How To Ensure Effective Communication in a Hybrid Workplace

Hybrid work has been in increasing demand by both employers and employees. Remote work was all but required during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many enterprises didn’t have any choice but to invest in infrastructure that could make this type of collaboration possible. However, even when in-office work returned, the idea stuck — and employees continued to want a hybrid environment. 

Many businesses discovered that a mixture of both in-office and remote work was the best solution for employee well-being and productivity. That brings us to today’s hybrid workplace-focused culture. 

To make a hybrid work environment, well, work, you need to know what a successful implementation of unified communication looks like. We’ll first define what hybrid work is before discussing some of its advantages and what you should expect from a decent hybrid workplace strategy. 

Hybrid work refers to a combination of in-office, at-home and remote work. 

A hybrid work model has become increasingly popular with employees in large part because it gives them the freedom to work wherever they feel the most productive. 

There are many other benefits to a hybrid environment. Employees often appreciate the extra control over work hours and locations, which reduces the risk of burnout. They’re empowered to use their time in ways they feel are most efficient for them, leading to greater productivity. Team members with families enjoy being closer to them for an improved work-life balance. Effective implementation of hybrid work can even enhance employee engagement and collaboration. 

Hybrid communication can be either synchronous or asynchronous. Depending on the need, one or the other might be the best option. 

Synchronous communication occurs when all parties are speaking to each other in real time. For example, a live video call falls under synchronous communication because there’s no delay between when something is said and when it’s heard. 

Asynchronous communication is when team members create a message that’s designed to be seen, listened to, or read later. This could refer to an on-demand video, email, or forum post. If you’ve ever watched a corporate video for training, you’ve experienced this type of communication. 

A hybrid workforce must be equipped with the tools necessary to engage team members with each other. This commonly means having platforms for email, chat, audio or video conferencing, video live streaming and video on demand. If you can put all these together, your employees will be more motivated and productive, passing on the benefits to your bottom line.  

Each of these types of collaboration is especially advantageous in different situations. 

Emails are useful for communicating information that doesn’t necessarily need to be read or answered right away. 

Chat messages are usually briefer than emails, but are better for simpler topics that require rapid back-and-forth communication. They’re often more conversational in tone. 

Audio and video conferencing are ideal for meetings because they’re live and capable of enabling communication between many people at once. 

Livestreaming to large audiences across the globe in real-time is vital for enterprises to bring in the value of translation and transcription. This type of video is ideal for town halls, all-hands meetings and other types of virtual events. 

Finally, on-demand videos can be used when the employee (or another party) wants to watch something on their own schedule. 

All of these capacities associated with hybrid work are necessary for effective communication. Adding video to workflows for your hybrid employees enhances processes, creates self-service opportunities, and lets you communicate to large audiences. 

No remote worker in any enterprise could rely on text or audio communication alone. A solid enterprise video platform is at the heart of effective correspondence. This is especially true if you want to take advantage of asynchronous communication in an enterprise environment. 

The first thing your video platform needs to have is consistent quality when hosting a video or performing a live broadcast. That means little to no buffering, hiccups, or errors. Issues like these can cause any number of problems, from wavering attention spans to viewers missing key sections to dropped streams. 

In the enterprise, high-quality video is infinitely important to reach your employees, customers and partners. Frequent errors and pauses look unprofessional at best — and cause your viewers to lose interest in what you’re offering at worst. 

Your video platform needs to be comprehensive, reliable, and secure. There can’t be any gaps in its capabilities for video hosting, or you may find yourself relying on a multitude of third-party products — which will certainly be less efficient (and more confusing) than having an all-in-one solution.  

An enterprise video platform  should be capable of hosting on-demand video as well as producing live events. It needs to offer a robust feature set with an easy-to-use interface. Finally, it requires top-of-the-line security to ensure your collection of video data is protected, with only authorized users being able to see what they need to. 

You might want a complete solution, but what if you already have something that works, and you just want to implement the platform with it? You need to be able to tie together your video platform with other products and services. You should never be required to work around the video platform to get things done. Any worthwhile solution should have the capacity to seamlessly integrate with what your enterprise is currently using, whether it’s pre-built or can take advantage of an open API. 

Whether you use Webex, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or something else for your meetings, it’s vital that you can take what happens on those services and manage it in your enterprise video platform. The same goes for your content management system (CMS).  

There are network implications of hybrid work that highlight the value of eCDN solutions that can handle fluctuating video traffic on the company network. Hybrid work policies are usually determined at the department level. This can lead to visibility issues for IT teams who might not always know when people are in the office. An effective hybrid work platform ensures maximum transparency. 

Enterprises can’t afford to settle. You need a video content management solution that can scale almost infinitely, regardless of the sort of video content you’re producing and/or hosting. This ensures hybrid workers can easily find the video content they need. 

Here are a few examples of what you could do with video for your hybrid enterprise: 

Corporate Videos 

Whether it’s a training video, a message from HR, or something else entirely, a corporate video is anything produced by the enterprise that employees need to see. 

Webinars 

Webinars can be either synchronous or asynchronous; either live or on demand. This also allows for multiple remote presenters at one time. Your video platform should be capable of both. 

B2B 

When you’re pitching your services to other businesses, you want them to be engaged — and video content can be more engaging than many other types of content. 

For Effective Enterprise Hybrid Working, You Need the Right Video Platform 

Vbrick’s enterprise video platform is a solution created to address the concerns of the hybrid enterprise workforce. Other products designed for smaller businesses are generally not sufficient for large businesses because they weren’t created with the enterprise in mind. Vbrick — from the ground up — is. 

Schedule a demo today and discover what Vbrick can do for your enterprise’s hybrid workplace.