Users Choose Video Conferencing Beyond the Traditional Meeting Room

In the past, meetings had to be canceled whenever one or two of the required participants were missing. When the weather was bad, the same thing happened. Indeed, there were a lot of things that contributed to many meetings being delayed, cancelled and rescheduled.
Well, no more. With web conferencing, delaying a meeting just because one of your team members is stuck in traffic isn’t going to be a plausible scenario any longer. Rescheduling or postponing a meeting just because of an impending storm or heavy downpour is now a thing of the past.

Remote work
The growing popularity of video conferencing has made the idea of traditional meeting rooms obsolete. With high resolution video technology enabling communication on the level of face to face interaction, there’s no longer any reason to miss the meeting.
Employees no longer have to beat the traffic or agonize over the thought of being caught in bad weather as they try to get to a meeting or go home after one. As web conferencing becomes a popular practice, more and more companies are choosing video technology in place of going the old fashioned route when it comes to meetings.

The advantages are, of course, obvious:
• Cost-savings. With no need to travel to or from anywhere just to get to a meeting, employees can save up on the cost of travel. Companies can also take advantage of this by cutting travels of top management by more than half. Meetings via web conferencing can take the place of some of these. This also makes it possible for companies to bring down associated costs with travel. These often include hotel fees for company representatives, plane fares and meals. And in the case of companies who rent venues just to have a place to host regular monthly meetings, saving on a ton of rental costs is now possible.
• More energy. Commuting often involves its own set of problems and issues. Employees have been so used to dealing with these that the idea of being able to take it out of their everyday existence can be ground-breaking. Imagine being able to start and end your day without having to go through the motions of catching a ride or driving to work. Imagine a workday that starts and ends without having to sit on the train beside sweaty passengers and enduring an hour or two in sardine city.
• More time. As video conferencing reduces the strong demand for employees to travel, employees can now enjoy more time on their hands. In many cases, this has allowed employees to achieve greater work-life balance. The trend has been especially helpful to new parents who spend every extra moment they have caring for a baby. Some also spend the time pursuing personal interests, indulging in sports like biking, running and generally keeping themselves fit. Others use it to get a second degree. All these just underscore the fact that employees who have more time off have higher chances of being happy, satisfied and well-rounded individuals.

Remote teams
Web based solutions like Blue Jeansoffer a cost-effective and convenient way for geographically dispersed teams to work together. In an article from the Powwownow site, being able to bring offsite teams together is a major advantage that web conferencing offers to any business.With features that encourage collaboration, that keep users engaged, it’s simple and easy to concile distributed workforce with Blue Jeans Network.
• Better communication. In the Beta News site, an article mentions how video conferencing improves the quality of communication among users. For instance, emails might often sound a bit terse, impersonal and abrupt. All these hardly inspire a strong sense of teamwork. That’s because words often get in the way of getting the right message across. Face to face interactions have none of that though. Seeing non-verbal tells help users get a read on their coworkers in a way that’s faster and more effective than emails and texts—even given the range of available emojis—ever will be.

• Fast feedback. One of the best things about web conferencing is the rapid response time possible. When teams resort to the use of video conferencing, discussing the finer points of a plan or initiative goes faster. This is different from the back and forth exchange, often involving several messages, that often happens in emails. Also, while emails and text messaging can send and receive messages in an instant, there’s still the human factor. Meaning, no matter how fast both communication modes are, if the person on the other end doesn’t want to reply just yet, then all you can do is wait. That’s a far cry from meetings that happen through web conferencing. Because of the face to face contact, people are more likely to respond faster to a question asked right then and there than one sent via email or text messaging.