1

HOW TO WIN YOUR VIDEO CONFERENCING ROLLOUT

EBOOK

2

In IT, when everything’s going right, no one notices, but when one thing goes

wrong, everyone complains. Some might call putting up with these conditions

quietly heroic; others might call it a thankless job. It probably just depends on

what kind of day you’re having.

But no matter how your day is going, you know how important IT is for a

thriving workplace. The Future Workforce Study 2016 found that technology

is an important factor for 82% of those under the age of 34 when deciding

whether or not to take a new job. For 42%, it could also prompt them to

quit. So choosing the right video conferencing solution is important, but just

as important is the way you roll out that new solution to your employees.

No matter how obvious the benefits of the new tech are to you after a long

search process, the only way to maximize your ROI is to carefully think

through your rollout.

INTRO

3

This eBook explores the keys to success that you need to consider before, during, and after rollout:

BEFORESetting clear metrics for success

Assessing your IT infrastructure

Getting employees engaged

01

DURINGEmpowering change champions to boost company-wide use of the new tool

Leveraging support from leadership during the initial launch

Helping your employees use the new tool to improve their day to day

02

AFTERAmping up ROI with ongoing efforts to drive employee buy-in

Creating incentive structures that reward mastery of the new tool

Making your IT staff to feel like quiet heroes instead of harassed drones

03

4

SET CLEAR METRICS FOR SUCCESS

BEFORE THE ROLLOUT

Before you do anything else to prep your rollout, you

need to decide how you measure its success. Will you

focus on aggregate usage data? Number of employees

registered to use the system? Cost savings? Time

savings? Perhaps you want to blend these metrics to

develop a higher-level view of your ROI. No matter how

you evaluate, having clear metrics from the start will help

keep everyone on the same page through a long and

complex evaluation process.

01

5

GET YOUR EMPLOYEES ENGAGED

Yes, it’s going to take some time and energy to synthesize

conflicting employee feedback. But consider this: a report from

IT service provider Softchoice found that when employees aren’t

consulted before a tech rollout, they are twice as likely to be

dissatisfied with the tool. You don’t want to cut corners with

stakes that high. Instead, follow these steps:

Compare that feedback against the pros and cons of the new tool

How will this tool directly address your employees’ concerns?

Get a clear picture of what your average employee is like

How tech savvy are they?

Do they like to experiment with new technologies?

How long might it take to train them on this new tool?

Get data about previous tech rollouts to help you set UX expectations

How intuitive is the solution?

Does it prioritize usability with crystal-clear UX?

Get employee feedback on the tools you’re already using

What would make your employees feel more productive

and better connected?

6

START WITH A TRIAL

Once you’ve settled on a tool that aligns with employee needs and

abilities, you can really cement company-wide engagement by running

a trial of the proposed video conferencing solution. Be sure to clearly

broadcast the message that you are taking employee opinions into

consideration before making a purchase decision. Once people are

engaged and excited, take a three-phase approach to evaluating the

results of the trial period:

Observe meetings and conduct focus groups to see how employees

are interacting with the video conferencing solution.

Check usage data during trial—if employees aren’t using the tool

during trial, they most likely won’t use it when it is deployed.

Survey end-users throughout the trial to get opinions on the video

conferencing solution.

ASSESS YOUR IT INFRASTRUCTURE

Assessing your IT infrastructure is especially important when

you’re looking at video conferencing as a way to erase the barriers

to effective collaboration. There are a number of ways to diagnose

your network capabilities. Directly compare your network’s bandwidth,

packet loss, latency, and jitter with the system requirements of the

solution you’re considering. If your infrastructure can’t provide,

you’ll be compromising video and audio quality, which is sure to

quash your ROI.

7

Change champions are essential to the first phase of your

official rollout. They are most excited about the new solution

and can help drive adoption across your company. So how

do you recognize a change champion? Beyond being early

volunteers who offer positive suggestions, change champions

often possess a certain degree of informal power. You’re

looking for the people whose advice and help are routinely

sought after from all over the company. Often their opinions

are passed around widely via informal networks of knowledge

with your company.

CHANGE CHAMPIONS, ASSEMBLE!

DURING THE ROLLOUT

02

8

When you have identified change champions from across the

company, it’s time to bring them together and empower them.

When your change champions feel ownership of the narrative

surrounding the rollout, they’re more likely to spread the good news:

Ask for their insight on the value of this video conferencing

tool for the company.

Ask for specific instances of team meetings that would run

more smoothly using the new system.

Ask them how they saw meetings improve during the trial period.

It is essential that top-level management be very visibly enthusiastic

about the new video conferencing solution and that they take an

active role in change management. No one else can command the kind

of company-wide attention that the executives of your company do, so

be sure you have strong endorsements of the new video conferencing

solution from them.

If your senior management is truly excited about the new solution,

their actions will speak louder than words. When Shift, an online

marketplace for used cars, implemented Highfive as their new

video conferencing solution, the top-down support for the system

was immediately clear. “Our executive team was so passionate about

it,” said Hannah O’Brien, Logistics Manager at Shift, “they started to

decline any meeting invite that didn’t have a Highfive link.” That kind

of direct support for change sends a signal loud and clear. And with

the blessing of upper-level management, you can follow up on that

support by removing the HDMI cables and dongles from your

previous conferencing systems or blocking DIY video solutions

on web browsers.

TOP-DOWN ENTHUSIASM IS A GAME CHANGER

9

“Our executive team was so passionate about it,” said Hannah O’Brien, Logistics Manager

at Shift, “they started to decline any meeting invite that didn’t have a Highfive link.”

“

10

Stay positive. When you announce the rollout

and training opportunities, make sure your

messaging is timely, relevant, and most of all

encouraging. You should be able to clearly

communicate why this solution was chosen,

what employees can expect from it, and all

the ways it will make their jobs easier and

more productive.

Be thorough. It’s important to cover all

the bases in your training. In the Softchoice

report, 71% of respondents said they use

only half a tool’s features. Make sure your

employees know how to use your new

video conferencing for seamless scheduling

and calendar extensions, user-friendly

screen sharing, and integration with other

communication tools such as Slack. Any

one of these features could be the key

that unlocks new levels of productivity.

Discuss Security. When you brief

employees on potential security issues,

be sure to provide advice on how to

prevent those issues. Ideally, you want to

offer solutions that are as easy to remember

as they are to implement. And while it’s

important to take security risks seriously,

be sure to balance that discussion with a

clear explanation of how the new video

solution is secured. Confidence in the

security of the system is critical to

driving employee adoption.

Start buzz. One great way to bring this

message home is to treat your initial onsite

training events the way Steve Jobs treated

he launch of a new iPhone. Jobs was a

master of buzz creation, and you can take

a page from his playbook by enlisting the

help of your marketing and PR teams to give

your training session a sense of excitement

and anticipation:

Have all employees stop work and

attend the event in person and via

video conference.

Invite company leaders to share how

the new tech will impact people in

their department

Bring in customer success managers

from your video solution provider to show

employees real-life examples of how the

new tech will make their lives better.

No one ever complained about a little free

swag, and the promise of a free t-shirt or a

chance to win a cool gadget is a great way

to attract attention and boost attendance.

THE BIG REVEAL

After the prep work is done, it’s time to launch

the tool and start training. The Softchoice

report found that 38% of employees have

access to communications tools they don’t

know how to use and thus never use. That’s

an easily preventable ROI disaster. The way

you initially present and train people on your

new video conferencing solution will set the

tone for employee onboarding and use.

11

Congratulations! Your big launch was big success! The balloon

drop at the end might have been just a hair over the top, but

everybody seems really excited and well informed. Now is not

the time, however, to ride off into the sunset. Sorry, but that’s

just not how people work. Training and efforts to promote user

adoption aren’t a one-time deal. They need to be ongoing and

readily available. Here are a few initiatives

to consider:

AFTER THE ROLLOUT

03

12

Turn your online documentation into a wiki. Wikis are great for

organizing complex and evolving bodies of knowledge, and they

accommodate screenshots, charts, videos, and other ways of getting

ideas across quickly and clearly. Perhaps most im portantly, a wiki can

connect the people with answers to the people who have questions

but aren’t sure who to ask. In this way, a wiki extends the training

process and makes your company’s informal networks of knowledge

sharing more explicit and robust.

Offer IT office hours. Have IT sit in on the first five minutes of the first

few meetings to make sure everything goes smoothly. If there is any

confusion about how to get up and running, they can nip it in the bud

before confusion turns into wild rumors and frustration.

Create a wealth of resources. The goal is to create an environment

that frequently reminds employees to use the video solution while

also making it as easy as possible to get questions answered.

Make basic how-to documentation and troubleshooting advice

available in print and electronically.

Create posters for video-equipped conference rooms so that

your most important meetings have an added layer of technical

support built in.

Include user tips and innovative use cases from across different

departments in regular company-wide emails and newsletters.

Set up incentive programs. Points-based rewards programs are

very popular, as they allow individual users to earn points for certain

behaviors (tied to your success metrics, remember?), which they can

spend at a special site that offers their choice of items or discounts

on things like travel, fitness, or restaurants. You can also harness the

power of gamification by setting up teams across departments to

compete with one another. Teams could meet monthly to compile

and submit their best user tips to the wiki. Once the submissions were

in, judges could then declare a winner for the month, awarding the

winning team with tickets to a show or sporting event. This has the

added benefit of fostering team unity and collaboration, which is

why you went in on a new video solution in the first place, right?

Acknowledge outstanding users. A wall-of-fame program is a simple,

effective way to recognize the employees who have achieved the most

goals, provided the most feedback, mentored the most people, or

otherwise distinguished themselves during the rollout. You can even

reconnect that visibility back into further training opportunities by

asking these top users to record videos for the wiki or host in-person

session in which they demonstrate their best tips for using the new

tech efficiently.

13

At Highfive, we deliver high-quality video conferencing with

the easiest-to-use meeting room solution that combines elegant,

lightweight hardware with intuitive cloud software. And at a

fraction of the cost of traditional systems, you can put Highfive

in every room, not just the boardroom. See how Highfive

can transform your meeting rooms and improve face-to-face

collaboration in every meeting.

YOU’RE ON YOUR WAY — HIGHFIVE!

CONCLUSION

The ultimate goal is to foster this cycle of training,

incentives, and recognition until it becomes self-reinforcing,

meaning the benefits of mastering the new video solution

become a reward unto themselves. How will you know

when the cycle has started to self-reinforce? That will

depend on your company’s circumstances and which

success metrics you chose to track at the start of your

rollout. But if you kept those metrics in mind throughout

this process, if you engaged employees prior to rollout, if

you sought out and empowered change champions, if you

leveraged top-down enthusiasm for your new video solution,

threw an exciting launch event, and followed up with

ongoing training and incentive programs, you can expect

to see the results: employees who feel valued and more

productive, skyrocketing ROI, and, most importantly,

a whole new understanding of what seamlessly collaboration

can accomplish.

GET A DEMO