AVT Question: Please share your insight into trends that will play a role in hybrid workplace culture, space planning, and technologies in 2024.
Thought Leader: Joe da Silva, Vice President of Marketing at Extron
Organizations are continually rethinking how to leverage their physical space and technology to best empower their workforce. As hybrid models are adopted, maintaining excellent collaboration remains paramount regardless of where participants are located. Hybrid employees need access to familiar, job-specific tools irrespective of their physical location. They need to be seen and heard without technology getting in the way.
There is a crucial human connection that must be maintained across distances and among a broad spectrum of technologies. Extron recognizes the importance of this connection and works with companies to ensure technologies are in place to facilitate collaboration in every space.
Traditional spaces were typically designed around how many seats can fit within them. In these rooms, essential AV infrastructure included the basics: audio and video sources, projectors, displays, and control interfaces, just to name a few. For the most part, these rooms were designed to host any type of meeting for any group. Today’s hybrid offices have fewer day-to-day employees in the office, so we have the freedom to rethink these traditional spaces to targeted, feature-rich meeting spaces based on, among other things, job function.
These new rooms must be built for collaboration, not only within the room but across distances. These spaces can be smaller and fitted with AV technology focused on specific needs. Here, the human connection comes into play, as individual needs are met with meeting experiences tailored to specific job duties, with tools available in each room that connect people to their work, presentations, and peers on a whole new level.
There are many decision points when designing AV for these new hybrid-era workspaces, and success relies upon effective coordination at all levels. All of this requires tools and techniques that allow spaces to be designed so they are easy to find, use, and manage remotely—all while keeping technology out of the way.