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HOW TO WIN YOUR VIDEO CONFERENCING ROLLOUT
EBOOK
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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
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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
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“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.”
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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