Posted by Bangalore: Cisco has announced a new People Insights feature that will promote personal well-being among its Webex users. People Insights feature addresses issues around the personal well-being of people amid the pandemic, which has impacted the way people work today.
Many among the remote working people have already experience its impact they have complained of meeting fatigue and burnout. And that’s where the new feature will help them work smarter with better quality connections and an inclusive work experience for all users.
The feature is available to all Webex users through a personalised and private view. With this feature, user can set personal goals for meetings, work-life integration, connections and focus time. The insights generated are in three areas – personal, team and organisational. Cisco said the feature undertakes users’ privacy and security concerns, ensuring the information is only available to the users.
The People Insights feaure, Cisco said is intended to be available globally, but will being rolled-out in a phased approach over the coming year. Initially, the feature will be available to select customers in the US starting this summer.
In the post-COVID phase, a new hybrid work norm is slowly evolving where employees will work have to from the office for some days and the rest of the days will work from home.
This changing work norm makes more critical than ever the need for tools that help people thrive while they are physically working. Cisco observed it as one of the biggest areas of opportunity to help people better manage their time and working relationships.
The company said that with a window into the trends and insights of how we work, individuals and leaders can now recalibrate how they use time, who they work with and uncover blind spots.
For example, gaining visibility into how many meetings user accept but don’t attend, user tendency to multitask during meetings, with whom user most frequently collaborate, the percentage of meetings taking place outside of the user team’s preferred working hours, or silos in user’s organisation that need support.
“At Webex, we believe it all starts with you – from the people you interact with to the networks you build and nurture,” said Jeetu Patel, SVP and GM Security and Collaboration – Cisco.
“We’re focused on helping people achieve more positive, productive and inclusive work experiences. Whether they are seated across the table or across the screen from their teammates,” added Patel.
“Having meaningful insights let you seamlessly collaborate and build quality connections, while also helping you focus your time in the best way possible will change, how we think about productivity and prioritize well-being in a hybrid workplace,” commented Patel.
According to Cisco’s EVP and Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer, Fran Katsoudas, the most precious resource is time. “The decisions we make around how we spend our time and connect with others, affects our performance, mental health and well-being,” said Katsoudas.
“People Insights help us to deliberately design our day – based on our priorities, personal preferences, and goals – to be at our best at work, at home, and with our teams. At Cisco, we believe that when we get teams right, we win,” explained Katsoudas.
“Teams are where the magic happens – they’re the engine of our enterprise where individual expertise meet powerful collaboration to be the spark for our innovation,” added Katsoudas.
“These insights enable a more inclusive work experience and empower our people to develop and leverage their collective collaboration network while helping leaders act at the intersection of performance, empathy, and service to others to build connected and effective teams,” Katsoudas continued.
Employee well-being must be prioritized as the line between work and home continues to blur and the number of work hours is on the rise, according to Aragon Research’s CEO and Lead Analyst Jim Lundy.
“There is a growing feeling of “invisibility” for employees who are less apt to engage virtually; with a hybrid work model, businesses need to wrap their arms around this very large and varied issue,” said Lundy.
With 600 million monthly participants and connecting 6 billion calls every month – Cisco Webex is one of the few platforms that offer global scale to businesses and organisations. Webex has a rich history of helping employees innovate and remain productive wherever they are.