Thanks to the telephone and internet industry, the business has the option of holding a meeting from anywhere around the world. Doesn’t matter if the employees are at home, traveling outside of the city or if the CEO is on the other side of the world, with just a click of a button, everyone can be called. With the help of the audio and video feed through the internet or phones, it will feel like the meeting is held at the office.

This used to be a technology that only the biggest corporations could pay for, but with the technological advancements, we have had these last couple of years, this kind of service has become much cheaper. If you are a small business owner you are probably wondering whether investing in video conferencing is really worth it.

To help you come to a decision we are going to go through all the advantages and disadvantages of it in 2020.

Advantages

• Faster information sharing

Every year companies in the business world are constantly striving to grow more and more. This can be done if both the employees and the employers work as efficiently as possible. This means that the decisions from the CEOs and the managers need to be made and shared with the employers of the company as fast as possible.

However, informing your workers on time can get tricky, especially if they are located on different floors in your office building, if they are working on a project from home or if they are currently located in a different city or country. You have two options. You could either contact every person individually which can be quite time consuming or you could send them a mail. While a mail can deliver any kind of information you want, it simply does not have the same effect as a meeting.

Fortunately, with access to video conferencing, you can schedule a meeting and contact everyone at the same time. During the conference call, you will be able to speak with everyone and they would be able to ask you all kinds of questions to clear some things up. It is simple, fast and efficient. Just what a small business needs to compete with conglomerates.

• File sharing and collaboration

The ease of access to the internet has allowed many companies to branch out in several different cities and countries. The internet allows employees to easily share files with each other. With the features video conferencing services come with, you will be able to simultaneous video chat with your coworkers, share files live and even work on them at the same time. It promotes collaboration between the workers which is definitely what every small business needs. If you are looking for video conferencing services, click here

This kind of tool can also be used by students when working on a group project.

• Happier employees

One of the best ways to keep your company efficient is to make sure that your employees are both happy and healthy. If they feel like their job is an obligation they won’t be as efficient as you would expect. Just the idea of not having to go to the office every single day will definitely boost the morale of your employees.

They won’t have to deal with the tiniest problems physically, they can just hop on a video conference and solve anything in a couple of minutes. No more hour-long drives or bus rides. It will save them money and time while bringing in higher profits for your business.

Studies have shown that companies that use video conferencing have employees that get a lot more sleep which ultimately leads to higher happiness.

• Cheaper

You might think that equipping all of your offices and all of your workers in your company with the right equipment to hold an online meeting is expensive, but that is simply not true. Once you make an investment on the equipment you probably won’t have to spend a single dime in the future. Sure, a few microphones or cameras might get broken in a few years, but the expenses of items such as those are insignificant.

Now compare the expenses of video and audio equipment with the expenses of booking flight tickets for your employees that work overseas and their hotel rooms. Sometimes those flights might get canceled which can lead to even more expenses and frustration.

Disadvantages

Even though you can see your employees through the screen and they can see you, the understanding between you will never be the same as when talking in person. The body language, the facial expressions cannot be shown through a camera, no matter how high quality it is. Sure, you could get a wider angle lens for your camera and make your expressions a bit more noticeable, but it will never be the same as a respectable handshake or a hug after finishing a hard project.

• Relies on connectivity

One of the biggest downsides to video conferencing is that it simply relies too much on the internet or telecommunication. If the internet in your office building ever fails, you won’t be able to host a meeting for who knows how long. If the internet at the home of any of your workers fails, you also won’t be able to contact them.

Sometimes, there can be connectivity issues that can be frustrating and be the cause of unnecessary stress. Audio or visual cutouts might happen during very important parts of the meeting which might go unnoticed and lead to misunderstandings between the workers in your company. You will need to have IT help on hand always, in case anything goes wrong.

• Training your employees

As an owner of the business, you probably won’t have to bother about dealing with technical issues because you will always have IT help present at the office, but your employees won’t when they work from home. This means that you will have to go through hours of training to help them understand how to deal with certain technical issues regarding the conference calls.