Employee Benefits of Video Conferencing

Video conferencing is rapidly changing the way business is done worldwide. Once an expensive and unwieldy network to set up and run, advances like cloud based conferencing have made installing video conferencing a streamlined and hassle-free experience.

You may have heard about the myriad of benefits video conferencing can bring to your business and your customers, but there’s another incredibly important group that benefits from video conferencing: your employees.

How can adopting video conferences create a better work environment for your most important resource? Take a look at some of the benefits.

Easier Interviews, Easier Communications

The benefits your employees can gain from video conferencing start right from the beginning of their communication with you. According to a survey by media analysts PolyCom, Human Resources professionals have come to prefer video conferencing over other means of communication. 56 percent said it was their favorite way to communicate with potential and current employees, surpassing voice calls, and even email. They find video calls a much better way to get to know interviewees and stay in touch with current workers, since they allow for face-to-face conversations and eye contact.

By the same principles, video conferencing is a great way for current employees to stay in touch between different offices, or when traveling. Top of the line video conferencing services like Blue Jeans Network allow for easy and streamlined file sharing and screen sharing. You can upload a video clip or a document to your personal Blue Jeans library and share it with everyone in the call with a single click. This makes it easy to get feedback and share ideas among employees, supervisors and team members.

Create a Flexible Work Environment

Now that everyone has a laptop with wireless internet and a smartphone in their pocket, telecommuting is on the rise. The number of employees who work remotely has ballooned in the last ten years, up over 80 percent since 2005. Many businesses now give mobile devices or smartphones to their employees to allow them some flexibility, or let them work on their own tablets or laptops.

Studies have shown that American employees love having the flexibility to work from home, especially Generation Y-ers and Millennials. According to Global Workplace Analytics, 80 percent of American employees report that they would like to have the freedom to work from home a few days a week.

Of course, working remotely has its downsides. While conducting a study on how flexible workplaces maintain communication with their remote workers, Wainhouse research found that 75 percent of remote workers report feeling isolated from their workplace. Video conferencing goes a long way towards helping them feel like they’re still connected, especially if you have a cloud or browser based network. Techradar reports that ad-hoc, informal meetings are the best ways for employees to communicate: by just emailing out a link to jump on an in-browser call with a co-worker, remote workers get that feeling of dropping by a coworker’s cubicle to ask their advice, or bouncing an idea off them at the coffee machine.

Better Quality of Life

The 40 hour work week and rigidly structure office hours have fallen by the wayside in the age of digital commerce, and your ability to be flexible and respond quickly can make or break a business, especially a small one. Many businesses use remote workers for exactly that reason: they have flexible schedules, and can help respond to crises and manage problems around the clock. It’s a win-win situation: a happier employee base, and also a more efficient one. Having the flexibility to work from home even has a measurable increase in the quality of life for employees, according to a 2008 report by the Wall Street Journal.

Mashable recommends telecommuting as a good way to maintain employees who need to relocate, or who need to travel for personal reasons but want to keep working. Having a good video conferencing system in place is another win-win for video communication and the flexible workplace. It’s great for your employee, who can keep their job while moving or be able to stay on top of current tasks while they travel, and it’s great for you, since you maintain valuable employees despite difficult circumstances.

A Few Final Words

Your employee team is the most valuable resource a business has, and installing a video conferencing system will benefit them every bit as much as it will benefit your business. From flexibility of work to face-to-face communication, to a better quality of life and more opportunities and options when things go wrong, there’s no downside to adding a video conferencing system to your business arsenal.

Author: Boris Dzhingarov is passionate about blogging. He writes for several sites online.