The future of work is hybrid, and Cisco is ready for it

The future of work? Cisco has no doubts: it’s hybrid. And companies that don’t adapt risk losing talent. There is a problem: according to the multinational, 68% of companies have not yet understood what is meant by “hybrid work” and have not adapted in terms of hardware and, above all, offices.

Hardware does not mean that of meeting rooms, not only at least, but also refers to the devices provided by companies to those who work remotely. To date, in fact, few have invested in quality webcams and microphones to be associated with the classic notebook that is now part of the endowment of many workers.

Cisco, on the other hand, believes it has clear ideas about how the office and workspace should evolve, but this is only because it started moving in this direction before the pandemic, which was only an accelerator for projects that already they were in the works.

The office of the future according to Cisco

As he explains in the context of a meeting with the press Michael Dalmazzoni, Director, Collaboration South Europe, France and Israel of Cisco, there are four aspects on which the multinational has focused to transform its office. An approach that according to the manager should be embraced by all companies that want to embrace hybrid work.

First of all, it is necessary rethinking spaces from a co-working perspective. No desks assigned to individual employees, who will be free to choose which workstation to choose according to their needs.

To satisfy them, corporate offices will have to provide both small rooms, where you can concentrate in solitude, and other rooms where you can collaborate together with other team members, both small, for two or three people, and larger, able to contain 6 or 7 people, as well as those who connect remotely. And there must be rooms for socializing, which in some ways are the most important: the task of the company headquarters is precisely that, to allow for the exchange of ideas, collaboration.

All the rooms must then have large screens, so that a video call can be started at any moment by relying on a quality audio/video sector (and we will see later what solutions Cisco offers in this regard.

Another key theme is that of employee health and well-being. So careful positioning of the lights, and adequate soundproofing of the prints, so as to avoid disturbing those who work in the office next door. The speakers should ideally be positioned on the ceiling, invisible, and the screens should provide contextual information on how to best use spaces and devices, but also on the temperature and quality of the air inside the room.

One cannot fail to mention the sustainabilityanother key element, and here IoT devices come into play (partly from Cisco, such as the Meraki video cameras that offer indications on the number of people present, in others produced by third parties), which make it possible to digitize the offices, verifying the occupation of spaces, so as to turn on lights and heating only when necessary.

In short, to achieve all the objectives, it is clear that it is necessary to completely rethink the spaces and, ultimately, digitize the buildings, so as to integrate all the technologies mentioned and make them more intelligent and on a human scale. A concept that may seem very generic, but Cisco wanted to give us a practical test. During an event held at the company’s Cybersecurity Center in Milan at the Museum of Science and Technology, where the most recent solutions of the multinational are being tested and in which Edge9 participated, we connected with Mark MillerDirector, Cisco’s Global Collaboration Center of Excellence, who was located in the New York office, which has already been updated to support the new forms of work.

The technologies of the Cisco headquarters in New York

Cisco employees working in New York are not limited in their choice of work location: they can work from home, the office or wherever they see fit. “Cisco’s hybrid work policy is that there is no such thing as a line“, explains Miller, and the employees are therefore not obliged to spend 2 or more days in the office, as often happens in many Italian companies that have timidly embraced agile forms of work. When they decide to enter the office, they will be able to choose from one of many smart screens present where to go and position yourself, booking the room.

A plan of the building is shown on the screen, and on each room there is information relating to the number of people present, the temperature, the air quality.

Here IoT technologies from Cisco are used, such as Meraki cameras, to count the occupancy of the rooms and measure the temperature, but also from third parties, such as sensors that detect air quality.

After the video call with Miller, we moved to another room dedicated to managers’ meetings, to understand what “collaboration” means for Cisco.

Here was a setup for hybrid meetings created by Cisco: two huge screens side by side, to give a panoramic view and “bring” the interlocutors closer. Above these two huge screens there was a third, slightly smaller one, useful for example for participants connected from a second remote office. Finally, on the table in the room, there were numerous microphone pods to capture the audio of each participant. And Cisco has also focused a lot on audio: the room was soundproofed, so as to limit external noise from being annoying, and the system was equipped with an array of loudspeakers capable of faithfully reproducing speech without distortion.

Work anywhere: the results of the Venywhere experiment

Cisco’s approach to hybrid work is open-minded and the multinational is experimenting with various formulas, especially opening up to digital nomads. An approach that is very popular with the younger generations and could have an impact on society, changing the way cities are lived. An example is the Venywhere project, created by Cisco in collaboration with the Ca’ Foscari University. 16 people from Cisco moved to the beautiful city for 70 days. The experiment envisaged that they could work anywhere: from home, in a bar, or in one of the four offices set up for the occasion in the city and equipped with Cisco collaboration technologies.

The idea was to understand how these people operated and if the concept of “city in 15 minutes” could work. This paradigm requires cities to be rethought so that everything, from the post office to the pharmacy, from the grocery store to the main services for the citizen, can be reached within 15 minutes on foot. An approach that, in this case, worked well in Venice. According to Cisco management, in fact, these 16 people have brought better results than other Cisco employees in the same position who, however, found themselves working in a more traditional way.

It is therefore not strange that Cisco has decided to further expand this experiment, replicating it again in Venice, but also in Rhodes and the USA, and in the future also in Southern Italy and Africa.