Hybrid Meeting Should No Longer Be a Headache

Table of Contents

Hybrid Meeting Definition

What’s a hybrid meeting? In a hybrid meeting, attendees meet in person and online. They talk to colleagues that sit next to them and also colleagues that are far away from the city through the Internet. A hybrid meeting becomes the new normal and meeting equity is something we shall notice.

Hybrid working brings flexibility to the workforce. Well, it also poses a challenge to team collaboration. Is there an efficient hybrid meeting system that gets everyone to engage and collaborate freely? Or the problem just got neglected and everyone is accustomed to disjointed meetings that waste their time.

From the perspective of tech for a hybrid meeting setup, we will see the challenges and solutions.

Check the hybrid meeting solutions now.

Hybrid Meeting Challenges

As a hybrid meeting is no longer purely in-person or virtual, the system has to support both in-person and virtual communication and make sure they work together perfectly.

To ensure a good hybrid meeting experience, the system shall take care of three main things: audio, video, and easy control. A smart hybrid meeting system makes the meeting space effective, enjoyable, and inclusive.

For the below discussions, we focus on the experience in a hybrid meeting room and just assume that a PC with an in-built webcam and speakerphone shall be adequate for an individual virtual attendee.

>> Read the infographic

1. Can everybody hear?

This is about your microphone and speakerphone and how they work together. Everybody’s voice shall be picked up and heard.

It may not be a problem for people to hear each other when they meet in person. However, the virtual attendees could only hear a broken conversation if your meeting room’s mic is not picking up everybody’s voice properly.
Can everybody hear the voice from virtual speakers and sound from the computer clearly?
If the microphone and speaker system are not properly set, the conversation may be frequently intruded by annoying echoes.

Having a speakerphone that picks up sounds and voices from all directions in your hybrid meeting room is necessary. All the employees in the main seat or not can be clearly heard by the team and no more dramatic yelling is needed in the meeting room.

2. Can everybody see?

A main screen for the meeting room is a must. In the meantime, a wide-range webcam that streams the whole room would be more friendly for virtual attendees as they don’t have to speak to invisible colleagues anymore.

Communication is far more than verbal. Seeing each other is critical as we communicate non-verbally as well. There shall be a webcam capable to stream the whole in-person meeting space.
A webcam with a presenter tracking mode would be a plus.
When the meeting room is more than medium size, a video wall of good size helps deliver a high-quality, clear view for every attendee.

The one who is working from home may feel isolated when he or she is talking to a whole team and can only see the face of the presenter/host. A wide-range hybrid meeting camera streams the whole meeting space and WFH colleagues can share the view of the space and see everybody when they communicate.

3. Can everybody engage?

Can people share their screens easily whatever device they are using?
Is it smooth to switch from one device to another? A wireless screen-sharing solution would be more friendly when the meeting room is too large to drag an HDMI cable around.

A Hybrid Friendly Workplace

We may unintentionally leave remote colleagues hanging when we indulge in an in-person discussion in the meeting room. However, this kind of bad experience makes remote working employees feel like they are excluded from the conversation.

Companies that adopt a hybrid working style need to build a modern, friendly hybrid workplace to encourage communication, collaboration, and teamwork.

And getting a hybrid meeting system could be the first step. We need to see, hear, discuss and share with our colleagues as we are in the same room.

Hybrid Meeting Solutions

AV Access eShare series is designed to solve the problem of hybrid meetings. These two hybrid meeting solutions would be sufficient for you to start building a hybrid-friendly system.

In fact, more AV Access products can be flexibly integrated to empower the audio, visual, and collaboration experience. You may talk to our support at support@avaccess.com to customize your own hybrid meeting solution.

Blog Post