For an interesting angle on the need for video presence to advance the adoption of telework, read Faceless colleagues sparking office mistrust by Jo Best (Silicon.com, May 17 2004) that highlights a survey from effectiveness consultancy Priority Management for Microsoft. According to the survey, working with remote, faceless coworkers leads to a loss of trust and effectiveness.

"Of those surveyed, 82 per cent had an invisible colleague and 84 per cent thought they worked better with those they dealt with on a face-to-face basis."

Kudos to the UK reader, who posted this comment:

"Time and again businesses fail to see the real benefits of real-time video communication and then we get a study that shows that if people communicated face-to-face the modern workplace work would be less stressful...GENIUS! "

Businesses took a good look at videoconferencing years ago, some investing heavily in expensive room-based systems, but the advantages weren't realized. As the Telework Consortium's soon-to-be published research shows, poor quality video doesn't help. Now there's a new generation of high-quality IP-based tools available for the desktop. It's most certainly time to take another look.

9:01:07 AM    
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