How Cloud Video Conferencing helps you Manage a Distributed Workforce
Geography of business is changing. Today’s networked economy means that everything is anywhere, and everywhere.
Distributed and dispersed workforces are becoming the norm for businesses today, and organisations must adapt by embracing the technologies that can successfully connect together dispersed teams, allowing employees to better balance their lives, work from anywhere they choose, and still effectively communicate and collaborate in a professional manner.
So how can Cloud Video Conferencing help you manage a distributed workforce?
As your company grows, you need to be able to connect with your team, improve productivity, and make decisions, without relying upon travel. Planes, trains & cars will never be as fast or as convenient as electronic communication, and to maintain relationships and provide a personal connection with your colleagues and customers, you must be regularly communicating, face-to-face. It’s fact that gestures, body language and facial expressions make up 65% of all face-to-face discussion, so how can you be effectively communicating with your dispersed teams without them?
The Video Interview
You can use Video Conferencing to interview candidates. Face-to-face, you can see reactions and responses to questions in much more detail, and with a much wider reach of candidates through dispersed working, you can 
also pull in talent from outside of the reach of your HQ. Easily bring in other members of your team for the interview, and schedule meetings with decision makers and managers where everyone can meet together in a virtual room, from wherever suits them.
Just simply send an invite from your Cloud account and your interviewee can call you directly from their browser, just with one click. And with in-build firewall traversal into your Cloud solution, no-one will have problems connecting.
Weekly Project Updates & Monthly Status Meetings
For ongoing projects, regular updates are vital to keep a project on track. Make the most of your update meetings by picking up on nonverbal cues and ensure you team and employees really understand what you are saying by recognising subtle head movements and eye contact that wouldn’t be possible over the phone.
Video Conferencing gives everyone on your team a seat, and face, at the meeting. Maybe everyone won’t fit into your boardroom, or you need to join people from multiple offices and remote locations… simply just meet over video in a Virtual Meeting Room. You can spin up as many Virtual Meeting Rooms as you like – one for each team or project – and share your dial in details with whoever you choose. PIN protection, or open spaces for everyone to collaborate – that’s up to each individual employee depending upon who with, what about and when they wish to collaborate.
Quarterly Updates and Corporate Announcements
With a distributed workforce, it’s often a challenge to keep everyone on the same page, especially when it comes to business strategy, roadmaps and corporate updates. Whether distributed across the UK or around the globe, everyone can be together in one big virtual room, the presentation can be shared in real-time for everyone to view, and the meeting can be broadcast to all employees and even recorded and shared for revisiting at a later date.
With Cloud Amplify as part of your Cloud solution, you get access to a corporate “YouTube”, and your room systems and desktop applications can simply select record – the meeting is instantly stored to your own secure personal space for later viewing, sharing, editing and streaming further afield. But not to worry, as an IT administrator, manager or executive, you can make this available, or not, and tailor the settings to ensure it works for you.
Hello!
Video Conferencing isn’t just for formal meetings. Actually, the most effective use of Video Conferencing is for informal catch ups, quick questions or quick daily updates with the rest of your team – especially if you are a home worker or working on a project with colleagues based elsewhere. Email is flat. An audio call misses vital information. Video is faster and more efficient, and helps you build relationships too. (See “Phone Call vs Video Call: It’s your Call” for a deeper dive into this!)
With simple user-friendly apps for mobile, laptop & desktop, and an interface replicated across all devices, including your meeting room systems, it’s easier than making a phone call, and much more effective too.
These are just a few of the ways in which Cloud Video Conferencing can help you to connect your distributed teams, and create a more connected experience across your workforce. Find out more by contacting our team today, or get a free trial of the Lifesize Cloud via the link below!
