How to facilitate collaboration in a flex office?

The standardised office is no longer the norm, but the workspace can now change from one day to the next. This is the principle of the flex office, which has become widespread in companies in recent years with teleworking and hybrid working. Video collaboration tools are a way of guaranteeing the performance and reliability of this new way of working.

The flex office, a new corporate culture

With the development of teleworking, office space is shrinking. Employees are no longer all in the office at the same time, and even less in the same office every day.

The flex office is one response to this. It consists of changing the workspace according to daily tasks and professional or personal constraints.

An employee can thus choose to work from home on Monday, in the company’s coworking room on Tuesday or in a café on Wednesday. The principle is simple: to encourage mobility in order to decompartmentalise employees and make them more responsible. In addition, the flex office, like hybrid working methods, improves work-life balance. A free and happy employee?

A working method favoured by employees

In 2021, a Deskeo survey of nearly 4,000 workers (41% employees, 37% managers and 22% executives) revealed that 55% of them were considering the flex office. These statistics echo the growing need for mobility among employees. Some even push the boundaries by becoming digital nomads.

But flex office, like nomadism, cannot be improvised. These hybrid working methods require support and a certain agility. To facilitate collaboration in the flex office, it is first and foremost necessary to be equipped with video collaboration tools.

Facilitating exchanges

A computer and an Internet connection are enough to go and work by the coffee machine, on a terrace or in a meeting room. However, it is important not to forget to maintain the link with your colleagues. It is this team cohesion that will enable the benefits of the flex office to be reaped. Supporting employees in the good practices of the flex office (working hours and places, installation, equipment, etc.) is therefore necessary, as is maintaining excellent communication.

This is why the deployment of video collaboration tools is essential. The video collaboration solution must be easy to use and bring fluidity in the exchanges. Tixeo offers a video conferencing solution with many collaboration modes (virtual open-space, meeting, conference…). The video adapts to the quality of the user’s network, to guarantee an optimal quality of the discussions.

Secure communications

Although they offer the possibility of communicating quickly and efficiently, video collaboration tools must not expose the company to cyber attacks. In fact, in a flex office, employees work in various locations. They exchange company data via video conference which can be listened in on. This tool must therefore have a high level of security to protect these communications.

But today, most video collaboration solutions do not include cybersecurity in their commitments. Their data protection is generally insufficient and many publishers host their data abroad. Companies that use such software can then be confronted with cyber espionage.

Tixeo’s European video collaboration solution is the most secure on the market: it offers end-to-end encryption of communications which eliminates any risk of eavesdropping. No need to censor a sensitive topic during an online meeting, no backdoor can give access to communications.

Accessible to all flex office employees, regardless of where they are located, the chosen video collaboration tool must be the subject of training. This avoids the multiplication of other software that could hinder collaboration.