It’s your lucky day. The nearest conference room is free for an impromptu call with some members of your team as well as some out-state-partners. You sit down with your laptop, open your notes, and ask someone to start the video.
“This room doesn’t have the zoom camera.”
“Oh, fine. We’ll just stream the whiteboard.”
Everyone is looking at you, and just like that you’ve gone from lucky to lost. This room does not have an interactive display. Does this scene seem familiar? At many companies, conference rooms are often booked, even if they sit empty.
And the technology varies from room to room, so sometimes you’re not even sure which room you need until you’re in the middle of the meeting. For example, a remote client may want to suddenly share content with you, but the display in the room is too small for everyone in the room to see clearly.
Ill-equipped rooms delay meetings. The cause can be time wasted searching for a room that meets your needs—and the best ones are usually taken. A survey cited in the Wall Street Journal found that 73 percent of meetings involve only two to four people, but over half of conference rooms are designed for groups of seven or more.
So workers reserve larger rooms to get the technology they want, regardless of room size, while other employees waste time trying to make their meetings work with inadequate AV functionality.
Delays can be frustrating and even embarrassing, but they create even bigger problems. Meetings that start late waste time and resources. To outfit rooms with the capabilities your company needs, you should first conduct a needs assessment.
Ask employees in all departments and at all levels what technologies they need to collaborate the way they want to. Also, implement an asset monitoring system that integrates with your scheduling software, so the IT staff can track room usage and use the data for room improvements.