Does Your Commercial Audio Video Installation Benefit Onsite and Remote Staff?

The conference room is the heart of your business. It’s where your team brainstorms new ideas, makes important decisions, and celebrates big wins.

While the traditional conference room is designed to support in-person collaboration, today’s workforce is shifting to a hybrid model as more staff work from home. If you have a dispersed team, you’ll need to redesign your conference room to support collaboration between onsite and offsite workers.

Below are a few tips to consider as you reassess your commercial audio-video installation and conference room design to meet the new demands of your distributed team in Tampa, FL and beyond.

SEE ALSO: The Upgrade Your Conference Room Audio Video Needs

Inclusive Seating

The traditional conference room typically features one long center table so that staff can face each other and conduct meaningful conversations. However, this setup excludes remote staff and can make them feel disconnected. Instead, consider a half-circle or horseshoe table that faces the room’s camera and monitor to encourage dialogue between all staff to help remote workers feel more included.

Ceiling Microphones

Your laptop mic might do a decent job of picking up your voice alone, but what if you need to hold a larger meeting? Without a powerful microphone, your remote participants will have a hard time hearing everyone in the room. Instead, consider a wide-coverage ceiling microphone that reduces ambient noise pick-up and optimizes speech intelligibility to ensure no one misses the conversation.

HD Wide-Angle Camera

To help your remote staff feel connected to those onsite, consider a high-definition web camera that features a wide-angle field of view to capture the entire conference room. Video conference cameras like those from ClearOne include features like auto-focus, digital zoom, panning, and tilting so you can adjust the camera to capture what your remote staff needs to focus on at the time of the meeting.

Interactive Whiteboard

It’s time to toss the paper and whiteboard as your main collaboration tools. For a hybrid team, you’ll benefit from an interactive digital whiteboard that provides familiar pen-to-paper collaborative writing but also allows you to save and share notes with your offsite team. An interactive whiteboard also empowers all participants to contribute in real-time from their own connected devices.

Multiple Monitors or a Video Wall

We’ve discussed tips for optimizing your meeting room for remote video conferencing, but how well can in-person participants connect with your remote team if their faces are tiny, hard-to-see squares on a small monitor? Depending on how many remote staff members you have, you might consider a larger monitor, multiple monitors, or a video wall to better see the faces and expressions of offsite staff.

Need assistance improving your conference room design and A/V installation for a more engaging hybrid workplace? The commercial technology experts at AV Specialists are here to help. Get in touch here or message us in the chat box below to schedule a free consultation!