Cisco’s hybrid workforce in real-time action

With Cisco’s recent announcement offering hybrid work options to all employees, technology leaders find themselves at an inflection point: do their — and, by extension, our — current technology stacks have the necessary chops to support a highly decentralized workforce on a permanent basis?

One area of particular concern is meetings. Ah yes, “meetings.” Lauded by some and dreaded by many, meetings are nevertheless essential in maintaining worker productivity, engagement, company culture, and overall well-being. After all, maintaining human connection is as important now as ever, so workers need secure access to collaboration solutions from any locale.

Considering these realizations, Cisco is responding accordingly — and so should we.

How Cisco is repositioning Webex in supporting the hybrid workforce

Since last September, Cisco has implemented more than 800 new Webex features with the goal of shifting our traditional notions of meetings, to a more inclusive model. Where attendees do not feel like outsiders in a strategy session, whether they are in an airport terminal waiting for departure. Or, a parent juggling the rigors of virtual learning for their children, while meeting (no pun intended) core benchmarks towards their employer’s success. For instance, Webex enrolled their vast user base with features such as audience interaction tools e.g., polling, quizzes, and Q&A. “MyVoiceOnly” is a particularly interesting new feature where remote attendees can eliminate background noise perceived as a disruption. The Webex Desk — a purpose-built all-in-one collaboration device — is another notable new capability.

As Cisco’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration, Jeetu Patel remarked:

“To be successful in the era of hybrid work, organizations need to make sure their solutions are flexible, inclusive, supportive, secure and easily managed on the backend by IT…the all-new Webex Suite ensures everyone in a hybrid workforce has equal opportunity and voice.”

Addressing a real-time use case

If you, as an organization, are struggling to bridge the virtual/physical divides in your meetings, SHI and Cisco are uniquely positioned to guide your journey. SHI’s approach centers around three factors in optimizing your hybrid meetings: assessment, architecture, and deployment. Once we fully understand your end-user requirements and challenges, we can help you design and deploy a Webex solution that aligns with your structure and goals and enables your employees to collaborate as though they were in the same room.

Our joint efforts go beyond what your users are seeing on their device screens — powering your hybrid meetings demands an agile and adaptable infrastructure. Leveraging Cisco’s best-in-class solutions for connectivity, collaboration, security, and cloud-based management, SHI ensures you have systems designed for digital agility and resilience. As a result, you gain a distinct advantage over competitors still applying bandages to their temporary fixes every few months.

To learn how smart collaboration using the Webex Suite can enable your remote teams, talk with our Cisco team.