(Ping! Zine Web Tech Magazine) Employee happiness is the cornerstone of true success. The more satisfied the people who work for you are, the more effective your business will be and the more work will you accomplish. Video conferencing can be a vital element of your office policies, improving the quality of the work environment, bolstering interpersonal relationships, developing the sense of community further, and, of course, improving your work efficiency. How does that work?
More Freedom Is More Productivity
Happy employees are productive employees. However, how does that translate to actual figures? According to last 
year’s report from IBM (as reported by newsfactor.com), adoption of flexible mobile device policies improved overall productivity by close to 10 percent and customer response times by close to 60 percent. Video conferencing takes this one step further by giving your employees the ability to work, meet and collaborate regardless of their physical location. Telecommuting becomes a real, tangible possibility, allowing them to work from the comfort of their own home. Breaking out of the office environment can provide the stimulus that the creativity and productivity of employees that you need for your business to succeed.
More Contact between Employees
While it might seem counterintuitive, video conferencing can improve contact between your team members and thus their happiness. Humans are social animals and need to interact with others to do their best. While classic office settings tend to promote relationships, the cubicle-based office often does precisely the opposite. With video conferencing, you can connect contractors and salaried employees with ease. With a proper video conferencing client, such as the Blue Jeans Network, you can stay in touch with a worker on the other side of the continent as easily as with Jane down the corridor. It’s this personal dimension of video conferencing, the ability to see each other in person, which makes it an extremely valuable tool for building the team spirit and happiness of your coworkers, as pointed out by managingyourhr.com.
Better Feedback and Collaboration
A crucial component of workplace satisfaction is the feeling that your work matters. An integral component of that is feedback provided by the management. With video conferencing, it becomes easier to summarize worker achievements and contact them, as well as facilitate cooperation between employees. That’s right – it’s not just fulfilling the innate need for interaction with other humans. Conferencing, with the breadth of available tools for sharing and collaborating on data, makes it extremely easy to pool resources, exchange documents, demonstrate strategies and ideas, evaluate concept, and much, much more. Employees will know their work matters when they actively interact with others and evaluate their work, as well as receive timely feedback on their ideas. Of course, it will also boost your productivity, which is a welcome side-effect.
A Different Approach to Management
The most important element of video conferencing and the long distance collaboration it promotes is the shift in management, as outlined by hrvoice.org. Rather than focusing on work, long distance work, by necessity, focuses on results and achievements. The employee who is given free reign to organize his time and work effort is a happier employee, as they know their boss trusts them to make the right choices, not to mention, they aren’t forced to work in an office setting from nine to five. The better and more efficient they are, the better off they will be. Even in an office setting, video conferencing can help introduce this approach to work. A goal-oriented, result-based focus of a workplace can have a tremendous impact on your business.
It’s Cheaper and More Convenient
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of video conferencing is that it allows employees to safe money and enjoy a more convenient way of handling meetings. As they can attend them now virtually, they don’t incur the expenses that come with traditional conferences. Attendance is easier, with fewer obstacles that stand in the way. All of these help improve the happiness of anyone who works, particularly when meetings are a regular feature of their work. It’s simply a function of the money saved on travel costs and other payments necessary to attend a regular meeting. As money is the greatest motivator, it comes as no surprise that savings are very much welcome and boost job satisfaction like no other factor.
Bottom Line
It comes as no surprise that video conferencing is taking the business sector by storm. As avinteractive.com estimates, by 2016, the majority of business meetings will take place over the Internet, using a video conferencing protocol. The fact that smart implementation of this technology can positively affect the happiness of your employees is yet another reason why investing it is a matter of good business, rather than jumping on the technological bandwagon.