This has led to changes in the way office space is being used, with a greater emphasis being placed upon teleworking and open plan hot-desking seating arrangements. The days of working while sitting at a single designated desk are a rapidly fading memory for many Australian employees.
According to Graeme Gherbaz, Managing Director, Plantronics Australia, these workplace changes are resulting in new communication requirementsfor employees.
Gherbaz said, “Employees now often find themselves needing to shift quickly between working in different locations, both inside and outside the office. To leverage the productivity and flexibility benefits of these new “Smarter Working” environments, employees really need to be able to stay in touch in a truly frictionless, easy manner.”
To address these productivity challenges, some businesses are looking beyond traditional email messaging and voice technologies, and adopting the latest generation of unified communications technologies.
Unified communications tools are designed to present a user centric view of communications, with a consistent user experience spanning desktop phones, computers, smart phones, and tablets.
According the Radicati Group, while the volume of email messaging is still growing rapidly, there is a shift towards a greater business use of instant messaging technologies. Radicati estimates that worldwide email volume expected to grow 45% in 2012, with a typical worker sending and receiving approximately 110 emails per day.
According to Plantronics, the deluge of emails is leading to a greater value being placed on voice calls and conferencing, with time poor employees increasingly using phone conversations and conferencing technologies for their highest priority communications. In these situations it becomes critical for calls to be as productive as possible, without the distraction of background noise.
Gherbaz continued, “Employees now need to juggle multiple communication devices in their work day. Plantronics headsets can be setup to simultaneously work with several devices such as computer, mobile phone and desk phone, which allows employees to get on with work without tinkering with settings, or carrying extra gear. Call quality is improved through the use of adaptive volume levels, advanced noise cancellation and wind elimination technologies.”
The results of research carried out by Mehrabian and Weiner in 1967 indicate why call quality can impact employee productivity. Their research established that while speaking on a telephone call without visual cues, 13 percent of the importance is attributed to the message, and fully 87 percent to tone of voice.
