[Exclusive] In conversation with CiOL: Mr Ankur Goel, Managing Director for Poly India & SAARC

It is not a secret – the office as we know it has changed drastically in 2020 due to the pandemic. Overnight, companies had to shift to remote working models, implement efficient collaboration technologies and tools to ensure that business continuity isn’t hampered and help employees get accustomed to new ways of work. For this, Poly serves a wide range of customers – from NIC in government sector which is used by top government officials, SGPGI university in Lucknow for telehealth services to Vedanta just to name a few.

Poly is a collaboration technology company which offers industry’s leading headsets, video and audio conferencing devices and other collaboration services.  Looking at the conversations now, the future of work is hybrid. That is, companies foresee that employees will split their time between home (office) and office and the technology that makes this connection between the two worlds seamless and enables them with a good user experience will emerge to be crucial.

Mr Ankur Goel, MD for Poly India and SAARC, is an industry veteran in the collaboration segment with over 22 years of experience, With CiOL, he talks about the pandemic and the changes that it has brought about. Excerppt of the interview here.

Mr Ankur Goel, Managing Director for Poly India & SAARC

What were some of the things you miss while working from home? How did you maximize your productivity while working from home?

 One of the things I miss the most while working from home is having a dedicated workspace. For instance, having the right chair, table, lighting and acoustics make a lot of difference in how we focus and function while working. I also miss that at the office I used to get a chance to have impromptu conversations with my colleagues at the cafeteria or while passing by each other in the hallway. These are the few things that I miss most about work.

With respect to productivity, while working from home, I would say that it is all about discipline and having the right collaboration tools.  Due to the circumstances of the pandemic, most of us and our family members are working from home and our kids have online classes or tuitions. Naturally, the distractions are higher.

It is important that we invest in tools like video conferencing and headsets – this makes our online meetings much more interactive and we are able to replicate the office like meeting environment at home.

For me, having a good video conferencing device like Poly Eagle Eye Mini and Poly Eagle Eye Cube is an absolute must – it enhances my video quality and the user at the other end can see and hear me clearly thus making the meeting more meaningful and impactful. I also highly rely on Poly’s enterprise-grade headsets – these products have features like active noise cancelling and is very useful for me to block out the background noise and focus on the task at hand.

How are you personally dealing with the pandemic? Are there any new activities that you have picked up?

The silver lining of the pandemic is definitely that I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with my family and it has been truly refreshing. Pre-pandemic days, I used to travel a lot for work and would not get the same amount of time to spend with my family. Also, surprisingly, over the last few months, I’ve had the opportunity to reach out to more customers and partners than ever before and have meaningful discussions about the industry, our pain points and how we can solve them.  This is perhaps owing to the fact that most of us are not travelling and are working from home.

The pandemic has pushed us out of our comfort zones and made us evaluate how we can approach and solve business problems. Personally, I have grown a lot and used this time to think about our business priorities and how we can make our customers’ collaboration journey easier.

I’ve also used this time to bring out the chef in me and have mastered cooking a few Indian dishes!

What is the Future of Work for new entrants in the new normal? How is the office culture evolving in the light of the pandemic? 

Over the last few months, there’s been a huge mindset shift in how remote workers are viewed and people are a lot more comfortable to communicate and collaborate remotely than pre-pandemic days.

Working at home is widely accepted now and many organisations have started realizing the cost benefits of remote working as they are saving a lot of expenses on real estate. Therefore, we foresee that the future of work will be hybrid.

Traditional offices won’t disappear, but it will take new form and shape and people will split their time between home office and office. There will be an effort to reduce the actual office space, and workplaces will be fitted out differently catering to the need to meet and collaborate on projects. Even if this move to reduce physical office space does not become mainstream,

organisations will have to repurpose or redesign the workspaces. The number of people physically attending a meeting will reduce, with some opting to continue to interact through video and collaboration solutions. There will be a need to have smaller huddle rooms for when colleagues choose to interact face-to-face - these huddle rooms will be fitted with high quality video conferencing systems.

Another trend we foresee is that organisations will focus on investing heavily in collaboration tools like video conferencing and headsets that enable employees to work from anywhere - according to industry reports from Ecosystem survey, 63% of organisations in Asia Pacific significantly increased their investments in conferencing devices and headsets to address the collaboration challenges during the COVID-19 crisis - with 41% increasing investments in videoconferencing devices, significantly.

This trend is expected to continue as companies move into a blended way of work. Video banking, teleconsultations and online learning have become mainstream. It has also facilitated engagement between supervisors and agents in the customer care sector. These use cases demonstrate how video has become critical in “keeping the business going” and in helping, organisations adapt to a new way of doing business. This shift will make businesses rethink how video can be leveraged to not only keep the engagement going but to drive sales; and will have a direct impact on both the top and the bottom line.

COVID-19 accelerated the transition to digital for all sectors. What will the new normal be and what kind of investments will companies focus on?

In the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, 90% of Indian organisations found that their IT environment was unprepared to handle the crisis. But since then, the transition to digital has no doubt accelerated across sectors and collaboration technology is at the heart of it.

The new normal will be hybrid working and focusing on user experience.  Many organisations are investing in this already and they’re saying that digital technologies for enhanced Employee Experience are here to stay. According to Ecosytm survey in India, 44% expect an increase in virtual meetings in the new normal that will emerge and they will by no means slow down on their investments in devices that can help their remote workforce.​

What are some best practices for business leaders while thinking about the future of work – how should they redesign, implement to enable hybrid workforce?

In the “next normal,” we need to create workspaces that give people choice—places to collaborate, think, create or simply check in with others.

Homeworking and co-working spaces will rise in prominence, but even with all the benefits they bring, we’ll still see a need for a central company workspace for idea generation, collaboration and to give the workforce its sense of identity. Across all these workspaces, the focus will be on creating environments that motivate and empower hybrid workers to be productive and do their best work. A few tips I would like to give are -

Rethink work patterns - Hybrid working brings flexibility on location, times and days that work is carried out. Review and revise work-from-home policies and focus on what employees need to be productive in their role.

Foster better collaboration - Encourage inclusive and productive work as teams become more virtual in nature. Create engaging and productive virtual workspaces, using noise-cancelling and intelligent acoustic solutions in dynamic headsets and video soundbars.

Optimize investment - Banish under-utilized office spaces that bring little return on real estate costs. Prioritize investment beyond the office walls to create flexible, collaborative, technology-enabled personal workspaces everywhere.