Presented by Zoom
Across the world, today’s workplace is actively being shaped by both leadership and employee preferences, and is aimed at attracting and retaining talent. As a result, a Zoom study found 64% of leaders report that they’re rocking a hybrid workforce, while a full 95% say they’ve made their workplace more flexible in the past two years. The good news is that human connection isn’t limited to the butts-in-seats model — hybrid workers reported feeling connected to their companies and coworkers more often than their in-office peers. Plus, generative AI is proving to be a powerful tool that doesn’t just significantly amp up productivity, but helps facilitate relationships between coworkers.
How are business leaders approaching the unique challenges that hybrid work brings, and how are they setting themselves up for the future of work, even as the workplace and GenAI continue to evolve? VentureBeat sat down with Zoom leaders Gary Sorrentino, global CIO, and Smita Hashim, chief product officer, to discuss the major challenges they’re helping customers and partners tackle in a modern, multigenerational workforce.
VB: What are the current dynamics of the 2024 workplace? Do most companies have it figured out, or are we still muddling through?
Sorrentino: We see companies of all different sizes and a convergence of post-pandemic worries. People struggle with what their future work or current work will look like, whether that’s hybrid or in-person. We’re seeing a brand-new generation of very smart, very tech-savvy individuals coming into the workplace. We’ll be about 20% Gen Z by the end of the year and about 90% of them will be hired by millennials. This convergence means they have different ideas about how they can work more productively. We’re supporting so many different models of what hybrid work is, different models of how people are going to work together.
Hashim: We’re definitely navigating uncharted territory. People are discovering different ways to work. Out of the pandemic, there was a desire to be really prescriptive. But now there are a number of ways to work, including hybrid, and people realize things can be more flexible. We still have things to figure out, but we’re making significant strides and the tools are getting better at enhancing productivity and collaboration.
VB: The approach to the modern workplace is using AI as a strategy and not just a technology tool. How have you seen that manifesting at Zoom? How are you innovating to prepare your customers to use AI that way?
Hashim: Generative AI offers tremendous potential to make work more engaging, and less mundane, enabling us to “work happy.” At Zoom, we’re on a journey to realize this potential through AI Companion. Launched last fall, we initially focused on meeting summarization, composing emails, chats, documents and follow-up tasks to boost efficiency. Now, we’re doubling down on increasing engagement by enhancing meeting summaries and in-meeting questions. We’re incredibly focused on delivering real value to our customers and cutting through the GenAI hype, which is why we’ve made AI Companion available across all paid licenses so that more people can amplify their skills and simplify their workdays.
The response has been really positive. It’s the quality, and solving repetitive tasks, and doing it well, which people absolutely love. It’s getting behind the hype of GenAI to find the reality — and people get very excited when they see what can be done today.
VB: Good communication can make or break a business. How can leaders invest smartly and consolidate tools without compromising on streamlined communications? How can you consolidate all of these tools?
Sorrentino: We have five generations of people in the workforce now. They’re all dealing either peer-to-peer, inside a company, or peer-to-client. Companies today need to look at each one of the different communication channels they’re using, whether it’s chat or voice or even email, and think about being omnichannel. They need to understand their use, understand what demographics use them, and make sure that when they’re connecting, they’re using the right channels.
Hashim: I’m with Gary. I feel like we need to support all of this omnichannel strategy for users to communicate with each other in ways that feel comfortable to them, in ways that feel natural to them. And while I’m a big fan of omnichannel, the reality is, while it connects all of us, it also creates noise. It’s continuous communication coming from all directions. How do we apply technology in order to simplify and help users streamline and be more productive while still keeping their connections?
VB: How can Zoom Workplace help the feeling of disenfranchisement, the freezing out of colleagues working remotely, and the potential loss of team cohesion?
Sorrentino: We design products around any kind of human interaction, whether it’s being hybrid, being one-on-one virtual, or being in-person. Zoom Workplace was designed around making people feel like their setup is built for their needs and different communication styles based on the workplace environment. This gives equity to the individual and helps to amplify productivity and connections between coworkers who won’t feel their workstyle is a deterrent to collaboration.
During the pandemic, everyone said they felt disenfranchised from their staff. But here’s what we learned over time. When you go by someone’s desk in the physical world, you might see a picture of their son playing baseball. But in the pandemic world, you got to actually talk to their son when they appeared for a few minutes on screen. You got to hear about the baseball game right from him. You got to know that the dining room was blue and that they eat dinner at 5:30.
A platform like Zoom with Zoom Workplace is making it easier for us to connect, easier for us to be productive, easier for us to work different styles, yet still contribute equally. We designed Intelligent Director to make the in-room meeting experience and the outside-of-the-room experience the same. We have to continue to build products and services and features that will allow humans to feel like there’s equity, and feel productive. Zoom Workplace is looking for where humans are going to touch each other and figuring out, how do I optimize that connection? How do I make it so that that becomes the most productive collaboration on their basis, not on a pre-described basis?
VB: As a leader empowering today’s collaboration and modern work, what is Zoom’s approach to innovation in terms of meeting and staying ahead of the evolving needs of its customers?
Hashim: Two ways. First of all, we are very close to our customers. The top value for Zoom is customer care. Listening to our customers, and being responsive to them at what we call “Zoom speed.” That keeps us ahead of innovations. It keeps us moving in a direction that’s useful to our customers. We evolve rapidly. That’s something customers appreciate about us. They say about incumbent platforms, once you buy it, it’s what you have. With us they see that partnership.
The other aspect is, we also try to be forward-looking and think about what technology we can provide that could be differentiating, that could add a lot of value. Whether it’s noise cancellation or virtual backgrounds, or even now, thinking about generative AI capabilities, taking a federated approach on the back end.
Sorrentino: People go to school on Zoom. Titans of industry run their industries on Zoom. It’s the same product. Having that breadth allows us to see — how do humans use it who are not tied to an organization? How do some of the largest 350,000-person companies use it? By having that dimension on both sides, it allows us to balance the product. Smita has to create a product that a six-year-old can use at home on a snow day, and a person who runs the largest bank in the world can use to run his or her company. The good part is, we live for that. We’re passionate about that. We want to hear about it.
VB: How does Zoom envision the future of work and collaboration, especially as companies begin to develop road maps for digital transformation? What does Zoom’s innovation road map look like?
Hashim: We talked a little bit about innovation and the partnership with customers, but it’s also looking ahead on the technology stack. Like the user experience, how can we make it better? We look not just at one product at a time, but across Zoom Workplace — users are often using these products together. Internally, within Zoom, we really use our products. That provides us with very candid feedback and it gives us an opportunity to make sure our products are useful. Our products are getting better. We’re able to evolve them in ways that provide a great experience.
To learn more about the ways Zoom Workplace is making hybrid organizations equitable, forging connections, ramping up productivity and more, explore the Zoom Workplace solution guide.
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