How Video Conferencing Can Impact Your Workplace Culture

Your employees’ age range, differences in cultural values, education level, and access to resources all contribute to piecing together your company culture.

Suppose you can’t create a cohesive, supportive, inherently positive company culture despite the above differences. In that case, it’ll have a massive impact on your company’s success, particularly its use of technology.

For instance, older employees may have more trouble using video conferencing software than younger employees because of a technical skills gap. Or larger companies may prefer more extensive virtual engagements, while small companies may want more one-to-one video conferencing sessions to engage their employees.

However companies decide to use video conferencing, you better believe workplace culture influences that usage and vice versa. Let’s explore five ways companies use video conferencing and how it influences workplace culture.

Host Meetings That Matter

As much as we might like to ax meetings altogether in business, we just can’t. Meetings are integral to the success of any company. However, managers and company leaders who micromanage their employees and misuse meetings are responsible for the bad rap meetings have now and will continue to have.

Luckily, leaders who’ve created a work culture full of empathy, understanding, flexibility, and appreciation in their companies are changing how we view and host meetings. Hashicorp and Instrument are just a couple of notable companies that use video-conferencing tools to enhance their meetings and ensure every employee can attend.

Companies using video conferencing tools for meetings are also mindful of employee mental health, intentional or not. For example, they allow team members to turn their cameras off and participate at their comfort level. Furthermore, they’re recording meetings for employees to view later should they miss a portion due to family obligations.

Also, companies are using video conferencing to create remote workforces.

Create a Remote Workforce

There are various factors to consider when shaping a positive company culture, one of those factors being cultural values. For example, one primary cultural value for employees these days is mental health support.

One solution for many companies was offering fully remote or hybrid work schedules to their employees to create a better work-life balance and, in turn, improve their mental health. Apple, Upwork, and Twitter are a few big businesses that offer fully remote or hybrid work schedules. They also use video-conferencing to power their remote workforces.

The common denominator in these and other companies that use video conferencing to connect their remote workers is a company culture that values technology, trust, and recruiting top talent worldwide.

Video conferencing enables people to work from anywhere and function seamlessly despite everyone not being in the office. In addition, video conferencing tools ensure that workplace community and connection don’t lack in a remote workforce.

Workplace culture also impacts companies using video conferencing to open up employees’ personal and professional growth opportunities.

Open Up Personal and Professional Growth Opportunities

The best workplace cultures are full of lifelong learners open to anything that incites personal and professional growth. When company leaders open up personal and professional growth opportunities to their workers, it boosts individual and collective productivity.

Companies are using video conferencing to offer more upskilling opportunities to their employees. Amazon, for example, offers its employees leadership programs and additional in-demand skills courses with the option to complete them on-site or remotely, thanks to video conferencing tools.

Video conferencing makes it so rather than using work computers or attending training sessions in the office. Businesses can offer webinars, tutorials, courses, or classes remotely.

Businesses are also using video conferencing to help employees move forward personally. For instance, they offer employees mental health support with virtual counseling sessions. They also ensure managers and other company leaders can chat via video-conferencing whenever an employee needs additional assistance.

It’s important to note that the companies offering comprehensive personal and professional growth opportunities are committed to ensuring everyone has equal access to these opportunities. In other words, accessibility is a crucial part of their company culture, and so is empowering employees to learn new skills and discover new things about themselves.

In addition, businesses use video conferencing to expand team collaboration and communication.

Expand Team Collaboration and Communication

This one seems pretty obvious, but it’s a must-have. Companies worldwide leverage video conferencing technology to expand team collaboration and communication.

Without genuine collaboration and effective communication, your team will always be out of sync, primarily if it consists of in-office, hybrid, and fully-remote workers.

Video conferencing tools bring employees together to converse and collaborate on projects regardless of physical location. In addition, they inspire the essence of in-office work, with virtual watercooler conversations, lunch breaks, small team discussions, and company-wide events.

The more your workplace culture values communication and collaboration, the better your employees will be at leveraging video conferencing to improve how they work together. Conversely, the more they adapt to video conferencing, the better their communication and collaboration will be, thus improving your company culture.

Lastly, companies use video conferencing to connect with external audiences.

Connect With External Audiences

Businesses love video conferencing for their internal teams. However, we should discuss how wonderful these tools are for their external audiences. For instance, companies use video conferencing to:

• Connect with potential business partners
• Enhance recruiting and onboarding efforts
• Participate in industry events and conferences
• Host virtual customer appreciation events
• Announce new partnerships
• Host webinars for product demos, thought-leadership conversations, or lead nurturing

Slack, Peloton, and Nespresso are excellent examples of companies that take their product demos to the next level with video conferencing tools.

Understand that workplace culture impacts how the above companies use video conferencing to connect with external audiences. Teams must value relationships and service to leverage video conferencing effectively in this regard.

If they don’t appreciate how crucial customers are to company success, they won’t treat customers with the respect they deserve. Teams also won’t see video conferencing as another way to inspire connection with customers.

On the other hand, if your culture is built on genuine relationships, service, and connection, your team will do everything they can to inspire lasting relationships with your external audience, including leveraging video conferencing.

Conclusion

We hope this article helps you look at workplace culture and video conferencing in a new light. Each supports the other’s development. When your workplace culture supports technology, employee growth, connection, and teamwork, video conferencing becomes that much more powerful in your workforce.