New Cisco research reveals how pandemic has changed the future of work

A new Cisco report has identified a number of key lessons for IT leaders who are developing ‘return to office’ strategies, including the fact that flexibility is here to stay, whilst a range of new Webex features have been introduced to help address this requirement.

The report, entitled ‘A New Perspective on the Modern Workplace’, found that respondents were generally optimistic about the future, with 74% claiming that their business will in some ways emerge stronger from the pandemic crisis.

However, flexibility is key to such optimism, with respondents confirming that it will benefit organisations as well as employees. Indeed when it comes to recruitment, 50% of respondents said increased remote work would lead to a more inclusive and extended talent pool. Businesses are realising that work can happen anywhere, productivity isn’t lost and an expanded talent pool will enable stronger and more capable work teams.

It was also particularly encouraging to see that nearly nine out of ten managers have increased their emphasis on employee wellbeing and work-life balance as a result of the pandemic. And of those managers reporting the increased emphasis, nearly half (47%) said they see this being maintained over the long term.

Another key theme to emerge from the survey results was that of business resiliency. What were the top challenges cited by workers who found themselves in remote working situations?

• 82% mentioned the need for greater IT support
• 77% were worried about maintaining customer service levels and satisfaction
• 76% feared a disruption of workflow and processes

The reality is workers need to know that their organisations can respond quickly, intelligently and with agility to just about any event. Plus, they want to connect in the most secure, flexible and productive ways possible, from anywhere, at any time.

From the organisation’s perspective, it’s important to have the right IT architectures in place to allow it to scale fast and respond quickly to meet ever-changing opportunities and challenges.

Cisco believes the future of work will be a blend of in-office and working-from-home; in other words, a hybrid workplace. The Webex platform for workplace collaboration is set to play a vital role in facilitating this evolving way of working.

Webex is empowered with new features 

Given the growing importance of Webex as businesses and their workforces return to the new normal, it’s no surprise to see Cisco announce the general availability of a number of new features for the platform. These include:

• Webex Assistant for Meetings: an intelligent, interactive AI meeting assistant that makes meetings searchable, actionable and more productive. It’s possible to capture meeting highlights, such as action items, with one click or a voice command and show captions so that no one misses a word of what’s being said. In addition, transcripts are searchable to help users locate key topics discussed across multiple meetings 

• Virtual, customised or blurred background options: this industry first delivers virtual and blurred backgrounds across all devices and platforms – Windows, Mac and Android. It gives a user the option to either blur their background, choose a virtual one. or create their own, to remove unwanted distractions during meetings and keep the conversation focused on what is said and not on the different backgrounds
• Hand raising: while Webex has always had a ‘Raise Hand’ feature, this has been enhanced to let a user do this no matter what device they are using - even if they have joined a meeting using their phone. And when they raise their hand, they are bumped to the top of the participant list to be more visible than before

In addition, there is Video for everyone, a solution to the real-world issue of poor bandwidth that can lead to inadequate video and audio quality during online meetings. This new feature will enable remote employees to maintain an optimal online experience even with 50% packet loss. And with ‘region of interest’ video encoding, Webex can provide a higher quality image for the more important areas of the video – such as a person’s face. 

Finally, there’s the Webex Desk Pro – an AI-powered collaboration device for the desk. This new purpose-built video conferencing device features a 4K touch display, an HD camera and a solid sound system, as well as several noise-cancelling microphones. 

Aruna Ravichandran, VP of Marketing with Cisco’s Collaboration Group, emphasised the importance of Webex as we move on from the pandemic into the hybrid workplace, saying: “From a business agility and resiliency perspective, it’s important that we learn and adapt quickly from this experience. You never know when you’ll need to pivot, and we’ve seen that technology like Webex is playing a key role”.