Planning for Your Next Phase of Work

Whether you’re returning to the office, going fully remote, or giving your team the flexibility to choose, Zoom can keep you safe and connected.

As a sense of normalcy begins to return after a year of extreme changes, decisions now need to be made about what the next phase of work will look like for your teams and your company. Will you be fully returning to the office? Will you leave the office behind and embrace a fully remote workspace? Or will you offer your employees the choice to work where they want, building a hybrid workspace with both fully remote and in-office options?

Whatever choice you make, we offer the features and functionality your team needs to stay safe, connected, and productive. This digital ebook covers three options for what your next phase of work could look like, as well as the specific tools and features of Zoom that can make them possible. What you choose for your next phase of work hinges on a number of factors unique to your business, your strategy, and your people.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

Full Return to the Office

This time last year, everyone was asking themselves the same question: “when can we get back to normal?” But over the past few weeks and months, many businesses are realizing that their sense of “normal” will likely never return just as it was. Even as organizations begin to return to the offices they left last year, they’re facing new and unanticipated challenges. While employees are eager to return to the office, they’re also nervous about their health and safety.

A study conducted by Envoy surveyed 1000 full and part-time employees in the US; the results showed that 73% of respondents were worried about returning to the office. Companies are taking these concerns seriously, and for good reason: the study also found that over half of people would consider leaving their job if their employer didn’t prioritize their safety. Getting the best work from your people now requires additional focus to ensure the health and safety of all those present in the office.

73%

Percent of workers are concerned about returning to the office

For those surveyed, the top three concerns about the physical workspace were concern over others coming to work sick, an overcrowded workspace, and proper ventilation. While Zoom has traditionally been focused on virtual collaboration, we’re rapidly expanding our product portfolio to help businesses like yours tackle these challenges and get back to work safely.

Top Concerns About the Physical workspace

Not knowing if someone sick comes into the workspace

Too many people in the workspace at once

Lack of proper ventilation

Returning to the Office Checklist

Ensuring the health and safety of your employees while they’re in the office is more important than ever before and you need the right tools to help you manage resources and minimize contact wherever possible. Zoom makes this easy with our video-first unified communications platform. With some exciting new features, and others you’ve known and loved for years, Zoom can get your team back in the office quickly and safely.

Health & Safety

Virtual Receptionist For contactless visit

E911 Platform For emergency response

Environmental Data To monitor conditions

Resource Management

In-Room People Counting For policy monitoring

Hot Desk Availability For resource sharing

Digital Signage For important updates

Room Schedulers For easy room booking

Hands-Free Communication

Companion Mode For mobile room control

Wireless Pairing With dedicated devices

Voice Control In conference rooms

Virtual Receptionist

Welcome guests safely and allow your front desk staff to work from anywhere with Zoom’s Kiosk Mode. Office visitors can tap to instantly be connected with your front desk staff over Zoom.

Once engaged, your front desk staff can greet and assist office visitors from anywhere, safely delivering a great first impression to every office visitor.

Digital Signage and Hot Desking

With more employees looking to split their workweek between home and the office, hot-desking with Zoom Rooms Scheduling Displays can help employees reserve their spaces in advance and provide visibility of available resources. Use Digital Signage to show resource availability (e.g. SpaceIQ) or information such as the cleaning schedule of hot desks.

Voice Commands for Zoom Rooms

Available on iOS today, and coming soon to all platforms, you can start a meeting in a Zoom Room with voice commands. Upon entering a meeting room, attendees can start a meeting without the need to touch communal Zoom Rooms controllers.

Alexa for Businesses is also available now on Zoom Rooms Appliances, providing additional abilities, like “Alexa, find me an available meeting room.”

E911 Digital Signage Integration

With fewer coworkers in the office to help in times of need, marshaling the right resources is more challenging than ever. Zoom Phone Nomadic E911 (U.S. and Canada) provides the ability to dynamically track the location of users as they move around your campus to ensure their location is up to date in the event of an emergency. When an emergency number is dialed, Zoom will notify your internal safety team and use digital signage to direct first responders.

In-Room People Counting

We’re enhancing Scheduling Displays to show inroom people counting to help attendees keep to social distancing requirements. The Zoom Rooms camera will constantly monitor people in a room, displaying the count on the rooms scheduling display. Rooms will also report on room occupancy over time in the Zoom Rooms dashboard, making it easier to track and enforce any occupancy policies or limits.

Zoom Rooms Scheduling Displays

Zoom Rooms customers can deploy an unlimited number of scheduling displays that can make it easy to book meeting spaces. Integrated directly in your organization’s calendar application, scheduling displays show real-time booking information and availability throughout the office. They can be used for large conference rooms, huddle rooms, and even desks or other shared resources.

Companion Mode for Zoom Rooms

In-room meeting attendees can now pair their personal devices to the Zoom Room with the Zoom Room Controller mobile application. Once paired, an attendee can manage the room controls from their own device. No need to touch communal controllers to start or control meeting rooms, everything can now be controlled from the attendee’s own device.

Digital Signage and Space Utilization

Zoom Rooms customers can deploy an unlimited number of digital signs to display important information and announcements throughout the office. Leveraging secure, cloud-based occupancy dashboards from organizations like Density.io, Zoom Rooms Admins can display building capacity limits and human occupancy alerts throughout your office space.

Enhanced Dashboard Reporting

The Zoom Rooms dashboard can now help monitor and report on room occupancy, giving you a clearer picture of how resources are being utilized and if employees are following policies. Supported hardware such as Neat devices can also monitor things like air quality to ensure a safe and healthy environment.

Buttonless Bluetooth Phones and Softphone

Zoom Phone makes it easy to pair desk phones to specific users in flexible work environments and new Bluetooth-enabled, buttonless models allow for easy cleaning and minimal hands-on usage.

Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery (coming soon)

When your workforce is split between home and the office, meeting with a conference room full of people can be overwhelming and impersonal when you’re working from home. With Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery, launching later this year, Zoom will automatically sense the participants in the room, and create a separate camera feed for each participant, making the meeting feel more like the Zoom Meetings you know and love.

The Hybrid workspace

As companies plan for their next phase of work, many will likely implement both a remote and physical workspace, or what we’re calling a hybrid workspace. A hybrid workspace provides employees the ability to choose day-to-day where they would like to work. Some employees can work remote full time while others will be in a physical office bright and early each day. But both groups have the flexibility to change their working location based on their schedules, projects, or needs of the day.

Allowing employees to tailor their workspace to their needs can have a dramatic impact on productivity, and employees seem to know it. That same study conducted by Envoy that surveyed 1000 full and part-time employees in the US found that a whopping ninety-four percent would like to still be in the office at least once a week. Physical and remote workspaces both have their place, and a hybrid workspace allows your team to choose the environment that best suits their needs and work.

The hybrid workspace is not without its challenges. The top three concerns about the hybrid workspace are concern over others coming to work sick, not being able to see friends and teammates as often, and missing out on birthdays, activities, and other events that can build and maintain culture. Just as Zoom helped facilitate fully remote workspaces and full physical workspaces, the Zoom platform is essential to productive hybrid workspaces.

Top Concerns About the Hybrid workspace

Not knowing if someone sick comes into the workspace

Not seeing friends and teammates as often

Missing out on birthdays, activities, and other events

Hybrid workspace Checklist

The hybrid workspace blends the advantages and challenges of both the physical office space and the remote workspace. This makes your communication platform more important than ever, and Zoom has the tools and features to provide the flexibility your team wants, with the safety and accessibility they need to stay connected no matter where they work. Use the checklist below to gauge your readiness to deploy a hybrid workspace.

Collaboration

Seamless Whiteboarding For easy collaboration

Zoom Apps (coming soon) Apps available directly in the meeting

Messaging Real-time connection

Noise Suppression Fewer disruptions