Hybrid Work - The Future Is Already Here

Last week Setup hosted a breakfast for some of our VIPs - brand-side marketers who have worked with us on multiple occasions to hire marketing agencies. 

During the breakfast, we discussed the new reality born out of the COVID pandemic: most white-collar workers are now, and will be in the future, finding themselves in a hybrid work environment. 

Many employers are not (and will not) demand workers to be in-person in the office five days a week. That means that there are days when employees work from a home office, coffee shop, co-working space, or some other remote location. Connecting with coworkers through video and audio will only continue to grow.

One of the members of our group happens to be the head of product and business management for Jabra, which is a 150-year-old company (originally Great Northern Telegraph Company) that has been on the cutting edge of building technology that supports human connection and communication. He provided us with some products to check out.

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Jabra and other electronics manufacturers have been very thoughtful to solve some of the challenges that make hybrid work difficult. Highlighted below are two of the major issues that arise from a hybrid work environment and cause misconceptions and false opinions: poor framing and low fidelity. 

Challenge #1 - Poor Video Framing

Our breakfast conversation turned to some aspects many of us had not considered. For example, when some members of a team are in-person and some are off-site, typically teams use Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or something similar to connect. Most conference room cameras are set up so that the people sitting near the camera are quite large on-screen and people sitting far from the camera are smaller. 

Psychologically those who are remote tend to assign higher prominence to those who appear bigger causing an inequity for those who appear smaller. Jabra solves this with a few of its higher-end systems by leveraging multiple lenses, the camera uses AI to readjust the focus to distribute the in-person attendees equally within the frame of view. One of the even higher-end cameras puts each in-person attendee in a “box” (actually called Dynamic Composition) so that they have equal footing with online participants - democratizing the participation for all.

Challenge #2 - Low Audio/Video Fidelity

Another aspect of great online meetings is fidelity - both auditory and visual. When we host an online meeting with poor quality video or sound, it does not just make for a rough time hearing or seeing the participant, it actually leaves other attendees assigning less credibility to the person. Bad fish-eye cameras or ones that are grainy cause the other participants to discount the opinions of the person as if lesser quality equipment equates to less quality ideas. Also, poor audio quality makes it difficult for others to hear what someone is saying. Again, Jabra has a solution for this. Several of their headsets are designed to drown out background noise like coffee shops with microphones that isolate the participant’s voice.

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Several of Jabra’s products have dual purposes - for example, many of the earbuds are fantastic for conference calls, but they also work great for listening to music while exercising or blocking out noisy seat-mates on a long flight. 

This video from Jabra does a good job of showing some of the different scenarios which play off their line: We engineer technology that makes life look and sound better:

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This post is not an advertisement for Jabra - we are just big fans. And, if your company is looking to stay remote, it may be a worthy investment to make the hybrid experience as fair and seamless as possible for your team. 

You can learn much more about hybrid work in this extensive report that Jabra published in 2021.