and published in January of 2021.

CONNECTED EXECUTIVE: Connected executives are tech-savvy business drivers who go wherever needed to make decisions and solve problems. They use more video on daily basis than any other persona. Since they are so versatile in where and how they work, their pain points include diversions, interruptions, and unpredictable background noise. They use more communication tools than any other persona, so they must stay connected across all devices. In a typical enterprise 12% of employees would fall into this category.

ROAD WARRIOR: Always on the move, road warriors work outside of the office more than 50% of the time. Due to their constantly changing environment, their pain points include noise on calls and unreliable connections. They also travel light, so they want solutions that are highly portable and easy to use. Road warriors report the highest smartphone use across all personas. In a typical enterprise 5% of employees would fall into this category.

FLEX WORKER: The flex worker splits time between the corporate office, a home office and travel. They are always innovating and adapting their communications channels. Due to frequent remote and on-the-go work, pain points include difficulty collaborating with colleagues and missing important information in the office. In motion even in the office, they spend 24% of their time moving from space to space. The flex worker needs to be “always-on” and communicate across several devices. In a typical enterprise 20% of employees would fall into this category.

REMOTE COLLABORATOR: Working from a home office or a remote center, the remote worker has fewer opportunities for in-person meetings and more challenges to successful and productive collaboration. Remote workers are most likely to have a dedicated office space at home and depend on multiple devices, unified communications and technologies to bridge the gaps between them and their colleagues, co-workers and clients. In a typical enterprise 15% of employees would fall into this category.

OFFICE COLLABORATOR: The office collaborator has an office-based work style, is highly collaborative and open to new technology. The majority of those in this persona group rate video calls as a preferred communication channel. As many of office collaborators work in open office spaces and spend most of the day at their desk, their pain points include background noise and constant disruptions. They want to seamlessly manage their communication across devices. The largest of all persona groups, in a typical enterprise 27% of employees would fall into this category.

OFFICE COMMUNICATOR: As a more traditional work style, the office communicator is most comfortable with familiar systems and devices (like a desk phone) and feels most productive working in the office vs. home or other locations. Though they are regularly in meetings, they are rarely the leader of calls and report the lowest adoption of video compared to other personas. Due to the high percentage of time they spend communicating, their pain points include being diverted by interruptions, background noise and lack of privacy on calls. In a typical enterprise 13% of employees would fall into this category.

*The remaining 8% are employees in very independent roles that operate with limited communication / collaboration needs.

Learn more facts about each of the personas: visit the Workstyles page.

While it’s not feasible for most companies to create a tech-spending strategy for every single individual employee, you can use these six personas as scalable/defendable framework to plan for most of your enterprise employees

Using this workstyle approach, you can avoid problematic “one size fits all” strategies. When it comes to technology rollouts, research shows that if you treat an Office Communicator as though they have the same behavioral attributes as a Connected Executive, you’re likely overserving/overspending, giving the Office Communicator more than they need.

In our next post, we’ll take a closer look at how COVID-19 affected personas in ways we hadn’t expected.

As you compile your return-to-office plans, learn how to serve your employee population by behavioral workstyle. With customers planning their return to office after the pandemic, things are not settled by any means. There continue to be challenges and changes by geography to take into account. If you take into consideration that there will likely be an increase in flexible workstyles in the future, that bodes well for companies looking to roll out new technologies.

You’ll see a higher adoption of technology, better return on tech investments as well as increased productivity for the people who are matched with the right devices.

Contact us to request a personas research consultation.

For nearly a decade, at Poly we’ve been studying workplace personas and how to match workstyles and employee behaviors to devices and technologies so that organizations can increase productivity. We have conducted proprietary research into workplace personas to create archetypes based on the behavioral traits found in typical enterprise business employees.

We refresh the research every few years, and when we embarked on the study in 2020 with our consultants, we marveled at how quickly the world was changing as a result of the pandemic.

In the past versions of our study, we’ve observed an emerging trend that as communication platforms and devices proliferate, people are increasingly able to work from different locations. The shift was incremental – predictable, even. However, with our latest research, we saw a dramatic shift in the global enterprise workforce to working from home.

We couldn’t help but wonder: What impact will this have on companies in the short term? And, perhaps more importantly, how will this impact the way we work in the future?

Empathy Leads the Way

We talked about delaying the research report until after the pandemic, but as I was reflecting on the seven workstyle personas, I was overcome with a wave of empathy.

I have spent the past decade trying to better understand these personas so that I can help share their stories and make life better for enterprise workers. And although each of these personas is a composite, they very accurately represent real people in our lives.

I thought about the Office Communicator –  we call her “Olivia” – who represents people that spend most of their time in the office… and they’re only 1% likely to use video. She must be feeling incredibly distraught over having to lower the boundary between work and home life.

I thought about ‘Ray’ the Road Warrior – who represents our colleagues who spend 50% of their time traveling. Having his wings clipped like this probably makes him feel anxious to get back out in the field to see customers and partners in person.

The decision became clear – we cannot wait. We have to do the research now. Given our historical view of workstyles, we are in a unique position to understand the current impact of the pandemic, something that will help our customers plan.

Our Latest Research Findings

This month (January 2021), we completed our latest round of personas research. The study surveyed more than 5,000 enterprise workers across eight different countries. While these findings reveal perspectives at a unique point-in-time – during a global pandemic – we believe the behavior shifts will have a long-term impact. In our latest survey, we asked about pre-COVID-19 work behaviors as well as the impacts COVID-19 is having on the way people work now, and what they anticipate for the future (post-pandemic).

Here are a few things we learned …

1. Work location will be more flexible in the future: The workforce was already starting to work more flexibly pre-COVID (compared to our 2017 research), and users expect the flexibility to continue post-COVID.

2. Home is the new office for many, but not everyone has a dedicated space to work or the right set of technology to be their most productive at home.

3. COVID-19 has led to a rapid growth of conference calls and video meetings. 42% of global workstyles reported daily use of video pre-COVID. That number jumped to 63% during COVID. Some personas are still reluctant to use conferencing technology – we know it isn’t a preferred channel for all workstyles – but the research shows that this is an opportunity for companies to embrace personal video technology in addition to video-enabled meeting rooms.

There’s no doubt about it: workstyles are transforming as hybrid work environments become more prevalent. Work is no longer a place and I believe the best way to understand the future of work is to understand the people who perform it. And without a doubt, those who pay attention to this research will have a more productive workforce for years to come. Make sure you’ve identified personas within your business – it is critical to ensure everyone has the correct tools and devices to maximize efficiency and productivity. For more information on how you can get to know your workplace personas, request a consultation with Poly.

For more insights from our latest personas research, join the UC Summit event where I will be presenting (registration is free; disclosure: Poly is an event sponsor). The video interview is accessible to all event attendees starting on January 25, 2021.

In the meantime, I have a message for the workforce – for the Olivias, the Rays, and all other personas, we see you and we are going to do our best to make sure your companies see you, too.

Like the Plantronics UC portfolio, Skype for Business has been successful in the UC ecosystem by building solutions that support that work isn’t any one place anymore. An increasingly mobile and flexible workforce should be able to communicate with practically anyone, anytime, anywhere. This is where collaboration solutions built to support a mobile collaboration strategy becomes key – mapping a mobile ecosystem to make everyone more connected than ever before.

Plantronics is an expert on mobile work styles and has built up a vast knowledge base of user needs and collaboration pain points. Poor connectivity, disruptive noises, being poorly prepared for a call, not having the right apps – the thing is, our mobile world, connected as it is, can be a very disconnected place. That’s why Plantronics is so committed to Microsoft’s Skype for Business certification program. This designation means Plantronics UC products meet the rigorous standards outlined in the program.

Together, Plantronics and Microsoft understand the communication challenges today’s workforce faces and provide the tools needed for them to work effectively, wherever focus is needed. This partnership provides simple, integrated audio solutions which help redefine what it means for workers to collaborate – whether it’s inside or outside of the office. Day-to-day business no longer needs to be conducted within the walls of a traditional office, and with trusted audio solutions and seamless integration with the Skype for Business platform, workers can confidently take calls without compromising on sound quality.

As the workforce and office culture continue to evolve, we look forward to continuing to reach new milestones with Microsoft as we both work to keep people connected.

Within the next decade, millennials will make up as much as 75 percent of the workforce, according to the Brookings Institution. Roughly defined as the generation of adults now ages 18 to 34, these early-career professionals are known for being ambitious and idealistic, with a global outlook on life. As the first generation of “digital natives,” they also tend to be tech-savvy.

Recently, Plantronics took a look at the work styles of this generation as part of a new in-depth global study of 4,000+ knowledge workers. The study revealed some distinct patterns about the way millennials work and communicate:

• Around the world, millennials are increasingly using communication methods for work like video calls, instant messaging, and texting.
• Millennials tend to shun desk phones in favor of relying on smartphones or their PC for calls.
• They report performing work-related tasks while commuting or traveling more than peers from other generations.
• While nearly 40 percent of Millennials identify as office-based, more than 60 percent report working more flexibly.

These trends reflect a single generation, but they can be seen as an indication of future patterns across the board. In fact, millennials from the United States, Germany and France have more in common with adult workers across a range of ages in growth markets including Brazil, China, India and Mexico than they do with older peers in their own countries. These patterns are likely to continue as members of Gen Z, which are now between five and 17 years old, enter the workforce.

Insights like these can be helpful to businesses in shaping their IT strategies for both the present and the future. But it’s important to avoid over-focusing on a single generation, or to think these traits are confined to one particular demographic group. There are, after all, three generations currently in the workforce with another on the way. And it’s also important to note that of the 7 key work styles identified in the Plantronics research, millennials could be found in each one — they just tend to occur in higher numbers in work styles that are more flexible. So having a strategy that encourages mobile collaboration will be a strategy that naturally appeals to millennials as well.

It’s clear that we are experiencing a transformation in how we work with our teams and get stuff done on the job. But as this data indicates, a one-size-fits-all approach to IT is no longer an option. Today’s workforce has different needs depending on their roles, tasks and preferences. While a person’s generation may influence these preferences, it’s far from the only important factor. A person’s needs and pain points are shaped just as much, for example, by how frequently they work out of the office or while on the move.

Tech savviness may be seen as a millennial trait, but it’s not exclusively millennials who want to be more productive, work more flexibly and communicate on their terms. Whether born in 1985 or 1955, today’s workforce needs to be equipped to be productive regardless of where they happen to be working. And enabling this productivity requires understanding how to support an increasingly mobile workforce for success on their terms. To learn more about flexible work styles and how to design a successful mobile collaboration strategy, visit plantronics.com/mobility.

Back in December we talked about how together Plantronics Voyager Focus UC headset and Unify’s OpenScape CP600 desk phone allow users to manage calls distraction-free with immersive HD audio while protecting privacy, and ensuring security in open office environments.

Yesterday, Plantronics and Unify announced another great display of our partnership with a new software integration with Unify’s Circuit platform. This integration enables synchronization between Circuit and Plantronics USB audio devices, meaning the headset can deliver easy access to Circuit call controls from the headset. As a result, businesses using Plantronics headsets with Unify Circuit will now benefit from a simpler, richer user experience.

The way this works is Plantronics’ APIs, integrated with the Circuit platform, create an extension in Circuit that communicates with Plantronics Hub software. Plantronics Hub also provides advanced multi-device and settings management. The integration works across desktop and web clients for maximum versatility.

Plantronics enhances Circuit users’ collaboration experience with a wide range of corded or wireless headsets and speakerphones, providing:

• A rich and crisp high-definition (HD) audio experience for vibrant conversations
• Active noise cancellation (ANC) technology to block distractions
• “Office-on-the-go”, where the user can seamlessly swipe a conversation from one device to another while maintaining audio in their headset

This effort benefits every type of worker – from the desktop office worker to the mobile worker to the flexible worker. Also, it removes the restrictions of being tethered to hardware at a fixed location. The Unify Circuit platform integrates easily with Plantronics hardware, and operates naturally in a rich software environment.

For more information on Plantronics and Unify, please click here.

The IT team had been building up to the deployment day with e-mail reminders, announcements, and posters spread throughout the campus. They put together a raffle drawing with technology prizes including iPods, webcams, wireless mice and some wireless headsets. It seemed as if IT was doing everything right to get people ready for the change, but on the first day of deployment I observed mixed reactions. Feelings ranged from optimism, curiosity, ambivalence, stoic resignation, and outright hostility. One woman walked up to the table to pick up her headset and said with a great deal of sadness, “I don’t want this.” Another stumped the IT Director by asking “If my PC crashes, how do I call IT?” Not surprisingly, the range of feelings could also be drawn along generational lines, with younger employees tending to be more on the positive to neutral side and older employees being on the neutral to negative side. And even among those who were in the positive to neutral camp, very few actually saw how these changes were going to benefit them specifically. This is where the idea of moving from a deployment mindset to an adoption mindset can really ensure success and quicker ROI for some of these big infrastructure changes, and it involves getting a little personal.

The argument for taking a personalized approach to IT is simple: people using technology have different needs across the organization, depending on their role, tasks, and preferences. And, what good is it to provide technology to employees if they won’t or can’t use it? According to a recent Oxford Economics¹ study, employees say they are expected to stay connected to the office all the time, yet only 40% say the devices they use at home integrate seamlessly with their work tools. Wouldn’t it be great if technology not only saved money and modernized your company infrastructure, but also worked well and was accepted by each individual?

Promoting a better understanding of work styles & behaviors in the enterprise became a passion of mine after seeing the impact of both positive and negative employee experiences during major technology shifts. But there are not very many resources out there to educate IT about the finer points of today’s workforce. With this in mind, Plantronics conducted an in-depth, global study² of 4,500+ participants, in an effort to understand evolving needs and pain points as they apply to communication and communication device technologies. The findings form this research underscore how understanding an individual’s preferred work style and having IT support accordingly, can help companies and individuals realize true adoption of technology leading to efficiency and productivity gains in the enterprise.

We analyzed the data and came up with 7 distinct user personas that combined cover 91% of the work styles found in a typical enterprise. I am often asked how a user persona is distinct from a job function, as many segmentations models out there focus on titles or roles. My response is that it is entirely possible to have two people with the same title who have completely different work styles. A persona is an archetype, a collection of demographics and psychographics that are distinct from other groups. While we have developed 7 personas with names and descriptions, each persona is actually a consolidation of hundreds of real people. There are three main areas of work style that our research uncovered: Office based work styles, Flexible/remote work styles and Connected executive work styles. Each set of work styles has different patterns of communication intensity and pain points, device usage needs, etc.

It is important to understand the behaviors, needs and feelings of these different work styles as they are distinct enough that treating them the same will likely alienate large groups of important stakeholders. And this is where the high cost really comes to light…can you afford to lose the confidence of the people your team exists to support? When it comes to adoption, there is a persona in your enterprise who is only 21% likely to adopt new technologies like unified communications and one that is 81% likely to adopt. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to identify your potential champions and while working to satisfy your likely adoption laggards?

Here are a few tips for taking a more personalized approach:

1. Conduct internal surveys to better understand the work locations, communication behaviors and device usage of your workforce, you may quickly discover the peril of taking a one size fits all approach.
2. Identify your technophiles and early adopters, these are the users who are most likely to evangelize new solutions with their teams on your behalf!
3. Don’t forget to consider the needs of a remote or mobile workforce, they often require more IT support than their office-based colleagues, are more likely to connect via mobile devices and technical issues can often bring their productivity to a complete stop.
4. Tailor communications and training to your audience, Baby boomers tend to prefer in person training and support, Gen X will self-support if you provide resources, Millennials will often just “figure it out”

Companies are embracing new ways of working (and technology to enable this shift) and are seeing business benefits as a result. Now, more than ever, IT leaders are beginning to recognize that if they hope to attain strong adoption of communications technology in the enterprise, they need to understand and consider user behavior, device preference and work style. This shift in thinking will only grow more important as technology opens an increasing variety of options for when, how, and where people engage with work.

I will be speaking on this topic at the upcoming 2017 ITEXPO Feb 8-10 in Fort Lauderdale, FL as part of the Business Communications Essentials track. My session is called Enterprise Communications: It’s Personal

Additional Plantronics speakers at 2017 ITEXPO:

• Tom Wesselman (@twesselman) will discuss Context, Wearables, and WebRTC as part of the Real Time Web track and participate in a panel discussion on Emerging Technologies Likely to Influence Your Business moderated by Jon Arnold.
• Richard Kenny (@richardk_PLT) will participate in a panel discussion on Customer Service, Evolved, also moderated by Jon Arnold.

¹ Oxford Economics, The Always-On Economy, 2015

² FactWorks, Plantronics Enterprise Segmentation Study, 2016

Thinking ahead, I knew that if I started the conference at home, it would drop as soon as I left my Wi-Fi range. So I left the house early, parked down the street, connected my Bluetooth headset and joined the meeting with mere seconds to spare before hitting the road.

To my surprise, no one could hear me. So I had to pull over again and leave the meeting to fix the settings of the app I was using. I then had to retrieve the call-in details from my email again, and scribble the access code on a scrap of paper so I could call back in. Despite my good intentions, I was six minutes late and had to apologize profusely to the person I left hanging.

I’ve learned many lessons like this as I work increasingly from the road. I’ve found that there are some fundamental differences in how you succeed in a mobile work environment compared to a traditional office environment, and some additional factors to consider.

Mobile collaboration requires a new mindset. In order to be both effective and “present” while on the go, avoid some of these common mistakes:

1. Not preparing for the X factor

A mobile work environment, by definition, is in constant transition with lots of variables. You’ve got to be ready to adapt to each situation and be prepared for anything and everything that WILL get in the way of your productivity.

That can mean anything from stocking up on portable chargers and cables, to always building an extra fifteen minutes to your schedule in case of delays. The last thing you want to do is be the reason 14% of people have heard a toilet flush during  call – a finding from a global survey we did on building better meetings.

Planning to join a conference call right after your plane is scheduled to land? I’ve learned from experience how important it is to warn colleagues in advance so they aren’t left hanging if my flight is delayed – and to put a backup meeting on the calendar later in the day, just in case.

2. Neglecting Relationships

‘Water cooler’ conversations just don’t happen when you’re mobile. But those informal, personal connections are so valuable for building the strong relationships based on trust and respect that enable you to get more done. According to a recent mobile collaboration study by Plantronics, it’s those impromptu collaboration opportunities and relationships that workers missed the most when out of the office.

One member of my team is 100% remote and based thousands of miles away from me. To make that distance feel shorter, we depend greatly on frequent videoconferences. This helps us avoid misunderstandings that can arise when we aren’t able to see each other face-to-face.

To that end, collaboration tools and instant messaging platforms are great for having the same kind of real-time, informal connection you might have if you ran into a colleague in the office kitchen. You may not be there in person, but you can reach out via phone, a quick IM or even video chat. It doesn’t have to be a scheduled call to check-in and see how a colleague is doing.

3. Not being mindful of how you’re coming across

We should all aim not to be “that person” on a conference call. You know the one – they show up late, apologizing for technical difficulties, and overshadow the conversation with a slew of background noise like chatter, traffic, barking dogs and worse.

When you’re mobile, you lack the benefit of non-verbal communication to help convey your message. In the absence of visual cues, listeners focus even more acutely on what they hear.  In fact, in voice-only conversations, 87 percent of a message is communicated through tone of voice alone. Unfortunately, this same principle also applies to any background noise, with more than 64 percent of people surveyed by Plantronics stating that they are often distracted by surrounding noises while on a conference call.

In order to make the best impression possible while on the phone, try standing up while you speak to convey energy and confidence. Consider the acoustics of the room if you’ll be on speaker. For video calls, pay attention to your background and lighting. And be sure to have the right tools at your disposal such as a noise cancelling headset with an easily accessible MUTE button – its strategic use can make or break a call.

4. Not choosing the right medium for the message

There are plenty of ways to communicate these days, from emails and IMs to video, phone calls, and text messages. Each one can be the right choice, depending on the message you’re trying to deliver and the urgency of the matter.

Lately, I’ve been impressed by some of the newer collaboration platforms hitting the market like Cisco Spark and Microsoft Teams. They recognize that different messages require different mediums, and offer everything from group messaging to integrated screen sharing and video conferencing as part of a unified platform.

If you have yet to find a platform that suites your needs, remember that there are always new options. For example, my colleagues in Southeast Asia use WhatsApp as a primary tool to collaborate, and exchange messages and photos.

5. Getting sidelined by technical challenges

Successful mobile collaboration depends on a fairly robust infrastructure to support it. It’s critical to think through all the necessary elements for successful interactions in advance. Otherwise, you might give off the impression of someone who is unprepared or unprofessional. Meetings starting late are a particular example we can all relate to, with 70% of people reporting 3-8 minutes on average of delays due to technical challenges – another finding from a global survey we did on building better meetings.

For example, many people working from home discover (when it’s too late) that their home Wi-Fi isn’t strong enough to support the download and upload speeds necessary for a video conference or to download a large file from a remote server. Or you may plan to take a phone call from a remote location, only to discover that your cell phone service in that area is unexpectedly poor.

Preparation is the key here. Evaluate your connectivity to ensure it supports the work you’ll need to do.

For phone calls, test signal strength prior to dialing in. For particularly important teleconferences or videoconferences, you could even do a test run with a colleague and make sure you come through loud and clear.

The evolution of mobile collaboration has been exciting and empowering for many. The first wave of mobile collaborators sought the same access to information and tools that their office-based colleagues did. Now that access is nearly identical anywhere, we can turn our focus toward expanding the social interaction of an office so we can be “present” from any distance. Mobile collaboration delivers real business results, and by avoiding these pitfalls you can make it even more effective. Click here for more tips on equipping the members of the mobile workforce for success.

Sound like a familiar situation? For many of us, the definition of the “workplace” has evolved far beyond the four walls of the office.  In the 2016 Plantronics Mobile Collaboration Global Survey, 73% of respondents said they work at a company that embraces flexible working and mobility, with 40% reporting regularly travelling for business.

Businesses are increasingly relying upon the ability of teammates to collaborate anytime and anyplace, and this mobile mindset has pushed IT to expand their focus to empowering those in and outside of the office. With diverse work styles and environments becoming the norm, the days of IT strategies focused on “end users” are long gone.

Rather than starting with the infrastructure and working out to the users at the end of the system, IT strategies need to incorporate a people-centric approach – one that focuses on the people, their work styles and pain points, and develop strategies to support them. This shift in thinking will only grow more important as technology opens an increasing variety of options for when, how, and where people engage with work.

Understanding flexible work styles is essential to building this people-centric approach, a task made even more difficult by the group’s subtle differences. The “road warrior” may be the classic image of a mobile worker, but the definition has grown far beyond that archetype.

Recently we conducted an in-depth study to better understand the mobile workforce and developed three overarching personas. By understanding these personas, companies can better address their needs, enabling better collaboration and ultimately, better serve their customers.

The Flexible Worker
As the name implies, flex workers include those who work flexibly at various locations. This is the fastest-growing work style, currently representing 23% of a typical enterprise. While these workers spend 58% of their time at a fixed desk (which is often at home as flex workers include the new breed of what we used to call telecommuters), roughly a quarter of their time is spent on the road and as much as 16% at other locations. These workers need tools that can easily travel with them to any location they find themselves, and critically value flexible communication tools such as their mobile phone and laptop.

The Connected Executive
Representing 18% of the workforce, these workers are highly valued for their ability to solve problems and set strategies in a fluid, mobile environment. Connected executives may work from the road less than other mobile work styles, but work in various office locations more than the other groups. Since about half of their time is not spent at a personal desk, they consider their mobile phone, laptop, and often tablet to be critical parts of their work lives. Managing devices is a key pain point for this group, as they use more than nine in a typical day to communicate.

The Road Warrior
While they may be the smallest segment of the workforce at 8%, road warriors epitomize the mobile lifestyle. With 30% of their working time spent on the move, road warriors consider their smartphones to be lifelines for staying in contact with colleagues and customers. They are always seeking new tools that allow for collaboration in a small enough form factor to move with them.

Chances are, flexible work styles have become part of your daily routine. If you identify with one of these descriptions, you know that no matter who we are, or when or where we work, the need for collaboration remains. And true collaboration can only happen when employees are able to share ideas, opinions and information – regardless of where they happen to be working.

This is the first in a series of blog posts on this topic. What steps is your organization taking to enable mobile collaboration?

To that point, I’m excited to announce that Plantronics has just completed the full certification of our unified communications (UC) portfolio with Cisco Jabber for Windows 11.5, certifying our compatibility with past, present and future releases. We’re the only headset vendor to have undertaken this commitment to Cisco and Jabber. Plantronics consistently invests in maintaining Cisco certifications, and with our software and audio solutions, this results in better meetings for all involved. What this means is that using a certified Plantronics audio solution with Cisco Jabber ensures a high quality audio experience with plug-and-play simplicity. It’s a message of assurance for IT and a great benefit for end users.

We’ve found that Cisco Jabber for Windows can help not only by enabling collaboration anytime and from anywhere, but also by reducing communications delays by providing presence information. It can help team agility and performance by instantly expanding one-on-one chats to larger, group conversations. This is one of the great capabilities of Cisco Jabber for Windows:  the ability to easily escalate an instant messaging (IM) chat into a meeting using audio and video and extend the reach to a Cisco WebEx meeting if you need additional and/or external participants. It’s simple, it’s quick, and as a result, it’s a better meeting for everyone involved.  These things, combined with Plantronics’ commitment to superior audio and user experiences and reduced external distractions, makes for a winning combination. And certification across our entire UC portfolio means we can provide this great experience regardless if your work style is office-based, flexible or even highly mobile.

Cisco Jabber for Windows is built on open standards for interoperability, it can be deployed on premises or on demand as a cloud based service and it’s integrated with commonly-used desktop business applications. Voice is prioritized so as not to experience reduction in quality, regardless of whether you’re inside the network or working remotely. Plantronics being fully certified for Cisco Jabber for Windows means you can collaborate with confidence.