“No choice but to do it right.”
Jacques Bertrand, Executive Vice President Asia of Crestron Electronics, says whether remote, hybrid or back-to-office, communication should be done right.
2 August 2022
Companies are embracing remote work, but in doing so they have to simply accept that intuitive and unified communications have to be seamless for each individual employee, no matter where they are in the world.
After all, in the debate about the Great Resignation and remote work, it is easy to forget that regardless of where you are in the world, communication is key to ramping up productivity.
In a recent interview, Jacques Bertrand, Executive Vice President Asia of integrated technology and electronics manufacturer, Crestron Electronics, told WorkRemoteBetter.com that going forward, companies are going to have to accept that not everyone will be in the same room at the same time anymore.
“There will always, somewhere, be meetings. And companies simply have to accept that for some meetings, people are not going to be there and yet everyone still needs to be able to be part of the discussion. And it has to be easy; otherwise why would they come into the office?” he said.
Work should be seamless-- companies have no choice but to enable this. “Employees who work remotely need to be able to contribute as much as before, or more. And it can only be achieved if your meeting rooms are equipped for making the remote people present in the room virtually and seamlessly. There is no choice.”
As a whole, the experience of virtual meetings should be as close as possible to the physical experience. Simply installing video conferencing tools in a device is not enough-- the person in the meeting room should have the same experience and view as the person behind the computer screen.
“It has to be the space that is in sync and it needs to all connect and come together,” he said, adding that in this instance, Crestron’s products offer this synchrony for companies. For example, the Crestron Flex Video Conferencing plus Intelligent Video technology, which is designed to give everyone, no matter where they work, the most inclusive, engaging and equitable experience; with this, remote participants simultaneously see the full room and everyone in the room clearly and distinctly.
Remote work, says Bertrand, was something that was in place before the pandemic, the pandemic merely accelerated it. It is precisely because it is now accelerated that such unified communications are more important than ever.
“Access to talent is another huge issue. Say I have a great talent in Jakarta but I am in Singapore, do I just ignore that possibility (to hire)? We all know how difficult it is to find talent,” he said. “It is impossible to do that without the technology-- it is access to talent, it’s the only way to do it.”
Ultimately, the workplace has changed and the only way to make it work is to ensure that every employer is equipped and enabled with all the tools they need to make that experience as seamless and integrated as possible.
