Once upon a time, the conference or board room was often the main – or only – meeting space available in a typical office. Equipped with a large table, and maybe a monitor and AV equipment, it suited the needs of a larger, offline gathering but wasn’t designed or suitable for smaller groups or online connections.
Then, at some point, organisations and their office managers started to identify that smaller rooms enabling intended for conversations, catch-ups, presentations, brainstorming were a better use of valuable floor space. Getting on for a decade ago, and especially in shared workspaces, the huddle room became A Thing.
Sometimes called breakout rooms, these small and sometimes tiny meeting spaces are typically not booked – or aren’t even bookable – in advance, remaining flexible and available for spontaneous conversations when the need arises. They’re often furnished less formally than boardrooms or traditional meeting rooms to encourage a more relaxed, casual atmosphere.
However, unless you’ve been on a five year-long, round-trip to Mars, you won’t need anyone to tell you that the entire concept of ‘the office’ has changed, apparently forever, since 2019. The idea of a dedicated building occupied in pursuit of shared business goals, from Monday to Friday between roughly 9am and 5:30pm, has – extraordinarily quickly – come to be regarded by many people almost as quaint. Instead, hybrid working or fully remote working has become the new normal.
It’s true that not everyone is enamoured with hybrid or fully remote working practices. Some bosses are less than impressed, feeling that spontaneous, in-person interactions are essential to the creative process of their organisations (the very reason that watercoolers and huddle rooms became an office fixture in the first place). Staff, however, are a different story: according to one recent survey, more than three-quarters of UK employees would actively look for a new job should their company’s flexible work policies be reversed, while 40% of candidates will not apply for any role that doesn’t offer their preferred working model.
It seems, then, that hybrid working is likely to be a new normal that’s here to stay. The question for most employers – whether or not they are totally happy with hybrid working – is not whether to offer the option to staff, but how to ensure that productivity and employee satisfaction remain at least as high with hybrid working as it was when ‘the office’ was the normal place of work.
Where, then, has this left the huddle room, with all of its positive impacts?
The technology-enabled huddle room
The answer is that the concept of the huddle room is alive and well. But, since an organisation today may find some, none, or (rarely) all its employees in one building at the same time, the huddle room has had to go virtual.
To encourage collaboration opportunities, the latest incarnation of huddle rooms are equipped with empowering technologies. A monitor with a range of connection cables (such as HDMI) is a basic but useful ‘plug and play’ starting point. Sometimes there will be a Mini PC with access to company servers, software and internet browsers. There may be digital whiteboards.
However, the size and availability of huddle rooms makes them perfect for online meetings with remote colleagues, partners, customers, suppliers and more. Many organisations are taking advantage of video conferencing and collaboration technologies to maximise these opportunities.
This is all possible thanks largely to some remarkable technologies that came into their own during pandemic-mandated lockdowns: the likes of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Slack – and the myriad similar technologies that provided some or all of the capabilities needed by managers and staff to make hybrid working viable.
Review your needs and match them with solutions
Whichever technology or technologies you are currently using for your teams to keep in touch, it’s worth remembering that there are also significant differences between them. There are endless reviews and comparisons available that will highlight to you the differences between them; factors include meeting durations, number of concurrent participants, security rating, features available on free plans or paid, etc.
So you need to ask yourselves: what functionality do I need? For which of these do I need to pay, and which might I get ‘for free’? Is the level of security sufficient? What levels of support will I get? And then check whether or not you need to reconsider your current choice.
And you need to do this regularly: one of the key things to remember is that providers of these technologies continue to innovate to meet the ever-changing needs of businesses and the staff that make them tick.
For huddle rooms, there is a consistent, standout choice
For those who want a user-friendly video conferencing solution that’s already integrated with Google Drive, or for any organisation wanting to experiment for the first time with virtual huddle rooms, Google Meet is – like so many Google products and services – ideal.
It has a free plan available for individuals (and lower monthly costs than competitors for paid plans) with paid Google Workspace plans available for organizations. Its user friendliness is also typically ‘Google’, making it very easy to use – an important attribute for a service that needs just to ‘work’, immediately, in order to enable rapid, ad hoc… well, huddles.
But the real winners are businesses
Is hybrid working here permanently? Who knows, although the signs are that it probably is; many large employers are downsizing their offices. And there are the expectations of an entire new generation of workforce to consider: after over three years, the benefits of hybrid working and the flexibility it offers to people have become baked-in.
But clever, small-footprint technology like Google Meet and the equipment needed to take advantage of it, means that businesses need not, it seems, lose the benefits of the huddle room.
Jesse Pitts has been with the Global Banking & Finance Review since 2016, serving in various capacities, including Graphic Designer, Content Publisher, and Editorial Assistant. As the sole graphic designer for the company, Jesse plays a crucial role in shaping the visual identity of Global Banking & Finance Review. Additionally, Jesse manages the publishing of content across multiple platforms, including Global Banking & Finance Review, Asset Digest, Biz Dispatch, Blockchain Tribune, Business Express, Brands Journal, Companies Digest, Economy Standard, Entrepreneur Tribune, Finance Digest, Fintech Herald, Global Islamic Finance Magazine, International Releases, Online World News, Luxury Adviser, Palmbay Herald, Startup Observer, Technology Dispatch, Trading Herald, and Wealth Tribune.