The Future of Meetings: Huddle Rooms

One of the biggest trends driving the huddle room revolution is the open office floor plan. Today, many businesses are opting for fewer stand-alone offices and more shared working spaces that promote communication and aid in productivity.

According to recent market trends identified by Frost & Sullivan, huddle rooms are projected to replace almost 70% of all meeting rooms by 2022. 

Here is a full breakdown of huddle room benefits and technology trends to help you future-proof your offices with efficient and productive huddle rooms.

What is a huddle room?

A huddle room is a small meeting room for 3-6 people equipped with audio/video capabilities that's used for quick team meetings (aka team huddles). Perfect for both unplanned working sessions and scheduled meetings, huddle rooms allow teams to hold discussions without reserving a larger room.

5 benefits of huddle rooms

Businesses of all sizes and industries, coworking spaces and universities have all started to build out these agile little rooms as a way for small teams to work together more effectively. Huddle rooms are typically inexpensive to outfit and require little physical space, and many would argue that they’re the most productive rooms in the building. Here are the top five benefits of deploying huddle rooms:

1. No reservations required

Many organizations choose to deploy huddle rooms without a reservation system. That way teams can have a place to meet for an impromptu working session without having to stop what they’re doing and create a scheduled meeting.

2. Turn underutilized small rooms into efficient spaces

Most small meeting spaces are underutilized because they lack the technology required for productive meetings. To help solve the issue of underutilization, video conferencing providers have started to develop video conferencing systems optimized for huddle rooms and small meeting rooms, making it easy for organizations to outfit their huddle rooms with all the benefits of video conferencing.

3. Save large conference rooms for large meetings

According to recent research by analyst firm Frost & Sullivan, 75% of all meetings in large conference rooms are among just three to four people, making the rest of those empty chairs just a waste of space. Huddle rooms are perfectly sized for small team syncs.

4. Ideal for remote team members

Huddle rooms give teams and remote workers the ability to connect face to face for any meeting or quick team sync throughout the day. And while traditional conference rooms are great for video conferencing with large groups to capture everyone in the room, huddle rooms are perfectly sized to give everyone a life-sized presence in the online meeting. The regular cadence of video calling in huddle rooms can make remote teams feel less remote.

5. Inexpensive to set up

Smaller work spaces have smaller budgets and require less complexity, so the technology in the room must be cost-effective and easy to use. DIY video huddle room kits and purpose-built huddle room solutions can be installed for less than the price of an employee laptop. And with a long-managed life cycle of six to eight years, you’ll get continued value for years to come.


Top 3 tips for a productive huddle

1. Keep the meeting right-sized

The limited size of a huddle room is a great analogy for the size of a functional team to collaborate and get work done. The more people that join the huddle, the more distracting things can be. Use large conference rooms for the initial brainstorm session, then use huddle rooms for breakout sessions and meet back in the conference room to share content and findings. 

2. Optimize the huddle room for video

Most huddle rooms are designed with a single display mounted on the wall and a meeting room table pushed right up against the wall. Smaller rooms like huddle rooms should prioritize a wide-angle field of view lens to help capture meeting participants sitting close to the camera. 

3. Don’t forget to be yourself

We’re well past video conferencing being solely used for quarterly boardroom meetings with your executive team — it has transformed into a daily way of communicating face to face. Just like texting, talking on the phone or walking over to your colleague’s desk and chatting in person, the video conferencing experience is about what’s being discussed. So don’t fret when it comes to getting on camera — just be yourself!


Ready to get started with Lifesize huddle rooms?

At Lifesize, everything we do is designed, built and supported to make the user experience excellent and effortless from day one. After more than fifteen years of developing huddle room and conference room systemswireless meeting room presentation devicesvideo conferencing apps and the global cloud network that ties it all together, we don’t settle for anything less than amazing. Lifesize delivers an unmatched unified meeting experience that you can trust to work the first time, every time. Schedule a demo with a Lifesize video conferencing expert or set up your free account to see a Lifesize huddle room solution in action.

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Source: https://www.lifesize.com/en/video-conferencing-blog/huddle-room