Office Return Needs Video Call Skills More Than Ever

Above chart from behind London's Times paywall, dated 23rd October 2023.

As they drool over the recruitment surveyor's PR interpretation, "the tide is turning on hybrid working".

Whether you prefer unstoppable trend or mere stabilisation is though irrelevant.

Salt-pinching can lead into rabbit holes such as vested interest bias or public-versus-private sector differences, and office-essential roles or definition greyness.

Caveats do follow.

30pc more hybrid roles being offered compared to two years back. 'It’s evident that hybrid working can’t be erased overnight ... what employers need to understand is that everyone is different'. "Employers who are asking staff to come into the office due to a lack of trust will struggle to retain staff going forward".

Yet for me the most startling stat appears at the very end of the article;

66 per cent [of employers] say they have refitted their workplace to facilitate a smooth hybrid-working approach, including installing large screens, cameras and microphones for meetings.

My first impulse was to scream, 'only two-thirds?!'

Then, 'which two-thirds?!'

Closely rounded off by wondering who was doing said 'refitting', to what ends, and what gains was it now actively bringing?

By these numbers, an astonishing one-in-three organisations stay stuck in 2019.

That cannot be good.

Also, I've been in a fair few offices - virtually and in-person - throughout, and those embracing video and properly moulding themselves and their environment for it feel way fewer than two-in-three.

As I continue to blare, even if you are back in an office full-time, your prospects likely aren't. Video call skills remain a key area of personal and professional differentiation. To leave them unattended is to make hitting your targets significantly harder to do.

Beyond this, to think that buying a few pieces of tech alone will make the difference is also to inhibit performance.

I've blogged before on the perils of leaving your sales video meeting environment in the sole hands of 'unified comms' resource. Please do not do so.

I might add by way of idea seeding, that when buying any 'machinery', there is always a proportion of that spend that is traditionally set aside for getting the most out of it. Implementation, Maintenance, Training elements. This absolutely includes combos of hybrid-working hardware and software. To neglect these is to make your life harder.

A bunch of tech in itself is never the answer, is it?

The secret to success here stems from how you structure it, where you adapt your process to get the best out of it, and how you yourself perform when using it.

How are you 'facilitating your smooth approach' to video and hybrid selling in light of these?