Many discussions about the future of the workplace focus on the element of remote workers, but the return to office is an essential building block for hybrid work. It’s also going more slowly than anticipated.

A spring 2022 survey of 160 major employers, conducted by The Partnership for New York City, found that more than 75% of firms are set to implement a hybrid model, but the larger the company, the slower the pace of return to office.

Why are things going so slowly? Because workers are unwilling to return.

A recent European survey found that on average 64% of workers are reluctant to return to the workplace, from a low of 56% in the Netherlands to a high of 83% in Ireland.

In the pre-pandemic world, things like game rooms, free snacks, and cool office design were used to create excitement among employees for being in the office. Today, these incentives have been replaced by HR policies, placemaking, and organizational design underpinned with a technical infrastructure that enables hybrid work.

THREE CONSIDERATIONS FOR CREATING A BETTER WORK ENVIRONMENT

The three most important elements to focus on in the return to office are people, spaces, and technology.

Meet employees’ changed expectations and attitudes. A one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. Someone early in their career may want to be in more often for the camaraderie, while established workers with families may prefer to be in on as few days as possible. With the autonomy many employees developed through remote working, managers who feel employees need to be in the office to be micromanaged are a detriment. Take roles and function into consideration and make more granular decisions about what makes sense.

Recognize the role of place in building workplace culture. 66% of businesses are considering remodeling their company spaces for hybrid work. While many organizations clearly understand that the traditional approach to office space won’t work, it’s also important to take a new approach to the function of office space. As you redesign your space, consider how your new environment communicates your values and culture.

Animate your return to office with technology. Technology sets in motion the interactions that solve issues, generate new ideas, express culture, and bring colleagues together. From workplace apps that bring people together in the right place at the right time to immersive video conferencing experiences, technology repositions your office as an intelligent hub for remote and face-to-face collaboration.

TURN YOUR RETURN TO OFFICE INTO A RESET FOR THE LONG TERM

With hybrid work becoming our new reality, many organizations are struggling to tackle their return to office at a functional level, while missing the underlying culture, structure, and values necessary to support all employees.

To help you navigate a strong return to office that sets your company up to succeed as workplaces continue to evolve, Poly has partnered with the experts at WORKTECH Academy.  Our latest white paper combines key insights, with input from technical and design leaders, and real-world examples to help your return to office strategy create a strong foundation for hybrid working.

Read The Journey to Hybrid Working: A Reset For Return To Office?  to learn more research-based considerations about people, spaces, and technology in your return to office planning.

Grant Thornton is a large accounting firm with over a hundred meeting rooms across Australia. Like many firms, they used the timing of the COVID-19 pandemic to upgrade and modernize their rooms.  They knew they needed to undertake a digital transformation journey to modernize, simplify and standardize their user experiences across many locations, while at the same time upgrading from Skype for Business to a native Microsoft Teams Solution.

They wanted their employees to collaborate as equals – whether they were working from home, on the go or in the office.  Their search was for a solution that would simply and easily replace their existing room systems without having to reinvent the wheel.

After researching the space in detail, Grant Thornton selected a suite of Poly systems to meet their needs.  The Poly Studio X30s they selected were more cost effective than the MTR options they reviewed, and they were so simple to install that they could manage the deployment internally – which also resulted in significant cost savings for the project.

Supplementing those, Poly Studio X50s and G7500s handled the larger and more complex rooms in the project.  Because all of these systems had the same user interface and firmware, Grant Thornton could standardize their user experience across all locations.  And, because they were all Android based appliances, they were able to easily slide into rooms to replace previously existing devices with only minor tweaks needed to existing automation and control systems.

“The complexity of our larger rooms with significant automation” provided an additional challenge, according to Carlo De-Fazio, Technology Officer at Grant Thornton.  “These rooms can sit between 20 and 250 people in any given video conference, and each individual room refit would have required significant investment to make it Microsoft Teams compatible.”

He explained that their research and comparisons quickly showed the Poly solutions to be the best option on the market.  “Not only was the cost of the [Poly] units less expensive than the Windows-based devices, but the installation was far simpler. Cabling locations, including various parts to the unit, were fewer, and the overall footprint was lighter,” said Carlo. “This meant we could do the installation ourselves, which not only saved money on the devices but the installation cost as well,” he added.

Over a series of months Grant Thornton started retrofitting the rooms themselves (with light touch support from their local vendors NQAV and Generation-e.)  “It became obvious how easy the device setup was, and the user experience was solid. Each month new features were added to the devices, and they quickly surpassed the Windows devices for feature parity” Carlo explained.  “The new rooms performed brilliantly. They look so professional, and our people have picked up the new interface very swiftly,” he highlighted.

“We saved millions of dollars and still had a premium finish” he explained.  However, he pointed out that in reality, “the saving was not as significant [to us] compared to how nice the new equipment is. The rooms look brilliant, and the devices were easy to setup. Overall, we could not be happier with our approach and outcome.”

Click above to hear Carlo explain in his own words.

When Grant Thornton looked for a solution that would allow their over fourteen-thousand employees to make hybrid working a seamless experience – no matter where they were working from – Poly systems were clearly the right answer.  To find out more about how Poly solutions can be the right answer for your organizations, and to learn about Poly’s unique, next-generation innovations like Poly Director AI and NoiseBlock AI, reach out to your local Poly representative.

SECURE A ONE-TIME DISCOUNT ON YOUR FIRST POLY MICROSOFT TEAMS ROOM

Poly is delighted to offer a unique, one-time discount on your first Microsoft Teams Room. This offer applies to both the Poly Studio Focus and Small/Medium Room Kits for Microsoft Teams Rooms.

For more information about Poly’s solutions for Microsoft Teams, contact a Poly representative or head to Poly.com!

For companies and institutions around the world, the pressure is on to create a plan to bring in new technology to support the return-to-office and enable productivity for hybrid teams. Hybrid is a complex new model which constitutes a fundamental challenge in how we will work moving forward. According to Microsoft’s latest Work Trends Index from March 2022, 38 percent of the workforce are now hybrid workers (an increase of seven points since 2021) and more than half of all workers (53 percent) are likely to consider transitioning to hybrid work this year.

Along with this evolution of the workforce, we’ve seen a rapid change in the technology designed to solve the problems introduced with the shift to hybrid. New solutions are rapidly coming to market, including webcams and speakerphones designed for home offices, headsets for mobile workers and video conferencing solutions that enable organizations to retrofit office space for a new era of collaboration.

With all this new tech coming to market, it’s imperative to stay up to date on the latest solutions. One of the best ways to accomplish this is through the simplicity and speed of a virtual briefing at one of our Poly Experience Centers. Here are three ways that virtual briefings can improve your productivity and help ease the transition to hybrid work:

1. Quick virtual demonstrations let you see new features and products. Short on time, but don’t want to miss out on the latest and greatest technology updates? With the click of a button, you can be connected to experts who give several technology demonstrations through an innovative virtual studio. In just 20 minutes, you’ll gain a good understanding of the benefits of the latest collaborative solutions.
2. Ready for a more in-depth tour, but unable to travel to a Poly Experience Center? Get a customized virtual briefing! In 1-2 hours, you can receive a customized, in-depth virtual briefing that is tailored specifically for your collaboration needs. Poly’s sales leadership and technical experts will be on hand to answer your questions and explain the business benefits. These in-depth tours are especially great for multinational corporations or those with complex network and infrastructure requirements. Special NDA roadmap sessions with virtual demonstrations are also available.
3. Host a virtual briefing event to educate your peers, partners and customers on the best solutions for hybrid work and return-to-office. If you have stakeholders in different locations, you can help them gain a faster, better understanding of collaborative technology solutions through a virtual briefing event. These don’t demand a big budget or long planning cycles—in 1-2 weeks, we can help you set up a nationwide virtual briefing event. The sessions can be coordinated and co-hosted with specific ecosystem and alliance partners, such as Microsoft, Zoom or Tencent Meeting, to best suit your environment and collaboration needs.

Don’t miss out on an opportunity to talk to Poly experts and see more hybrid work solutions during these live, highly productive virtual sessions. A virtual briefing is an excellent step toward finding the ideal solution for your organization’s needs and workstyles. To schedule a personalized demonstration, contact your Poly Account Manager or Partner.

For more information, visit the Poly Experience Program page on our website.

Chan Chen is Poly’s Experience & Demonstration Lead for the Asia Pacific region.

The opportunity to experience professional work in the tech industry and the different career paths within it helps upcoming talent enter the workforce informed and inspired. Internships are one of the most comprehensive ways to gain this experience, and this year, Poly welcomed 54 interns from across the United States. Christine Zhou, who worked as a marketing intern on Poly’s Zoom Alliance team, participated remotely, and she shares how the internship at Poly has impacted her and her peers.

A Poly Intern Experience: Christine Zhou

From the very first day of my internship, I was excited to learn how to be a better communicator, pick up leadership skills and work with Zoom, a household name. Now, as I approach my last day, I realize I have gained all of those and so much more. My biggest takeaways from this incredible 10-week internship experience are connection, development and celebration.

Creating Memorable Connections

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Poly interns had the opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations with executives and the CEO himself. These leaders shared insights into their role and career journeys across our conference and personal rooms. With Poly technology, no comments were left unheard, so our chats felt very interactive—even to a remote intern, like me.

As part of my marketing role, I collaborated daily with creative and technical teams on a global scale. I networked with Zoom colleagues and even coordinated Poly’s presence at this year’s Zoom Education Summit. Each intern’s networking journey is different, but everyone I connected with was open and welcoming, no matter how packed their calendars were!

A Business Analyst intern in the Global Customer Solutions Teams, Behnoosh Sethna, explains, “The Friday Intern Brown Bag Lunch was a wonderful way to network with other interns and peers in an informal setting, in which we tend to share more about ourselves. Having it on a Friday helped us wind down after the week and share our learnings with one another.”

Professional Development

Throughout my internship experience, I explored Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and networked with Poly employees who gave me great advice for navigating the tech industry. One of my learning highlights was the Rapid Intern Development & Education (RIDE) series. My favorite session was the Past Intern Panel in which current Poly employees shared how the internship program helped them flourish and shape their careers. Other session topics included Poly product training, Microsoft Teams tips and tricks and career management.

Bobbie Burton, a Learning & Organizational Development intern agreed, “The RIDE sessions have been super helpful in getting to know Poly, the people at Poly and how to be successful as young, emerging professionals. I especially enjoyed the session on how to strategically manage and navigate a professional career, which was led by Deborah Rousseau, the US Intern Program Manager, and LaTorsha Hill, Senior Director Talent Management and Talent Acquisition. In addition, I have truly valued the opportunities to ask questions about employees’ professional journeys and to learn about the various functions within the organization.”

Celebrating Interns!

At Poly, having fun is part of work. Interns participated in virtual scavenger hunts, volunteer day and a desk decorating challenge. The “Westminterns” in Colorado claimed the desk decorating title by transforming their cubicles and conference room into a Hawaiian paradise.

At the end of the internship, we will all share presentations covering our contributions and takeaways to highlight our diverse goals, achievements and the lessons we’ve learned. It’s awesome that so many Poly employees from across various teams plan to show up to support and celebrate our work.

Onward and Upward

Something I learned from Gloria Loredo, Poly’s Chief Transformation Officer, is that life isn’t linear or predictable. It’s so true. Every day at Poly contained a new surprise and experience—it made summer fly by. No matter where our group of interns end up in our careers, we’re leaving with lasting bonds, wisdom from employees and newfound skills to help us face the future of work in the tech industry and beyond.

If your organization has been searching for a DECT^TM mobile handset that works with Microsoft Teams, the wait is finally over. Poly Rove is a wireless IP phone solution that delivers the freedom to connect to your Microsoft Teams environment thanks to the Teams SIP gateway. Poly and Microsoft’s collaboration on the SIP gateway integration opens the Poly Rove offering to small businesses and shift-based workspaces that rely on Teams with the additional benefit of end-to-end encryption to keep conversations safe and secure.

The Poly Rove family is comprised of two wireless DECT^TM handsets, Poly Rove 30 and Poly Rove 40 that are deployed with dedicated base stations, repeaters and charging stations to provide a rugged wireless phone solution capable of scaling to cover your organization’s entire physical footprint. Poly Rove handsets are simple to use with a large 2.4-inch color display, and dedicated keys for push-to-talk, volume, and mute. Using Poly Rove 40, you have the ability to go hands-free with your favorite wireless Poly headset via built-in Bluetooth^® or use a 3.5mm wired headset on either the Poly Rove 30 or Poly Rove 40.

Mobility? Rove Understood the Assignment

Poly Rove was designed with mobility in mind, meeting all the mobile CAP (common area phone) needs across verticals like healthcare, retail, manufacturing, warehousing, hospitality, etc. The scalability of the Poly Rove platform enables you to deploy up to 254 base stations with various combinations of handsets, repeaters and charging stations depending on how much area you need to cover. With integrated Microban® antimicrobial product protection and dust-tight, water-resistant technology, you can trust that Poly Rove can handle even the toughest physical environments.

Use Cases Now Open to Microsoft Teams Environments

Microsoft Teams provides a great platform for collaboration and Rove is the ideal solution to provide wireless flexibility in various work environments. Let’s look at some of the benefits that wireless handsets can enable, when using the Teams SIP gateway with Poly Rove:

Healthcare: Hospitals and clinics need to streamline communication so they can respond quickly to patient needs, which in turn improves patient satisfaction. The efficiency gained from deploying mobile wireless solutions helps to address the shortage of trained health workers and improve working conditions, which is key to retaining staff.

Retail: Managers and shop floor staff need to be mobile, visible, and able to spend more time in front of customers. With the mobility enabled by Poly Rove headsets, these teams can provide better customer service and respond much more quickly to in-store incidents, such as spillages and theft.

Manufacturing/Warehouses: Wireless handsets eliminate paging delays, improve operations, and enable faster responses to problems and emergencies, thus reducing downtime and production slippage.

How Does the Microsoft SIP Gateway Work?

The Microsoft Teams SIP Gateway was designed to let users connect their Teams account with a traditional phone line, enabling you to use your handset to dial into a meeting or make calls using Teams. The SIP gateway also allows users to route incoming calls from Teams to a traditional PBX system, providing next-gen calling capabilities within a legacy on-prem phone system.

Benefits of using Teams SIP Gateway with Poly Rove:

• Sign into Teams remotely via Teams Admin Center
• Make, receive calls with hold/resume
• Transfer calls, forward calls
• Local Conferencing
• Voicemail and message waiting indicator
  • Listen to electronically stored voice messages left by callers
  • Receive notifications for new voicemail messages
• Manually dial into audio conferences
• Static emergency calling and location support with dynamic Emergency 911

FOMO?

With Poly Rove running on Teams, you ensure your organization has the secure mobile phone solution they need to get their jobs done and stay connected to remote team members. The Teams SIP Gateway will be available for the Poly Rove Products by the end of July 2022, allowing you to optimize your legacy phone systems with a future-proof solution designed to scale as you grow.

Visit Poly.com to learn more about Poly Rove family solutions.

On Friday, June 3^rd, Poly Tijuana, traditionally known as Plamex, celebrated its 50^th anniversary with an epic celebration recognizing the thousands of amazing employees who have contributed to Poly’s success. Attended by several dignitaries from the Baja California and San Diego government and business community and many of Plamex’s former leaders from over the decades, it was a fiesta that will go down in the Poly history books.

Alejandro Bustamante, Grant Hoffman, Governor Marina del Pilar Avila Olmeda, Dave Shull, Rodolfo Reyes & Plamex Team

Proud Tradition of Excellence

Opening its doors in 1972, Poly Tijuana is one the longest continuously operating maquiladoras in Baja California with a proud tradition of excellence made possible by outstanding leadership and a dedicated team working tirelessly to build the gear that we’re proud to deliver to our customers.

The scale of the factory’s output and impact on the Baja California community is staggering. The numbers speak for themselves:

• Manufactured and shipped over 1 billion products
• Employed over 61,000 employees
• Married over 500 couples on-site
• Provided over 5000 scholarships to employee children and 3500 to employees to pursue degrees
• Awarded over 200 national and international awards for manufacturing excellence
• Voted Best Place to Work in Mexico 6 Times

It is because of the dedication and leadership of our Plamex team that Poly has a long-standing reputation as an exemplary business in the region. Receiving special recognition at the anniversary celebration was Alejandro Bustamante, Poly EVP and long-time leader of Plamex, whose contributions to the facilities’ growth and operations over the years have been essential to its success.

Under Alejandro’s leadership, Plamex has earned a reputation of excellence where resilience, commitment, and focus on community are built into the fabric of the organization.

Resilience

The pandemic accelerated what was already an existing trend toward digital collaboration which made Poly’s products and services more relevant than ever before. Mandatory stay-at-home orders across the globe created a surge in the number of people working from home or remote locations. And with that, demand for our enterprise headsets soared – products that are built at Plamex.

The need for world-class product manufacturing became more critical to our business success than ever and our Poly Tijuana team stepped up to the challenge in a big way. They were not only able to keep the factory open and keep customer orders shipping but managed to scale operations significantly all while keeping our people safe and healthy.

It was amazing to see how the Plamex team stepped up, and it’s only through the resilience of our people that we made it through one of the most challenging times we have ever faced as a society and a business.

Commitment

The employees and leadership at Poly Tijuana have created an environment where trust, respect, and opportunity thrive. This is why Plamex has earned the title of “Best Place to Work” in Mexico six times.

The continued commitment to excellence is apparent in everything Plamex does. Leaders concentrate on creative ways to improve the work environment by fostering a place where employees continue to grow, personally and professionally.

Community

The Plamex team fosters an awesome sense of community within the business, and for its local citizens. Environmental programs, like reforestation efforts; on-site healthcare for employees and family members, and perhaps the most beloved among our Poly family: weddings, where we have had over 500 couples tie the knot over the past 20 years.

There is also a lot that our Poly Tijuana team does outside the walls of this facility in the greater Baja California business community. One recent example was the cross-border vaccination program initiated with several other business and government entities to ensure that local employees had access at a time when border closures and the scarcity of vaccines in Mexico were making things very difficult.

The Future Looks Bright

We have 50 years’ worth of hard work to celebrate at Poly Tijuana and a future that looks incredibly bright as Alejandro passes the reigns to Rodolfo Reyes and Grant Hoffmann. In addition to our award-winning headset and voice products, we’re happy to announce that Plamex will begin to manufacture video products this year, beginning with the recently introduced Poly Studio R30.

We can’t wait to see what the next 50 years bring!

As workers return to the office, collaboration spaces are getting a makeover. Poly understands that designing the room environment and deciding the layout for video equipment can be challenging, especially with the new considerations for supporting hybrid teams. Even though our Poly G7500 and Poly Studio Family products were designed with ease of deployment and setup in mind, there are other important considerations when prepping your video collaboration spaces, such as how to deal with windows, where to place the furniture, and where microphone placement will work best in your space. 

The new Room Preparation Guide offers pre-installation strategies and recommendations for room planning to help you optimize your collaboration environment. These helpful tips can prevent oversights that can counteract a productive and enjoyable video conferencing experience. 

Maximizing the Room Environment 

The basic elements of your collaboration environment – walls, windows, HVAC, colors, lighting, acoustics – are important to creating a workable space. Fine-tuning the room environment before installing your video conferencing equipment is crucial to your collaboration experience. 

The guidelines in the Room Prep Guide help establish a good foundation for collaboration rooms by answering questions such as the following: 

• Do window treatments really matter? Yes. Use curtains or draperies (never blinds) that are heavy enough to dampen sound from inside and outside the room. 

• How bright should the lighting be? Bright light increases the range of in-focus objects, especially people’s faces. Make sure the light is diffused and never shining directly at the camera.

• Which floor materials are acceptable? Choosing the right flooring makes a big difference in the room’s acoustics. Stick with carpet if you can or pay special attention to sound dampening in other parts of the room (like walls and ceilings). 

• What color should I paint the walls? Neutral colors with hints of blue work best. Grays, silvers, and champagne work well for acoustic panels. Avoid saturated colors if possible (and stay away from green!) 

• How can I minimize background noise? Most of the options to minimize background noise are integrated as acoustic materials built into the walls and ceilings. If you can’t alter or update the construction of your room, consider enabling Poly Acoustic Fence or Poly Acoustic Fence with Beam Shaping Technology (depending on the equipment used). 

Configuring the Room Layout 

A good room layout is the key to an enjoyable and effective collaborative experience. This is more than hanging a display and setting up a conference table with chairs. The most effective room layouts provide the right audio and visual interaction between participants, whether it’s 2 or 20. 

What do you need to consider when setting up the layout of your collaboration rooms? The Room Prep Guide goes step-by-step with information like the following: 

• Can I use a Studio X30 system in a large conference room? Studio X30 systems are designed for huddle rooms that hold only a few people. For larger conference rooms, Poly recommends a Studio X70 system or a G7500 system with a connected Studio E70 camera. 

• Is it a good idea to mount a camera under a display? You can, but cameras are best positioned near the horizontal and vertical centers of your display. Placing cameras too high or too low can cause eye contact problems or skew images of the participants.

• How far can a meeting participant be from a Studio X Family built-in microphone? The microphones integrated in the Studio X Family products can typically pick up speech between 2.5 m (8 ft) and 3.5 m (11.5 ft). When integrated with a Poly Trio system, you can use the Trio microphones to extend the distance or allow for audio pickup in other areas of the room. 

• What does camera framing look like for a Poly Studio X50 system at full HD zoom? Luckily the Room Prep Guide provides detailed images that show what speaker framing looks like. Check out the guide for some examples! 

• How do Poly Acoustic Fence and Poly Acoustic Fence with Beam Shaping Technology work? Poly’s Acoustic Fence technology uses various microphones with G7500 systems to set up a virtual area where sound is picked up. Poly’s Acoustic Fence with Beam Shaping Technology is integrated into the Studio X Family systems and uses a defined beam to limit sounds outside of the beam area. These are great options to reduce background noise if you can’t update your build environment with acoustic materials. 

We Welcome Your Feedback 

We’re excited about our new Room Preparation Guide as a resource to support our customers in planning their return to office strategies. Access this document at Poly Support and use the guidance to build out your best collaborative environment for Poly G7500 and Poly Studio Family systems.  

We developed this guide to serve our customers, so let us know what we can improve or update it. Please join us in the Poly Community or send us feedback directly to documentation.feedback@poly.com.  

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. To achieve this goal during a global pandemic that required more virtual and hybrid-style briefings, we dreamed up the idea to use a central camera to highlight multiple vignettes in a single space that could be adjusted quickly as needed – and our new virtual studio was born! Unlike the heavily engineered green-screen studios that we have used over the past 10 years, this re-imagined location features a unique theater-in-the-round format.

By mounting our own Poly videoconferencing technology atop a mobile cart positioned centrally in the briefing center, we can now easily swivel the camera to focus on different use-case setups that encircle the room, such as a home office, classroom, doctor’s office or a typical enterprise deployment.

The reimagining of our virtual studio briefing format lets us accommodate and tailor briefings for our customers across industries and locations. During the pandemic, we received an unprecedented number of virtual briefing requests from customers located in different countries. This inspired us to expand our Virtual Studio model by replicating this setup in Poly Experience Centers throughout the world so we can help more customers in more regions, and in more languages. For customers who aren’t located close to a physical Experience Center, virtual studios provide an opportunity to get a custom briefing experience with Poly.

Below is a 3-minute video that demonstrates the Virtual Experience Studio space and functionality. The demonstration is hosted by Lillian Trinh, Virtual Experience Manager at Poly.

Simplicity Through Design and Décor

The success of the Virtual Experience Studio is due to the simplicity of its design. We chose not to incorporate extra digital media or control panels that we had used in the past. Instead, we stripped down the experience and focused on using our own technology as both the demonstration vehicle and the product to be showcased.

Then, we relied on the simplest of accessories and décor to help illustrate our stories. Each set-up encircling the virtual experience studio is highly customizable. We have graphics with magnetic tape and a slat wall with adjustable shelves. This lets us alter the décor and details to make the demo environment specific to the application most relevant for our guests. For example, the Healthcare setup (pictured below) can quickly be switched to an education setup by rolling away the medical cart and adding a jar of pencils. The process is amazingly simple and extremely impactful.

A virtual briefing is an excellent step toward finding the ideal solution for your organization’s needs and work styles. To schedule a personalized demonstration, contact your Poly Account Manager or Partner.

For more information, visit the Poly Experience Program page on our website.

Renée Niebylski is a leadership representative with the Association of Briefing Program Managers and the Director of Poly’s Global Experience Program. 

Today’s hybrid work environment has created its own issues and challenges but new innovations in artificial intelligence are providing solutions. If workers feel disconnected or left out of a conversation it can lead to consequences in lowered productivity and employee buy-in. Alternatively, poor audio and video quality can hurt the professional image of individuals and your entire brand. Static, unchanged views of the entire room in an hour-long virtual meeting can disorient even the most attentive meeting participants. Both remote employees on the far end and the in-room participants lose their focus and become less engaged and productive.

Poly has partnered with Microsoft on advancing A.I technology that delivers an equitable experience for in-person, remote, and hybrid employees. This A.I. addresses issues with having workers in-office, remote, and on-the-go such as giving everyone in the room equal face time and voice. The way workers connect is changing every day and the future of work lies in A.I. Poly and Microsoft are proud to work together to continue introducing intelligent hardware and software features that will help all participants feel engaged, connected, and empowered on every call.

Poly Solutions and Microsoft Teams Rooms

Poly has pushed the envelope with our ground-breaking capabilities such as speaker tracking and AcousticFence technologies. We have been at the forefront of solving hybrid working problems with A.I solutions. Poly continues to work with Microsoft Teams to deliver seamless meeting experiences, using our innovations in camera and audio technology alongside Microsoft Teams Rooms. This includes intelligent features like Group Framing and industry-first technology like Conversation Mode and Presenter Tracking which provide effortless video conferencing.

Today, Microsoft announced the next wave in Teams Rooms innovations with a new category of intelligent cameras. There are three unique technologies that power this new category of intelligent cameras:

• A.I.-powered active speaker tracking, enabling in-room cameras to use audio, facial movements, and gestures to detect who in the room is speaking, zooming in for a closer perspective. Poly has offered speaker tracking capabilities for many years and is proud to partner with Microsoft to bring it to Teams and Teams Rooms.
• Multiple video streams that allow in-room participants to be placed in their own video pane.
• People recognition, which will identify and display the profile name of enrolled users within their video pane.

When intelligent cameras are paired with Dynamic view in Teams, you can deliver more equitable meeting experiences where everyone feels seen and represented. As people join the meeting, Teams will automatically adjust various elements of the meeting, so remote participants can see the room and content with ease.

Advancing Meeting Equality

These Poly features paired with Microsoft Teams new capabilities advance meeting equity for everyone in the “room.” The combination of meeting A.I. innovation and professional-grade equipment sets every employee up for success.

Pairing Microsoft Teams with the right audio and video solutions—for both group and personal workspaces—ultimately determines how your employees experience and show up in virtual meetings. Professional-grade headsets, speakerphones, and external video cameras are the equalizers that elevate the virtual meeting experience for everyone in a Microsoft Teams meeting—no matter where they work.

Check out our professional-grade equipment, support, and services to create meeting equality, at Poly.com.

The past 15 months have been a constant state of preparation. We prepared to close our doors to customers, prepared for lockdown, prepared for a completely virtual program and now we are preparing to reopen our offices to support a new era of hybrid work.

Like many others in the briefing program industry, as Poly prepares to reopen our doors to in-person customer visits we are wrestling with important considerations: How do we create and implement successful hybrid staffing models for our briefing program? What program resources or staffing roles does our organization need to fill?

We tackled these questions at the recent virtual conference for the Association of Briefing Program Managers (ABPM). For this event, I co-led a session with my esteemed colleague Pamela Evans, an experienced briefing program leader. Together, we hosted a discussion that focused on resourcing and staffing briefing programs amid COVID 19.

What is a Hybrid Briefing Experience?

During the presentation, Pam and I posed questions to the group that we felt each program manager should ask themselves, such as: “What does ‘hybrid’ mean to you?” Since, when it comes to briefing formats, a hybrid can mean many different things. For example:

• all-virtual meetings
• all in-person meetings
• guests in-person with presenters joining virtually
• presenters in-person with guests joining virtually
• A mix of all the above!

If briefing managers focus their energy on finding the answer to what “hybrid” means to them and their company, it will be much easier to identify briefing program goals and successfully execute on strategy in a hybrid working world.

To me, hybrid can be all the above. However, what you can do successfully depends on the technology you have available for use. Poly has always had the capability to do a hybrid briefing experience program. We manage virtual experiences and in-person experiences, as well as experiences where some customers and/or presenters join virtually while others are on-site.

Hybrid Staffing

Now as vaccination rates begin to climb, I am seeing diverse actions across how my industry peers are organizing their briefing program resources and staffing. Many companies are not looking to open their doors to in-person engagements for quite a few months. They have successfully moved to virtual briefings and plan to stay virtual for the foreseeable future. Other companies, like Poly, are ready to open doors a bit sooner (in accordance with local health and safety regulations).

If your organization wants to do a hybrid briefing experience program, be prepared to staff up a team that can handle more complex scheduling and management logistics. In our case, Poly requires our experience managers to have a deep understanding of our products and how they are configured, so we can effectively run demonstrations for all meeting participants, no matter where they are located.

Cementing the Role of the Facilitator

If hybrid experiences are where your briefing program is headed, the role of the facilitator may need to evolve too. Traditionally, briefing facilitators are tasked with hosting the in-person guests and managing the flow of the day. In some briefing programs, including the one at Poly, briefing facilitators also conduct product demonstrations.

Organizations will need to decide if the facilitator should also be responsible for managing the participants on the video stream and the associated technical aspects of the meeting, such as setting up the dial-in logistics, keeping up with the chat, and helping remote participants with technical troubleshooting. It is a lot to take on.

When I asked the group at the virtual conference about the evolving role of the facilitator, some of my peer organizations worried that it would be difficult for a facilitator to manage all of the in-person and remote aspects of the meeting successfully.

My perspective is that it’s possible, given the right tools and training. At Poly, our facilitators manage it all. They’re able to do so because we see the onsite group as equals to the people who are joining on video. The key is for the facilitator to be trained on modern meeting tools and technology, which may include managing the chat to share questions and comments to engage all meeting participants and encourage conversations among everyone, regardless of their locations.

Briefing program directors should consider the extra workload that comes with a hybrid briefing approach, as sometimes it may require having two people staff a briefing, instead of one. One party to manage the technical logistics and a second to enable the conversation both in the room and online.

A New Role: Production Manager

Video conferencing is not new. Many companies, and quite a few briefing programs, already use the technology. However, systems are often set up in one direction, where guests face a camera that is mounted above or below a screen at the end of the room. However, if there is a presenter in the room, they’re often standing with their backs to the camera and monitors, which gives remote participants a sub-optimal view of the main speaker. There’s a better way to set up video in a briefing room so that participants, remote and in-person, have meeting equality. (As an example, check out the new Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery.)

For companies not already entrenched in video conferencing, the idea of integrating dedicated multi-directional video into a customer briefing can be daunting. But if your goal is to host customers on-site and still allow for virtual participants, it may be necessary.

The discussion at the conference then turned from whether to build or upgrade the room to figuring out how best to manage it. That’s where the idea of a Production Manager came into focus because while many of my peers have IT support, most do not have dedicated video support.

While video conferencing products have become very user-friendly, the small staff of Briefing Programs will likely still need a Production Manager to help with the video equipment, whether it’s in one room or many. Here are a few of the avenues through which my peers have found a Production Manager to support the video equipment portion of their briefing program:

• Corporate IT
• IT video operations division
• The executive support team
• Training an existing dedicated engineer to support video too

If you’re planning to implement multi-directional video into your briefing program, don’t forget to identify a Production Manager to help manage and support it.

Learning From Each Other

Overall, my experience co-leading a discussion for the ABPM community was a great learning experience for me. My view of how to operate in this hybrid world is based on the technology at my fingertips and the goals of my program. After all, by using the video equipment in this way, we are simultaneously presenting its value. However, my peers who run other programs have different business drivers, which brought about other key learnings and new technology needs over the past 15 months. It was refreshing and educational to learn more about the creative ways they have found success through the pandemic. I look forward to seeing how our programs evolve in the years ahead.

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For more information, visit the Poly Experience Program page on our website. To schedule your own personalized demonstration today, contact your Poly Account Manager or Partner.

Renée Niebylski is a leadership representative with the Association of Briefing Program Managers and the Director of Poly’s Global Experience Program.