Auto-Framing Technology | Logitech Business

The Problem with Inequitable Hybrid Meetings

In a typical hybrid meeting, remote participants miss out on non-verbal cues that they would normally get in-person, along with overall context (for example, the ability to keep track of who is speaking). When the camera frames only the active speaker, remote participants can miss reactions like body language, facial gestures, and other cues that are vital to communication.

This affects in-person participants, too. In-person participants in hybrid meetings often struggle to see and hear remote participants fully due to poor visual and audio quality. As a result, they can often feel disconnected from those who join remotely, and will often instinctually focus on those who are physically in the room rather than those who are on-screen.

Remote participants taking a backseat in meetings due to technical limitations can lead to “proximity bias.”¹ Proximity bias occurs when in-office workers gain arbitrary advantages over remote workers due to their location. It is the result of an “out of sight, out of mind” effect that takes place when remote participants are difficult to see and hear. This leads down a predictable path: unequal participation, disengagement, meeting outcomes left on the table, and dissatisfied employees.

The exclusion of remote participants from hybrid meetings is not a sustainable approach to the new world of work. It can result in disempowered workers who struggle to influence conversations, access decision-making, and get things done, along with a divided work culture. There is an increasing sense of urgency to solve this problem and make the hybrid meeting experience equally accessible for all participants, with equal visibility and equal presence.

Engineering an Equal Experience

RightSight 2 is a big step forward on the journey to creating an equitable hybrid meeting experience. At Logitech, we are striving to make all aspects of hybrid work better for everyone at the same time, which is why we continue to create these innovations.

RightSight 2 will also be used to create unique, platform-specific experiences. For example, we’ve integrated Speaker View with the Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery platform, which supports multiple streams from a single meeting room. We take the stream of the active speaker and the stream of the room, and make these into two individual tiles for the remote participant's viewing experience.

Additional platform integrations will be released through future CollabOS updates.

RightSight 2 is compatible with major video conferencing platforms like Microsoft Teams on Android and Windows, Zoom Rooms, Google Meet, GoTo Room, RingCentral Rooms, Pexip Room, and Tencent Meeting Rooms.

Deploy RightSight 2 today and put your hybrid workforce on the same page in any space. Get RightSight 2 by updating CollabOS 1.5 through the Sync device management platform. Or, read more about the CollabOS 1.5 release.