As employers strive to build hybrid work experiences, what many of them say they’re looking for is technology to “minimize the cognitive load” on employees who are forced to adapt to multiple work environments, said Lorrissa Horton, senior vice president and general manager of Webex calling and strategy.
“People don’t want to have to relearn how they work in the office when they’re only coming in one to three days a week,” she said. “I get used to my setup at home, and I come in and it’s like ‘Ugh, I don’t know how to work this room.’”
Although many technology companies operate in the collaboration space, Cisco has few rivals in terms of the comprehensiveness of its solution portfolio, which includes physical hardware, software and, increasingly, smart building technologies. At Cisco Live, the company touted those solutions:
- Hardware: Cisco’s portfolio of collaboration devices includes AI-powered cameras, conference room kits, desktop devices that enable videoconferences, headsets, digital whiteboards and more. The company offers every piece of hardware that a business might need to outfit a conference room, set up an office with hot desks or equip employees’ home offices.
- Software: Cisco’s Webex collaboration platform is one of the best-known brands in the space. The company has been upgrading the built-in features to better support a hybrid workforce. For example, to improve remote workers’ experience of hybrid meetings, the new Webex People Focus feature will zoom in on individual faces of in-office participants to create a video “box” for each person, making such meetings appear just like all-remote videoconferences with which workers are already familiar.
- Smart Buildings: With its own and partners’ technologies, Cisco is moving into equipping offices with smart technologies that allow administrators to do everything remotely, from controlling room temperatures to adjusting lighting and more. Location analytics will offer insights into how people move around physical spaces.
“The way a lot of us have done hybrid work is to spend all day hunched over our laptops, and that’s no way to spend eight hours,” Patel said. “Just like the Kindle is a purpose-built device for reading a book, we have purpose-built devices for making sure you can engage with your work experience from home.”
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