Commercial Integrator January 2023 - 36

MARKETS: CORPORATE
Settling into the Hybrid Office
Hybrid work represents a prime opportunity for integrators, and the AV industry broadly,
to reimagine workspaces and help facilitate new ways of collaborating. By Alyssa Borelli
There's reason to believe the shift to
hybrid work won't hurt integrators, even
if offices are less occupied. It presents
a real opportunity when it comes to
conferencing and collaboration.
AFTER WEEKS AND MONTHS of forced
working from home, employers discovered
a surprising (to some) result: Remote
work is effective. Employees can still
be productive at home, contributing
appreciably toward business operations.
It's clear that companies with an eye
to future success understand remote
work is the new normal. The number of
telecommuting workers has increased by
115% over the last decade, according to
AVIXA research, making it a major driver
of videoconferencing's proliferation.
For integrators, this revolution is a prime
opportunity to reimagine workspaces and
help facilitate new ways of working.
Despite fears of workers making a
collective mass exodus from corporate
offices, AVIXA's economist, Peter Hansen,
said that those fears are not coming
through in the data. " After the Great Recession,
we saw years of flat office rent;
36
after the pandemic, office rent flattened
out for a few months, but it's been really
slanting upwards, " he said last September
on AVIXA's inaugural Xceptional
Insights podcast, titled " Hybrid Work,
Corporate Offices and the Impact on
Pro AV. " He added, " It's not to say that
demand for office space is just spiking or
anything like that. " AVIXA's marketintelligence
data suggests that workers
plan to balance their time working in the
office with time spent working remotely.
Clearly, the concept of hybrid work has
become the norm over the past few years.
However, according to data from Relogix,
the Canada-based occupancy-analytics
provider for hybrid-workplace monitoring
and performance, workspaces were
already under-utilized by 35% to 40%
before the onset of the pandemic. That
trend has only accelerated in the present,
with occupancy varying day by day.
Commercial Integrator JANUARY 2023
An Opportunity for Integrators
Fortunately, there's reason to believe that
integrators won't suffer from the shift
to hybrid work, even if physical offices
become less occupied. Instead, it's going
to be an opportunity, particularly when it
comes to conferencing and collaboration.
According to AVIXA research, working remotely
has soared 140% since 2005, and
close to 90% of American businesses are
investing in videoconferencing technology.
Videoconferencing also has a much
higher utilization rate than corporatemanagement
software, messaging applications
and project-productivity solutions,
according to research conducted by
Upwork.
Videoconferencing software offers a
wide range of features - for example,
breakout rooms, which allow teams to
communicate more effectively during
all-company meetings. As enterprises
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Commercial Integrator January 2023

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