‘Sorry, I was on mute’

A view from Savanta research

'Sorry, I was on mute'

Will this become the phrase that accompanies the loss of ideas?

31% of enterprises are already planning more investment in cloud solutions, and 26% in automation.

In the world of face-to-face meetings we drove collaboration through post-it notes, mini-group breakouts and even talking sticks. But in the world of online conferences, how many awkward pauses, how many jilted conversations and how many videos of ‘silent mouthing’ now punctuate our daily working lives? All accompanied by those five increasingly clichéd words: ‘sorry, I was on mute’.

Perhaps we don’t need to worry as it will all be ‘back to normal’ soon. Except normal has changed. Amongst the newly home-bound workforce, far from crying out for the re-opening of office doors, 60% want working from home to remain a more frequent occurrence after the end of the crisis. And our competitors are acting: 40% of enterprises plan to permanently increase their remote working options.

Maybe our saviour will be in new technology. AI chair-bots that control meetings, giving the floor to the right person at the right time and automatically un-muting their mic (whilst also making sure we can’t hear Dave’s blender in the background)? Or maybe we’ll all be in AR and VR meetings, with colleagues sitting virtually across the table, or all gathered round an abandoned jeep in a Jurassic Park-like forest? Tech must surely be on our agenda: 31% of enterprises are already planning more investment in cloud solutions, and 26% in automation.

So, how do we solve the ‘sorry, I was on mute’ conundrum? What does everyone think?

Hello…? Has anyone been listening?

Damn it. “Hi there everyone! Sorry, I was on mute”.

The statistics in this post are taken from Savanta’s covid-19 trackers. For more information please get in touch here.