We’ve all heard of the benefits that installing a video conferencing and calling solution in your office can confer to your operation. Although it started out as a fad and a commercial failure according to MethodShop, it picked up in recent history. From helping you connect with clients and customers without the resource hog that long-distance travel can be, to initiating a more substantial form of communication between executives and low-level employees alike, the simple addition of a whole new sense into vocal communication can change the way you and your company function.
Productivity goes upward as people feel more engaged in the work they do and, more importantly, the people they do the work with. Costs go down as speaking and communicating online becomes the simpler alternative to most face-to-face visits, save for the few unavoidable meetings that are best held in person every time. Finally, the actual wellbeing of your company’s morale increases as video calling allows for a more cohesive form of interaction as companies expand and several locations are needed to support your business network.
However, there’s one more aspect to calling that many businesses don’t consider. In this case, it’s all about thinking big. Web conferencing can be a simple tool, that is, a small cog in a larger network of tech options that feed into one concept: social collaboration.
Through adopting the concept of a social platform, you can achieve something many businesses fail to do: address an employee’s dissatisfaction with their inability to truly contribute and be a meaningful part of the business on every level. However, without a more concrete game plan, that really just sounds like a whole bunch of jumbled words. That’s not what we’re going for, so let’s dig a little deeper and reiterate what it means to transform your business and office space both physically and digitally to promote a place for social collaboration.
Explaining How “Social” Helps Your Business
Here’s the gist of the matter. When working on a project – whether it’s a publishing deal, a marketing scheme, a new website, a new app, an event plan, or something else –the best way to get the job done is to make sure it’s not being done alone. That’s where the social bit in social collaboration comes into play, because it’s literally all about working together.
The thing is, given what technology is available in this day and age, most businesses aren’t working together as well as they could. They’re stuck using old habits and concepts that don’t quite apply today as much as they used to ten years ago. Today, technology allows us to work in coordination with today’s technology to bring the most out of people – out of your people – and make sure that they have every opportunity to contribute to the workforce of their company through tech.
Bringing Video into the Mix
That’s what social collaboration is about, at least in terms of definition. It’s important, then, to have a framework in mind as an example of how exactly that might work. Take into consideration, then, video conferencing. A video conferencing app for IT built for an office specifically through a premium service like Blue Jeans would give a business an exclusive method of communication that allowed for a plethora of options in the project management sense. You could share screens and send files, discuss concepts, launch into immediate and impromptu face-to-face meetings and go into the next key steps for the project. You could do all this for all sorts of purposes, whether you’re deciding on a company to collaborate with for an event, or choosing a specific widget or design element during the web design process.
You can take it a step further and utilize premium web calling technology to live stream physical meetings between the key members of a project team and the client, while having the rest of the team attending digitally through video. Instead of relying on text, chat, and email to create a line of accountability and communication, video chat focuses on truly bringing employees and clients alike into the project’s core. It creates a greater sense of urgency and calls for more attention. There is no taking the backseat in video communication. Instead, people pull together to get things done. It’s not an easy transition. As FastCompany points out, people are often change-averse. We fall into patterns when we work, because it’s easier than innovation. However, innovation is how companies come out on top.
Other Collaborative Options
Dashboards are a common example of a great way to collaborate in a company, and it can be customized as per your business needs. There are tools you can utilize to install a digital dashboard for the entire company, so every employee has an overview of how the company is doing and how other projects are coming along, with a space specifically for water cooler conversations and personal notes.
Alternatively, every project can come with its own dashboard – a space where everyone can contribute concept ideas and expand on them, and invite others to become creatively invested in their work. Often, utilizing technology effectively is about getting people to show passion for their work. If you can do that, you can bring your company to new heights.
