The world is changing. Money is tight, companies are finding it hard to turn a profit and people are loosing their jobs all over the place.
So for those companies (and this also applies to those who work for themselves), cutbacks have to be made and in light of recent huge rises in fuel prices (although things are getting better on that front), one area where big savings can be made is on travel.
Indeed the company I work for is taking this very approach and for me this works out just fine. Whilst I am sure there are colleagues who enjoy flying and staying in 3 star hotels, I have been there and done that and you know what? It doesn’t do it for me like it used to. I suppose it helps that I am a home based worker so a cut back on travel sees me spending more time at home with my family. So one side effect of all of these cut backs is that my work/life balance is better.
On top of all of this, less travel means less emissions and is better for the environment. Bonus!
So whilst we are all trying to travel less we still have a job to do and we still need to interact with people in different locations so we are seeing a big push on the technology front for a number of tools including online collaboration platforms and video conferencing. Indeed the latter is seen as the technology that will save the day but to be fair, I am not convinced.
Now don’t get me wrong. I think video conferencing is great. Within my organisation, we have some serious video conferencing kit with full video immersion kit in some locations, traditional HD video conferencing suites in other locations and even video to the desktop for some users. I also use video at home to speak to friends around the globe via tools such as Messenger etc and as a technology, it works very well indeed.
But the question I have is are we just over complicating the solution to the problem? Having watched people using all of these technologies I have to wonder if we are just using technology for technologies sake whilst the sales people are happy to keep on selling us more. Let me explain.
In many circumstances, with a one to one video conference, each person sits in a room, sees the other person on the screen and holds the conversation. That’s it. They don’t share any visual material such as slides or documents. They just talk.
Now if they were doing this from their desktop then why not but for a lot of people, they have actually gone through the process of booking a video conferencing suite, set out time in their diary and walked (or even worse driven) to the location of the video conference room to have this conversation. In these circumstances one has to ask the question, “what have we achieved that we would not have achieved if we had just picked up the telephone and talked”? What benefit does the video add to the conversation?
Now it is true that a large percentage of communication happens at a non verbal level. When you are talking to somebody, your brain interprets what is being said not only by what the ears hear but also by facial expressions, body language and so on. But recent research has shown that in the case of video conferencing, this is simple not the case. Sure you can see the person you are talking to but because of the low definition video, low frame rate and lag between the video and the audio, the brain does not place as much importance on the non verbal communications from the other party. The exception to this is where you use immersive video conferencing suites (where you have huge screens set out in three dimensions in a special room) but of course most of us don’t have tens of thousands of pounds to spend on this kind of kit right now and even then the research shows that a large percentage of the non verbal communication is lost.
But what about team working?
Again we have audio conferencing where many people are able to “dial in” and participate in a call. There are many flavours of this but again, video brings little else to the table in terms of enhanced productivity. Indeed in the case of team working within a project, audio conferencing brings the advantage that people are able to dial in from anywhere which means increased attendance.
But then there is collaboration. The sharing of PowerPoint slides, charts, documents and so on. Surely this is a visual thing and as such VC has to be the way to go?
No.
Here you need to see the presentation material but you don’t need to see the person presenting it. Again technologies exist that allow for online collaboration in real time where you can share slides and documents and even work together on the same document in real time. Indeed programs such as PowerPoint now have this sort of capability built in right out of the box so no additional investment is needed. but do you really need to see the face of the person you are working with? Probably not.
So one has to ask: “Is video conferencing just a load of hype and a big waste of money?”
Well for those companies who are buying this kit because they think it will substitute the travel they have cut back on, probably. In these cases what they should be investing in is advanced voice communication tools integrated with collaboration capabilities. These could range from Microsoft Messenger at one end of the scale that comes for free with Windows and gives full collaboration, desktop and application sharing, voice over IP and even video (if you really want) through to some of the high end collaboration platforms with high end document management etc. Indeed speaking of Microsoft, some of the upcoming stuff in the new Office Communication Server R2 in a few weeks really brings some fantastic productivity gains with great document collaboration and management tools, advanced voice capability and voice messaging (that’s voicemail to you and me), integration with email and again, even video. They have even included some really nice LOW COST hardware options including Polycom conferencing phones and the RoundTable kit (that’s CHEAP meeting room video conferencing to you and me).
This sort of investment in any organisation will bring huge productivity gains and make a real contribution to the travel budget. If it then does video “as well” then fine. Sure some people will use it because it is there but for the most it doesn’t add value so why bother.
So please invest your money in communications (and I am not just saying that because i work for a communications company) but think hard about what it is your people actually need to communicate. Would it not be better to put that investment into something that brings real productivity gains rather than a white elephant that’s looks fancy but really adds no value what so ever?
And if it helps to focus the mind, do you really want to SEE the person (working from home) on the other end of the line?
