As part of Cisco, I look after the pre-sales Technical Consultants within the UK&I Collaboration team. Recently, one of my team (let’s call him “Tom”) had to undergo surgery to correct a longstanding problem (I won’t go into the gory details!!) which meant that he could not drive nor travel for around 4 weeks. Normally, this would mean that Tom would be sat at home, disconnected from the business world and slowly going stir-crazy.
However, Tom has a Cisco DX80 video endpoint at home and is able to connect with Cisco people, Partners and Customers from home. In fact, within a couple of hours of being discharged from hospital he was on a video call with the rest of the team and, in his words, “felt connected with his peers”. It also has the added benefit that we could see how well he was doing as we really are a caring team.
Tom spent around 4 weeks working from home and during this time he was happy to be called on video for demonstrations of how video can be used for remote workers, for meetings with customers and partners. If Tom had not been able to communicate via video, then this would have been 4 weeks of boredom and isolation. From Cisco’s point of view, we had the benefit of being able to make great use of the time that Tom had at home, whilst not abusing his time. Before we had video at home, this would have been lost time to both Tom and to Cisco.
You’ll be delighted to know that Tom is well on the road to recovery and is back in the driving seat (metaphorically and physically) again.
How many, do you think, UKI productivity hours are lost to businesses’ who can’t/don’t accommodate Tom’s situation? I don’t think there is an accurate measure of this, but it must happen all the time. I’ll bet most people can recall a similar circumstance in your own career.
Have you got any stories of how Video Conferencing has helped people make great use of their time when they haven’t been able to get to an office?
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