The rise of anywhere work means people can be at the office, working remotely, or moving freely between the two. It also means your teams can be located anywhere in the world, in any time zone.
And while this boosts employee satisfaction and expands your talent pool, human connection may be lost in the digital world. However, there are ways technology can enable the human experience from anywhere.
Let’s explore how to accomplish this with Microsoft Surface Hub 2S.
1. Make everyone feel connected on equal footing
To make online meetings more human-centric, ensure everyone’s voices are heard and faces are seen equally. Every face must be clear on the screen so participants don’t miss non-verbal cues such as facial expressions. In addition, eye contact is essential for a human experience over video.
Surface Hub 2S has an AI-powered solution for these human experience challenges: the Hub 2 Smart Camera. The camera features tilt compensation that enables more natural eye contact through the camera position. It also corrects any distortion that a wide-angle lens can create.
2. Provide flexibility
To make anywhere work meetings feel more natural, people in the room should feel they can move around. They shouldn’t have to worry about remote attendees missing any of the action if they want to get up out of their chairs. Automatic framing allows people in the room to move freely without worrying about if remote workers will miss any of the action.
And, remote participants can see everything going on with a dynamic view of the meeting room. And, on-site team members will see all remote workers on the Surface Hub 2S 4K display.
And while those joining a collaboration session remotely can move to a different room wherever they’re comfortable, Surface Hub 2S allows that for on-site participants too. The optional rolling stand and battery make it easy for teams to move Surface Hub 2S to any room and keep their ideas flowing without interrupting the live meeting.
3. Give everyone a platform to collaborate and co-create
Human-centric meetings foster inclusive collaboration sessions that spark creativity and ideation, no matter where everyone works. To deliver that human experience, all session attendees should have access to the same tools for real-time collaboration.
To further promote an inclusive meeting experience, remote participants should be seen on screen and are not hidden when content is shared.
People in the room can digitally ink directly on the Surface Hub 2S using a shared Microsoft Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams. The larger Surface Hub 2S 85” provides ample space for two people to whiteboard while social distancing.
Remote participants can have the same collaboration experience by using their PCs to annotate on the same whiteboard. Whatever teams do on a Surface Hub 2S is seamlessly available to everyone in the meeting.
4. Empower synchronous and asynchronous communication
Synchronous communication is a key to delivering a human experience with digital collaboration tools. Meeting platforms must offer persistent chat and file sharing. While the goal is for everyone to connect in real time, different time zones, time off, and meeting conflicts mean that’s not always possible.
Surface Hub 2S helps teams stay connected before, during, and after the meeting. This is where asynchronous communication comes into play. For example, when using the Microsoft Whiteboard app, all annotations are saved to OneDrive for later viewing or continued collaboration.
Additionally, persistent chat and file sharing allow team members to respond to messages and download or annotate Office 365 files when it’s convenient, no matter where or when they work. One-click recording also makes it easy for anyone who could not attend a meeting watch it on demand and post questions in the meeting chat.
5. Keep shared content secure
It’s human to worry and want to protect our teams and our data. Have you ever entered a meeting room and seen content from the previous session or someone’s email inbox on the screen? It’s too easy to forget to stop sharing your screen before you’re on to the next meeting. From a security and privacy perspective, Surface Hub’s End Session command permanently wipes all activities and data from the Hub’s working session.
This security feature doesn’t stop teams from reviewing meeting content, however. Following a Teams meeting on Surface Hub, attendees can securely access shared content and recordings long after the meeting ends.
6. Ensure a consistent, positive user experience
How can you continually foster a human experience in the anywhere workplace? Ensuring devices and tools are always available and tracking the user experience are big parts of that. You can take the burden of tracking users, devices, and rooms from your IT team by leveraging AVI-SPL support and managed services.
Our team can provide support for your Microsoft Teams Rooms and Surface Hubs, including 24/7 live help desk support to augment your MTR Microsoft Pro licensing support.
AVI-SPL is a Microsoft Managed Partner and Gold Partner. Our team can quickly align with your collaboration strategy and business goals. We globally deliver and support Microsoft Teams, Teams Rooms, MTR managed services, and Surface devices.
AVI-SPL and Microsoft can help you bring your teams together and foster a human-centric workplace. Contact us today to get started with Microsoft Surface Hub 2S.
