With the exception of essential services, most workplaces across Canada have sent employees home to work remotely. With proper resources and protocols, a work-from-home system is acceptable, but it’s important to remember that when the coronavirus crisis passes and people return to their offices, some sort of social distancing may still be required, or preferred.

Luckily, there are a slew of audio visual technology options available to provide that degree of social distancing at work, whether required or preferred. You might need to be in the same building, but not necessarily in the same room.

First off, let’s take a look at some social-distancing techniques to apply when you are working in an office environment:

  • Part of your day, lunch break perhaps, might be saved for a mid-day workout at a nearby gym. It may be a good idea to forego that kind of interaction for a while.
  • When it comes to lunch, bring something into the office, preferably made at home. Avoid busy cafeterias and restaurants.
  • Use audio visual technology for inter-office meetings and avoid close face-to-face contact.
  • When required to attend a meeting, make sure there’s separation between attendees. Current advice suggests six feet or more.
  • Try to cut down or eliminate business-related travel.
  • And avoid hanging around the ‘water-cooler’ zones of a workplace, where people often gather to chat.

A Range of Meeting Spaces to Support Remote Work in the Office

There are a number of options for meeting places that support working remotely in the office. These include:

  • SnapCab Pod: These highly mobile enclosed pods respond to the demand for noise and distraction prevention in the open plan environment. Leaders looking to incorporate private and enclosed spaces quickly and affordably can do so with SnapCab. These stand-alone office pods are simple to install and easy to relocate.
  • IRYS Pod: Today’s workers must be creative problem-solvers. The IRYS pod meets workers’ diverse needs for collaboration, privacy, focus and regeneration in a whole new way. Key benefits include: ceiling, lighting, air treatment and access to power; easily add enclosed spaces to the open plan without architectural renovation; ships within two weeks and installs in just one day.
  • Air3: Orangebox’s award-winning Air3 acoustic pod range can act as a freestanding meeting room, private space, phone booth or touchdown room. Interchangeable panels allow you to refresh your Air3 at will, swapping, changing and refreshing colours and fabrics to fit your own unique preferences and requirements. Its combination of high-quality glass and soft acoustic paneling delivers both a refined aesthetic and a high level of insulation and speech privacy.

These pods can be supported with the use of Virtual PUCK, a digital collaborative tool that allows meeting participants to share content wirelessly from a laptop.

Technology That Works Within ‘Remote’ Meeting Places

As mentioned, the above solutions are great for meeting ‘remotely’ within an office environment using technology but aren’t in themselves the actual technology that facilitates collaboration between individuals and among teams. Here are a few suggestions for technology that works inside these ‘meeting’ places:

  • Microsoft Teams: This communication and collaboration platform brings together a range of tools when working remotely, including chat, a hub for teams, video conferencing and screen sharing, online meetings, audio conferencing, and interaction among team channels. It is a user-friendly platform that can work among remote users or within a large business.
  • ZOOM: This highly ranked platform provides a user experience that includes online meeting, webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms, an enterprise phone system, and a chat function.

Audio visual technology resources not only help to maintain social distancing in the office, they are also highly flexible, productive applications. Contact POI today to talk to one of our experts.