What do huddle rooms look like in a post-pandemic workplace?
Huddle room hype has waned, but it helped promote the concept of simplifying video in the workplace. Now, organizations could consider a video everywhere strategy.
Several years ago, the huddle room trend dominated the video conferencing market. Every hardware and software vendor sold huddle room-branded products. Every trade show booth had the word huddle emblazoned everywhere.
The huddle room concept came into clear focus. Suddenly, video conferencing hardware was affordable and easy to use to support huddle spaces. The software was flexible and powerful enough to make it all work.
Business video communications was no longer limited to the C-suite in the boardroom or large conference rooms. Regular working teams, in their smaller workspaces, collaborated with remote team members on video calls for more effective meetings. Everyone was excited to huddle in small groups. Then, COVID-19 hit. Huddling went from a cool way to work to a way to get sick. Social distancing -- the exact opposite of huddling -- quickly became the new norm.
By now, many workers have returned to the office, but things are different. The pandemic sparked lasting changes. Organizations now have different workflows and work environments. As a result, the huddle space concept needs to be revamped to accommodate today's modern workplace.
Adjusting huddle rooms for post-pandemic collaboration
Before the pandemic, everyone was expected to be at the office every day. Therefore, huddle spaces were primarily designed to support in-person meeting attendees. While some video element was expected to include remote guests, most of the work was done in the room. And the collaboration tools -- whiteboards, for example -- were optimized for in-office use.
Today, meetings may have more remote attendees than in-person team members. It's a completely different dynamic. The meeting isn't happening in the room. The meeting is happening in Zoom or Microsoft Teams, and the room is just one attendee of that meeting. Therefore, the collaboration tools, including whiteboards, need to be accessible and manageable from the cloud.
Every space in the office is now a potential space for remote collaborative work.
In addition, audio and video quality are larger concerns. Collaborative video calls are not always one-to-one sessions. Often, several team members are joining the same call, and they need to see and hear clearly the people in the physical huddle room. Teams can't just put a laptop in the room and make video calls on it. They need a quality room system.
Also, meeting spaces themselves are different. Huddle spaces used to be small meeting rooms. Organizations were already using these small spaces for team meetings, and the discussion was simply about bringing in remote people and adding collaboration tools.
Now, organizations don't just need to bring remote workers into these designated meeting rooms. Businesses need to bring remote workers into more spaces. Every space in the office is now a potential space for remote and hybrid collaborative work. By enabling video everywhere, organizations can make every corner of the office a potential huddle space. If most team members are remote, organizations need this level of remote access at the office.
How huddle room technology has evolved
Fortunately, video conferencing technology has evolved to support post-pandemic requirements. The hardware has trended toward video bars and video boards. These all-in-one approaches make setup and integration a lot easier than the huddle room kits of the past. They are also much higher quality with greater ease of use than past technologies. For the most part, organizations can plug them in and start making calls with high-quality audio and video.
The hardware has also added AI features to support the new workflow. If organizations are enabling video in almost every space, figuring out all the camera angles can be a challenge. AI solves that problem, however, with face and voice tracking, people recognition and smart-camera controls.
The software has also evolved to support this new way of working. Video tools have grown into full workplace collaboration suites. Instead of just connecting to a meeting room, software like Zoom and Microsoft Teams provides several AI tools to support teams during and after meetings, including meeting summaries, automated task lists and AI-generated whiteboard content.
The result? The tools needed to get work done are no longer in the physical room. They are in the software, so they are equally available to everyone.
Long live the huddle room
The video conferencing industry may not refer to "huddle rooms" as much these days. Huddling still sounds like a way to get COVID. But the huddle room trend should be remembered as a positive step in the right direction. By enabling working spaces to include remote workers before the pandemic, huddle rooms, in a way, helped organizations get ready for remote collaboration.
In that sense, organizations already had some tools in place for remote work. While the huddle concept has evolved into the new "video everywhere" workplace, the basic idea of simplifying video in the workplace remains the same. And, fortunately, the hardware and software of today are ready to meet this challenge.
David Maldow is founder and CEO of Let's Do Video. He has written about the video and visual collaboration industry for almost 20 years.
