How IoT and the cloud can improve the meeting room experience
Twenty-three hours a week. That’s how much time on average that an executive spends in meetings, according to MIT’s Sloan Management Review. That’s approximately three whole business days’ worth of in-person and remote meetings, and for some of us it feels like even more. While most meetings are essential and help move forward impactful ideas, even the most important or most stimulating could use a boost.
Oftentimes, it’s not about the meeting content but about the environment itself that can be draining. For example, lighting, air quality, humidity and temperature can have a meaningful impact on the success and productivity of a meeting room workspace. Anyone who has tried to do a brainstorm session in a room that’s either too hot or too cold knows that it’s almost impossible to concentrate and come up with good ideas.
In fact, several studies have shown that indoor climate conditions can have significant physiological and psychological effects on employee performance. It can impact your concentration, attention span, alertness and even your mood. One study from researchers Nigel Oseland and Adrian Burton concluded that a combination of adequate air quality, temperature and lighting has a measurable impact on employee performance. Some additional takeaways from related studies include:
It’s no surprise then, that creating the right ambient work conditions is fast becoming a top priority for businesses, especially as we continue to reopen offices. But first we have to understand the conditions in order to improve them.
There’s a smart way to do this and it involves placing IoT sensors in your workspace and feeding the data it picks up into a cloud-based analytics application. Imagine having all this data about your meeting rooms at your fingertips. Not only can you easily adjust room comfort settings to help drive productivity and work transformation, but you can also save on overhead costs when a room is not in use by ensuring lights and devices are turned off. These added insights are a revolutionary way to approach and refine your smart spaces.
One example of a solution to address this need is Synappx™ Workspaces, part of Sharp’s Synappx family of smart office solutions. It monitors temperature changes, humidity and air quality, as well as attendee impact on the environment, providing status alerts that can help business leaders make informed decisions about the workspace. Synappx Workspaces collects this data through an IoT sensor hub on the Windows collaboration display from Sharp and combines it with calendar and room usage data from Microsoft 365.
Employees will eventually head back to the office, and when they do will occupy workspaces and meeting rooms again. When this occurs, we know a first priority is, of course, safety. But we are also working to make those 23 hours of meetings a more productive and enjoyable experience through the power of technology.