There were many heroes in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic – healthcare workers, scientists, grocery store workers and front line responders – but let’s not forget technology. This interesting topic came to us from Tech Radar Pro in their article, “Zoom and Microsoft Teams were the big software winners in pandemic.”
Turns out videoconferencing was the marathon winner in the pandemic battle. Zoom and Microsoft Teams were the most popular collaboration tools used during the 2020-21 lockdown based on a recent survey of over 1,200 US-based professionals. Seventy five percent of respondents said they had used Teams, with more than eighty percent saying they had video-called with Zoom.
There is a downside to all this. Forty two percent of respondents reported suffering from videoconferencing fatigue, which is often brought on by technical issues, performance pressure, and ‘gaze awareness’ – a lack of eye contact – can result in feeling like you’re not being listened to and cause frustration with colleagues.
How are managing the technology side of the pandemic? Even as offices go back to in-person staffing, there will forever be a need for hybrid situations.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
