As the timeline for the ongoing COVID-19 crisis appears uncertain, businesses around the world are looking to remote work as a way to continue operations in these uncertain times. Remote work has a variety of proven benefits, including increasing employee morale by offering them the flexibility and autonomy they desire, decreasing the number of sick days taken by employees, lessening costs associated with maintaining office buildings, and in many cases, improving the productivity of remote teams.
In order to harness the full power of remote work, businesses need to ensure that they’ve got the tools for the job. One of those crucial tools is Google Meet, a video conferencing app that connects teams anywhere, at any time, without the headache that often comes with video conferencing tools. From now until September , Google has made the premium version of their Meet tool free of charge for users, featuring larger meetings of up to 250 users per call, live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within your domain, and the ability to record and save meetings directly to Google Drive.
What is Google Meet?
Google Meet is a video conferencing tool designed to bring businesses together by allowing for seamless video calls that break down borders and allow remote working teams to connect at the touch of a button. The advanced version of the tool currently allows up to 250 participants in each call, with additional viewers able to view live streams of meetings in an audience capacity. Businesses have the freedom to record video conferences and chats held in Meet, storing them indefinitely in Google Drive.
How Google Meet can benefit your workplace
In the current state of the COVID-19 crisis, video conferencing tools like Google Meet are vital for connecting employees, teachers, and students, creating comfortable environments that promote productivity and cut through some of the loneliness that inevitably comes with self-isolation. Clear and open communication with employers and fellow team members is critical during these times of stress - Google Meet takes away much of the uncertainty by bringing people together.
In order to keep your workforce happy and healthy, video conferencing abilities are going to be extremely valuable to businesses of all sizes. Having the ability to instantly launch video calls allows teams to continue collaborating on projects to ensure high-quality output. It also gives your team the opportunity to chat in their downtime, increasing morale and forming closer bonds throughout your workforce - this ability should be promoted by employers who are concerned about the wellbeing of employees during the crisis. It can also serve as a helpful tool to allow employers to periodically check in on employees to ensure that all is well on their end, making it easier to take a load off, overburdened team members.
Setting up Google Meet for remote work
Google Meet calls can be launched immediately or scheduled via Calendar. To launch or join a call, all team members have to do is open Meet in Google Chrome. Joining a call may require a meeting code or invite, which is sent to your inbox when you’re invited to an ongoing or upcoming meeting. Team leaders can schedule video meetings directly from Google Calendar, where they’ll be able to add all appropriate team members to the scheduled call, allowing groups to adequately prepare for an upcoming presentation, meeting, or casual call.
Participants can mute their microphones, share their screen, enable and disable their cameras, and use the sidebar to chat with participants during the meeting. Additional members can join the meeting as audience members, where they’ll have limited options, but will be able to stay in the loop. For large teams who are looking to conserve already stressed networks, default video quality can be changed in the Google Admin console.
To find out how UpCurve Cloud can get your team started on Google Meet, or for more information about how our team can seamlessly implement and integrate cloud-based solutions like G Suite into your workplace, contact us today.
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