Meetings are still some of the most important interactions in a business environment.

Although unproductive meetings can leave your employees lamenting every trip to your conference rooms, well-structured interactions can support better productivity, enhanced staff satisfaction, and better business results.

In a world where agility and focus are key, huddle rooms are beginning to replace the old-fashioned board room environment. Huddle rooms are small meeting areas, typically with enough space for up to 6 participants.

These rooms come with all of the technology you’d expect in a standard meeting room, including display monitors, video cameras, and even conference phones.

What are Huddle Rooms and How do They Work?

Huddle rooms are spaces designed to support quick, ad-hoc meetings between in office-employees and clients, shareholders, or remote workers.

Huddle rooms are becoming increasingly popular in modern open-plan offices, where teams need a private space to host conversations and brainstorming sessions.While huddle rooms may be small, they’re packed with potential.

Before the huddle room, most companies spent thousands creating a single, extravagant conference space equipped with all the technology they needed for effective communications. Huddle rooms offer a more cost-effective and intimate environment ideal for the fast-paced millennial worker.

Named after the standard sports “huddle” these small conference rooms provide an excellent space for digitally-enhanced meetings. To know more details on video conferencing solution for small business visit People Link.

5 benefits of huddle rooms

Businesses of all sizes and industries, co-working 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 hosting large groups and capturing everyone in the room on video, 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

We recently published our tips and tricks guide for hosting a successful video conference call, and while all of the tips can lead to a successful huddle room meeting, these three perfectly fit the smaller size and ad-hoc nature of the huddle room:

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.For more information on live virtual classroom software check Agropedia

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!

How to set up your huddle room: 5 must-haves for any great huddle space

Whether your office is just starting to build out huddle room solutions for small teams or you’re looking for a way to optimize your old phone rooms with modern collaboration technology, you’ll want to include these five must-haves in your design:

1. Furniture

Follow your corporate culture when deciding on the styles for your huddle rooms — styles, plural, because many companies are opting for a unique look for each space. The limited square footage of a huddle room allows you to make bold choices without having to completely renovate the entire office.

The typical room will have seating for four to five with durable work surfaces. If room design and interior decorating aren’t your forte, source help from an agency or consult your favorite search engine for ideas. Here are some keywords to get you started: modern office, great huddle room and creative office.

2. Display

Okay, your room is decked out with stained concrete flooring, a reclaimed barn door, exposed pipes, airplane-grade aluminum tabletops and Herman Miller® chairs — now what?

It’s time to bring in the technology that turns your stylish sitting room into a built-for-doing huddle room. Whether you’re brainstorming concepts for the latest marketing video or analyzing data in a sales report, the availability of a display to screen share is critical for this space.

Teams shouldn’t have to rely on gathering around a laptop to view a presentation or video conference with another group. The prices of displays have dropped dramatically in the past few years, so go as big as your budget allows — but remember that it’s still a small space, so the 42”–50” range is probably sufficient.

When deciding on a mounting height, we recommend staying close to eye level, especially when equipping rooms to connect with one another with a huddle room video conferencing solution.

3. Whiteboard

Be it traditional white enamel, interactive smart or just a pane of glass, make sure you don’t overlook the ability to write out ideas and concepts in the huddle room.

Whiteboards can act as a parking lot for ideas you’re not ready to act on, help you visualize your priorities and provide an easy method to modify ideas when you realize that there were a few bad ones in that “no idea is a bad idea” brainstorm. At the end of your meeting, simply snap a few pictures of your work so you don’t have to write it down again.

4. Ambience

Acoustics

With many offices transitioning to a more open floor plan concept, it’s more important than ever to have designated collaboration spaces free from noise and distractions.

Sound insulation prevents noise leakage in and out of the room, and a professional-grade microphone setup can significantly increase the audio quality of a meeting with native ambient noise reduction and full room coverage.

Lighting

Natural lighting has been connected to better health and increased engagement in employees. It is a wonderful addition to many meeting spaces, but care should be taken to provide lighting control in meeting rooms with windows.

Rooms in direct sunlight at the wrong time of day can look washed out on video, and a light source directly behind a subject can create a harsh silhouette.

5. Video Connectivity

Video conferencing allows team members to have a seat at the meeting from wherever they are. So if your team includes teleworkers, people located at another campus or coworkers who travel regularly, a video conferencing solution is a smart investment to maintain your group collaboration and connection.

When equipping your huddle room with video conferencing, be sure to look for a solution that’s easy to manage and use, meets your security and reliability requirements, and above all else, helps your teams feel as connected as possible.