Telepresence is Finally Coming of Age - Essay Example

Telepresence is Finally Coming of Age Introduction The benefits of telepresence meetings are suitable for most organizations with office settings. Many organizations with many locations across the nation or the world today largely use teleconferencing services for distant communication. Organizations that do not use any form of teleconferencing technologies eventually incur travel costs for their employees. If such organizations installed telepresence innovations in their offices, they would benefit from face-to-face meetings without the stress of travelling costs. Similar to face-to-face interaction, telepresence meetings allow users to read other participants’ pronounced body languages and participate in active, natural conversation. Similar to face-to-face interactions, telepresence meetings allow users to view one another and the tension to stay attentive and engaged occurs. For most offices, such an innovation would prove the ideal solution (Shein 2010). Clearly, the abilities of the technology might form an experience that feels very realistic. However, users must question whether the experience is similar in quality to real human communication. As a result, prior to continuing to grow telepresence technology, an organization must take its effect on human communication and relationship quality into account. Question 1 a. Apart from the travel cost savings mentioned in the case study, two less tangible advantages for applying telepresence over the travel alternative are the quality of the life of a worker and ecological footprint. These merits are not effortlessly weighted or valued. As a result, I will offer and reference conformist approximations in this research to support my answers. These kinds of innovations are only possible because of the functionality of grids, particularly telecommunications (Shein 2010). b. Levels of stress affect human health significantly. Researchers surveyed traveling businesspersons in 2000 who recorded 80% more clinical claims than those who are stationary (Shein 2010). Consequently, clinical claims can result in lost work output at the workplace. Between 60 and 90% of grievances made by patients and taken to doctors are about stress (Shein 2010). Researcher Dr. Herbert Benson says three of the most widespread symptoms, headaches, serious pain, and hypertension, account for more than half of lost incomes from absenteeism. It is logical to presume that retain workers in their homes as much as possible to prevent increases in their stress levels (Shein 2010). Such an approach would better not just the outcome of an organization, but the welfare of its workers too. c. Secondary importance is the organization’s ecological footprint. Evading essential travelling would be advantageous the environment. Flights will be the best method for this paper. Airplanes make up just 3.5% of the globe’s greenhouse gas emanations. At the same time, the number of people taking flights is rising by between 5 and 5% yearly (Shein 2010). Appling telepresence solutions for an organization can save an organization a significant amount of money if certain limitations like current travel rates are considered. The organization would first have to deal with some open costs, but these expenses are insignificant in comparison to the intangible merits of the aforementioned data. Question 2 There are many advantages for using telepresence in organizations. At the same time, there are certainly a number of measurable and non-measurable drawbacks to using the same innovations (Shein 2010). The most significant potential disadvantage to telepresence is losing the merits of physical communication. Organizations do not simply organize meetings between their employees and clients in remote locations, but for interpersonal communication with employees from another office too. Prior to the planned meetings, it is likely that the visitor will dine with coworkers, spend leisure time with them after work, and interact in the course of the day. This kind of interaction is referred to as “outside hierarchy” and enables members of an organization to debate ideas easily (Shein 2010). These debates are crucial for organizational innovation as these easy dialogues can result in new projects. Another major disadvantage is complacency. Complacency occurs mostly because of telepresence. Since it is much simpler to have meetings with dissociated respondents, motive and tasks could be delayed for other meetings equally easily. By employees travelling to distance meetings, they get devoted to achieving the goal of these meetings (Shein 2010). Given that these problems could be handled effortlessly by following meeting protocols and excellent practices, this disadvantage does take place easily. As a result, this demerit affects output and disdains the expense of the telepresence meeting. This permanent meeting can be undervalued in contrast to temporary cost benefits, as defined by Amara’s law (Shein 2010). Clearly, the abilities of the technology might form a realistic experience and question whether the experience contrasts in value to real human communication. As a result, prior to continuing to grow telepresence technology, a company must take its effect on human interactions and relationship value into account. Question 3 a. The objective of teleconferencing meetings is to achieve face-to-face communication. Telepresence provider Cisco shares this argument by implicitly calling their services an instrument for face-to-face cooperation. The technology today enables users to have live interactions with a full-size picture of their meeting equals. I believe the next step in meeting the demand of the several current differences between telepresence and face-to-face meetings is the introduction of spatial holographic telepresence interaction (Shein 2010). This innovation is operational today and Cisco presented it in 2007 even though it is still not widespread. In 2007, Cisco called this innovation “On Stage Experience” and customized it for speeches made before big audiences with the aim of eventually engineering it so that it is configured for enterprise and home environments properly (Shein 2010). b. The current telepresence products used by many organizations are two-dimensional, facilitate face-to-face communication with a camera, and display. Users of this innovation are not just full-size, but have the capacity to move around the conference room in the course of their presentation and communicate more realistically with the other meeting attendees. Consequently, the experience becomes more accurate in detail and the same as conventional face-to-face meetings. c. Telepresence meetings ought to be handled the same as face-to-face meetings since the users are not present in the other user’s conference rooms physical. Additionally, the users’ communication mode is still face-to-face. The same shared etiquette of face-to-face communication must be observed during telepresence meetings (Shein 2010). This etiquette includes being early for the meeting, maintaining the least interruptions, and participating in the conference. Behavior that may be seen as impolite during the same telepresence meetings include facing the computer monitor instead of the big screens, performing other tasks, rather than maintaining focus during the meeting, and talking to another person during the telepresence meeting. Essentially, one must behave like the rest of the users in the room during a telepresence meeting. The rules of etiquette change I would like best for telepresence meetings include maintaining focus in the course of the meeting and refraining from communicating with other people physically present in the conference room (Shein 2010). Works Cited Shein, Esther. Telepresence Catching On, But Hold onto Your Wallet. 2010. Computerworld. Web. 2014, Nov. 1. Read More