Futuresource Consulting has highlighted a major shift in how employees collaborate, with the latest Rooms Without Walls: The Future of Work report showing that 70 percent of organisations now see meetings taking place outside traditional conference rooms. The trend reflects the rise of hybrid working and more fluid work patterns.
The research shows collaboration is becoming continuous, informal and opportunistic, occurring across desks, huddle areas, open-plan zones and personal devices rather than in booked meeting rooms. Employees increasingly expect interactions to start, continue and finish seamlessly, wherever they are.
Survey data from Futuresource also indicates that 37 percent of workers are hybrid, while 41 percent actively prefer hybrid arrangements. Many employees adapt their own spaces and devices when formal rooms do not meet their needs, turning five-minute check-ins, ad-hoc video calls and quick screen shares into the dominant mode of collaboration.
Organisations are responding by redesigning offices with more small rooms, multi-purpose areas and informal spaces. More than six in ten companies have invested in technology to support these areas, particularly larger enterprises with diverse collaboration requirements. This expansion has made the collaboration estate broader, busier and more fragmented than ever.
Responsibility for AV is increasingly in the hands of IT, Futuresource reports. Seven in ten organisations now maintain dedicated AV budgets, and 63 percent locate those budgets within IT teams. Standardisation, manageability, security and ease of deployment have become the key criteria for technology selection.
The report highlights the growing importance of management, monitoring and analytics. IT teams require real-time visibility, remote control, intelligent alerts and usage data to maintain performance and plan upgrades. Futuresource argues that success in the modern workplace is defined less by individual devices than by how effectively pro AV vendors support IT in managing the wider collaboration ecosystem.
Jonathan Mangnall, managing director, Utelogy EMEA, said: “What stands out in this research is the accelerating shift in responsibility toward IT. As collaboration moves into informal spaces and personal devices, IT teams need predictable, manageable and secure solutions that can scale across an entire estate.”
Mangnall added: “The pro AV vendors who succeed will be those who treat collaboration like enterprise infrastructure, ensuring technology is visible, supportable and data-driven rather than a series of isolated deployments.”
Futuresource concludes that the next generation of pro AV solutions must support multi-platform, flexible and easily deployed experiences to meet the reality of work that no longer happens in rooms but in moments, wherever employees choose to collaborate.
