The Long Term Impact of COVID-19 on Telecommunications
Traditional work forces have been flipped over. Instead of the majority of employees getting into cars, trains, and other forms of transportation to commute, technology, specifically telecommunications, has been the caravan for connecting teams together worldwide.
Despite the painful parts of these modern communication tools, such as bad internet connections, background noise, and difficulties for non-tech savvy teammates, the way the world works and communicates has probably just changed for good. This article will talk about how some of these integrations may stick around for years to come.
1. Working from home
In Professor Nicolas Bloom’s Standford research study, Bloom found that “Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9% was from working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days) and 4% from more calls per minute”. This was attributed to a quieter and more convenient working environment.
The study was for Ctrip, a 16,000 employee NASDAQ-listed company in China. Volunteers at the employee’s call center were either randomly assigned work from home or work from the office for 9 months. Bloom said the company offered the team the option to continue to work from home, and nearly 50% of the participants from the study elected to do so.
This shift will probably happen to most other companies and businesses post pandemic, even though I personally believe the percentage will be closer to 20%.
2. Group Meetings Though Zoom, Skype, and other Services
Video conferencing services have been around long before the pandemic (Skype was founded in 2003). Even though these services were used prior to the pandemic, the use of these platforms in a post COVID-19 world will look a bit different. Teams who would previously only meet in-person may decide that some meetings can be done virtually, saving time, travel, and money compared to some other in person meetings. This is not to say that all meetings will continue to go virtual, but when the right tool fits, people tend to use it.
Some could argue that these video calls were heavily used before, but there has never been a time in history before COVID-19 where meeting in person was not an option and virtual meetings were essentially mandatory. Now that companies have experienced the good and the bad of this tool, I believe more widespread use of such platforms will happen.
3. Virtual Events and Conferences
A traditional conference has booths, presenters, breakout rooms, and stages to showcase the different aspects of that event. Virtual events and conferences replicate those same elements, and allow your audience to experience those elements on a digital platform. Though the experience is very different, there are a few key benefits to a virtual event (such as not having to answer the same question at a breakout booth 20 times an hour during the conference).
What will keep us going to these virtual conferences? Let’s take a large conference like NAB for example. There are over 1,000 booths and 100,000 people who attend an event of that scale. Vendors have to fly their team in, spend extra time setting up their booths, and pay for hotel rooms during their team’s stay, which are ultimately cut for online events.
We’ve seen some of our clients save over 86% compared to in-person events.
Not to mention, every year I went to NAB I was unable to visit every booth or attend every breakout event because of overlapping time or the distance of walking across the convention center. With virtual conferences, I can visit booths without the extra steps, and breakout sessions can be watched on demand and even downloaded to watch after the event’s closing.
4. Webcasting and “Webinars are back”
When communicating with large teams (more than a dozen people), webinars or webcasts are a popular tool. Unlike video meetings that show webcams for every participant, webcasts project the leadership team towards an audience. Having the ability to do a presentation style broadcast where a small leadership team can communicate with hundreds or thousands of people is important.
I was a webcast engineer for a large town hall meeting about a week ago (the client will remain unnamed). During the broadcast a phrase spoken by a presenters stuck out to me: “Webcasts are back”. She went on to talk about how this tool was popular amongst many companies in the early 2000’s, but many were unable to utilize the dream of webcasting because the tech was essentially not ready to support the bandwidth.
Thankfully, more modern technology within the past few years has spurred the capabilities for today’s webcasts, making hybrid and completely online events possible.
These Hybrid events capture the feeling and energy of an in-person event, yet give companies the flexibility of a global reach with real time communication. It also offers the event to be seen after the fact, so that it can be seen by teams who may have not been able to attend or watch the live event because of different time zones, work shifts, etc.
Our team here at Corporate Streams specializes in connecting business clients with their audience through clever webinars. Here’s an overview of our services:
If you want to learn more about doing a webinar with your company, check out our Remote Presentations page.
What did we Miss?
Is there another tool that your company started using during this time that you think may stick around for the long hall? Let our community know by leaving a comment below! We’d love to hear from you.