Video conferencing offers huge advantages for various industries. Businesses can reduce their travel expenses by over 50%. HR teams can speed up their hiring processes. Even doctors can consult and treat kids in distant or hard-to-reach areas. But what about remote workers? How does video conferencing benefit you? Here are five top advantages that cloud-based video technology provides for remote teams.
1. You Feel More Connected to the Company and the Work You Do
TechRadar states that the in-person feel of video conferencing is key to improving engagement among remote workers and their teams. Cisco backs this up by referencing Gigaom, which found that around 87 percent of remote employees feel a stronger bond with their teams and the company when video conferencing is part of their interactions. Ultimately, seeing people face-to-face makes you feel more connected than just chatting, emailing, or calling them.
2. You Feel like You’re Sitting Right next to Them
The visual interaction is a huge part of what makes video conferencing a successful tool for remote teams. According to The Houston Chronicle, 65 to 75 percent of what we say is communicated to other people in nonverbal ways. That’s a lot of message being put out there, and a lot of it is lost when we use non-visual ways to reach out to each other. For simple video conferencing BlueJeans is an obvious choice for remote teams, given the brand’s HD technology. With HD clarity, onsite and offsite workers are all given the chance to see, talk and swap stories with each other in a way that makes the interaction feel like a normal, in-person conversation. This encourages bonding and helps give remote workers a sense of belonging, all crucial to building an effective workforce, one with a strong sense of camaraderie, and of taking one for the team.
3. You Can Work from Anywhere
As video conferencing makes remote solutions possible, you can reap the benefits of a less than traditional work arrangement. Need to relocate to another country for a few months? By becoming remote, you can stay connected to your team without compromising your own schedule. The Harvard Business Review revealed the results of a nine-month experiment at work involving work-from-home solutions reaped surprising results, and found that everyone was in favor of the advantage of flexible work arrangements. In one case, JetBlue was able to find and hire the talent they were looking for simply by offering mothers, who possessed the high-level skills and training they needed, with flexible work solutions. That says a lot about the rise of mobile solutions as a bargaining tool for companies and remote workers alike. With video conferencing, remote employees are able to come to work on their own terms.
4. You’re Always Updated and Caught Up
With video conferencing, remote employees are able to join company-wide meetings and townhall announcements. Since the technology makes it easy to loop in offsite and onsite employees in one big video conference, keeping everyone updated is simple and easy. You’re caught up and involved. By knowing you and everyone else on the company is on the same page, you’re able to feel closer to the people you work with. With remote technology for business conference, being offsite doesn’t have to be a barrier to building a stronger and closer relationship with your team.
5. You Can Collaborate on Projects in Better Ways
In the past, while using online tools could help offsite and onsite teams sort through problems together, the lag time and delay inherent in the process made it difficult to sustain it for the long-term. After all, while email and chat are fast, it still takes more time to type out a word than to say it. With video conferencing, remote workers have the perfect collaboration tool. They can share and send files, and then review those files together. That feature especially comes in handy when you and your team need to work under a tight deadline. Video conferencing also eliminates delays in production. As soon as you click on the invite, the meeting is underway. With email and chat, you can log in, step out and come back later none the wiser. With video, on the other hand, you’ve got no such leeway so everyone can focus on the project at hand. Video also makes decisions happen faster. Instead of emails going back and forth, you and your team are able to talk through critical campaign points and revisions and come up with solutions more quickly.
These are just five ways video conferencing helps remote workers make it. Add more to the list by exploring more of the handy side benefits this work solution offers you and your team.