Employees are the lifeblood of every organization, and their morale is a vital sign indicating the health of the company. Pre-Covid, keeping morale up translated to organizing activities like office parties, employee-of-the-month recognition, and birthday celebrations. To put it simply, group interactions built the team.
Humans are social creatures. The more we get to know each other, the more we care about the shared cause. A comprehensive research paper published in the Annual Review suggests that group identity in organisations determines individual morale. Conducting social activities is an easy way to cultivate this attachment outside the constraints of timelines and deliverables.
Remote Working: Is Video Conferencing the only way?
Today, millions across the world have moved their interactions online through the use of virtual meeting apps and software like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet etc. The contrast between real-life discussions and lag-filled online video meetings has proven to be a challenge most people are struggling to overcome. With awkward pauses and cross-talking peppering every conversation, concurrent video feeds are making it difficult for people to communicate effectively with their teammates.
If e-meetings were unpopular before, they are downright daunting now – especially as they emerge as the only safe solution to conduct business in the face of rising health and safety concerns. Needless to say, even on the best video conferencing app, it is tough to truly connect with the person on your screen. What happens to team morale in this scenario?
What we have and what we need: Information Vs Engagement
The current remote working setup defaults to multi-video UIs supplemented with single-source audio and a chatbox. For personal use, emergencies and simple 1-on-1 interactions, this interface works well enough. However, as the size of a team increases, so does the need the convey increasingly complex information.
While a number of productivity tools and plugins can make up for the project side of operations, a large chunk of the complex information being conveyed in team calls is entirely human. Sound and gestures are just as important in getting everyone on the same page as a snazzy presentation. While the best video conferencing apps can project the presentation, they struggle with doing the same for participants’ inputs.
Simple things make physical conferences engaging: watching people convene in a room, orienting towards the speaker, and hearing your teammate’s comments from next to your seat. These inputs cannot be replicated via video conferencing applications, especially when connectivity issues turn most participants into black boxes on a grid. It makes engaging teams even harder as users can simply zone out or even click away from the screen, a problem that Video Conferencing giant Zoom has already identified.
As we know, policing employees’ app activity cannot generate morale. The real solution lies in finding a way to replicate physical meetings in a 3D virtual environment. When people feel seen and heard, they’re incentivized to participate too. This participation – driven by interest, not information bandwidth – is what makes for true team morale.
Solution: Being ‘real’ in virtual spaces
There is ample data suggesting that extra-verbal cues can make or break a conversation. A simple way to recreate these cues is through the use of Immersive Virtual Reality. IVR technology can recreate the office space down to the colour of your favourite couch in the break-room. With NextMeet, we’ve used this technology to create an interactive ecosystem comprising meeting spots, seminar halls, art galleries and expo spaces where users can convene and interact just as they would in real life.
Using 3D avatars and spatial audio, users aren’t confined to just logging in – they can wave at each other, pick seats next to one another, and hear their colleagues as if they were in the same room. The water cooler conversations that make for strong-interpersonal connections within a team may not translate on video, but they can definitely happen in virtual reality.
