Meetings are now moving entirely online. As more and more workplaces transition to being remote, we need to learn how to navigate our daily tasks virtually. With video chats and conference calls becoming regular part of of work for most workers today, getting accustomed to video meeting tools is a vital necessity.
In this occassion, Phil Haynes, Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Zoom Video Communications sits in an exclusive interview with HR in Asia on how both employees and leaders can make the best out of video conferencing.
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Phil, thank you so much for your time for this interview. In Covid-19 era where many activities are encouraged to be done at home, Zoom has evidenced a skyrocketing popularity as more people are turning to Zoom to stay in touch. How does such immediate global attention affect Zoom as a team?
We were humbled by the accelerated adoption of the Zoom platform around the globe since the pandemic outbreak. We are proud of the role we are playing to help and, understanding that Zoom’s increased popularity among consumers makes it more of a target for bad actors, we are taking proactive steps to further protect the consumer user experience.
These steps include hiring experienced advisers to help us review and ensure best practices, locking accounts we have found to be compromised, updating the default settings for many of our users to enable meeting security features by default, educating users to use secure passwords and other measures. We are also looking at implementing additional technology solutions to bolster our efforts, and we continue to provide regular updates on our efforts.
What actually makes Zoom a compelling platform in terms of talent recruitment and acquisition? How does Zoom empower the digitization of HR processes?
All of these duties have one thing in common: Effective communication is mandatory for the HR department to succeed. The inability to move swiftly and talk to every team and each team member serves as a common impediment to its human resources ecosystem – and the solution to all of this is Zoom. Through the platform, HR will be able to speak to anyone, anywhere, at any time, through any device. By utilizing Zoom, HR leaders are able to:
Broaden Talent Pool
In a world where telecommuting is getting more popular and today remote working is mandatory for most, video conferencing tools like Zoom expands a businesses’ pool of potential talent from thousands or millions of people to 3.3 billion. Having that kind of reach – combined with the ability to offer any potential candidate the possibility of having a job from home – significantly increases the chances of finding the most talented individuals, regardless of geography.
Gain More Flexibility with Video Interviews
Zoom uniquely grants HR the privilege of meeting with another person within seconds online. In addition to the convenience, meeting from home is easier for job candidates, removing the need for travel.
Communicate with Teams Easily
Zoom’s Video Webinars can make large-scale training a breeze, and has proven to be invaluable for connecting people, teams, and organizations. The webinar service helps to get information across to large audiences quickly and easily. HR can also divide people into groups via Video Breakout Rooms to work on team-building exercises and other projects.
HR also can keep the organization up-to-date with the latest information through the use of webinars. Zoom’s settings mean that attendees can ask questions and participate via Q/A and polling and those who can’t make it can have access to a recording.
Train New Employees
With Zoom’s screen sharing tools, trainers can make use of screen sharing to present any materials they have on hand, using other functions such as annotation to direct the attention of the person at one particular area.
Based on your observation, where do most people actually ‘do it wrong’ with Zoom?
Possibly the most worrying one is having the risk of uninvited visitors getting into the session. To prevent such incidents from happening, it is important for users to ensure that their Zoom meeting links are not shared publicly, such as on social media or by participants.
It is also vital to leverage security tools, such as the waiting room to ensure only members users have verified may enter the meeting, and manage participants by forcing them to be muted on entry, and limit their screen sharing or annotation capabilities on Zoom. Finally, once all users are present, lock the meeting room.
This is where IT teams come into play – enterprise Zoom accounts are centrally controlled, with security settings such as waiting rooms, and limits on what users can share controlled by the organization, which will prevent most of such incidents from happening,
We understand that limited / missing features that are not available may sometimes be an issue when using Zoom on a browser. To access the full suite of functions, we strongly encourage users to download the Zoom app on their devices and ensure that the version is up-to-date.
There are also several things that can happen during video conferencing that may be disruptive to meetings, such as noise in the background, or audible echoes when certain users are speaking – to prevent hot mics, hosts can selectively mute certain participants, or mute all participants in a meeting.
If participants want to look presentable, Zoom also has a touch up function that helps smoothen skin tones on a user’s face, making them look more presentable. Virtual backgrounds also ensure that no matter where a user is, they can always be ready for a call, and avoid showing a messy or cluttered room as their background.
As an insider, can you share with us some secret hacks to conduct better video meetings on the app? What features could help HR leaders get on their tasks better?
Zoom’s video-first unified communications platform is extremely feature-rich, so users may not be aware of all the tools available that will help them get the most out of our products. Some features that HR leaders can utilize to help elevate their experience on the platform include:
Zoom Webinars
With the ability to effectively and efficiently broadcast to up to 10,000 attendees, Zoom Webinars are perfect for HR leaders to host training, all-hands meetings, and other situations where hosts need to communicate with a large group of people without audience interruption. Some helpful tips include the use of Zoom’s Webinar chat function to chat directly with individual members of the audience, and having the control to unmute call-in attendees, which makes it easier to have guest speakers call in to the webinar to speak.
Zoom Meetings
The In Meeting controls in the Zoom Meetings platform allows users to create and control a meeting space for all their security, accessibility, and organizational needs. Some In Meeting controls HR leaders can leverage includes the test of microphone and speakers, as well as to hide non-video participants.
HR leaders can also make use of the pre-assign break out rooms to conduct ice-breaker games for employees. Conducting training online not only helps to save time, but it also prevents logistic issues. By enabling the audio transcription feature for meetings recorded in the cloud, this can help HR leaders to save the time and hassle from having to retype all their meeting notes.
In your opinion, will companies remain embracing virtual hiring after the pandemic ends?
We feel that this crisis has shown companies that working from home is not only feasible, but productive, and we think we will see companies be more lenient and/or embrace the work from home model post-COVID 19 using virtual meeting platforms like ours.
Since founding Zoom in 2011, we have always believed that the future is video communication. This crisis has shown companies that working from home is not only feasible, but productive, and has signaled a shift away from the traditional brick and mortar office. Especially for a diverse, fragmented region such as Southeast Asia, a tool like Zoom presents greater connectivity across regions so that businesses can expand within the region, and perhaps even beyond with sales and support teams on the ground.
Zoom is under global scrutiny as many people are raising questions about its security issues. Do you have anything to say on this matter?
During the first few months of 2020, the Zoom team worked around the clock to support the tremendous influx of new and different types of users on our platform. The sudden and increased demand on our systems was unlike anything most companies have ever experienced.
On April 1, 2020, we pledged to make a number of enhancements to address security and privacy. During the 90-day period, it has brought about meaningful change at our company and made the safety, privacy, and security of our platform central to all we do, as we strive to be worthy of the trust customers place in us. But we cannot and will not stop here. Privacy and security are ongoing priorities for Zoom, and this 90-day period – while fruitful – was just a first step. Some of the changes we have made include the following:
Zoom 5.0
Zoom upgraded to the AES 256-bit GCM encryption standard, which offers increased protection of meeting data in transit and resistance against tampering. This provides confidentiality and integrity assurances on Zoom Meeting, Zoom Video Webinar, and Zoom Phone data.
Data Routing Control
The new data routing options for Zoom meetings allow customers on paid accounts to customize their data center settings with respect to real-time meeting traffic for Zoom Meetings and Zoom Video Webinars. Zoom admins and account owners of paid accounts can, at the account, group, or user level, opt out of, or into, specific data center regions with respect to data in transit. All paid admins can make regional selections in Account Settings.
7. With the pandemic showing no signs of slowing down, what is Zoom’s commitment and plan in the future to further help connect the world?
It is crucial that business leaders see and understand about what is possible – long commutes and inflexible practices can be eliminated. For those that are not in traditional offices, remote work was more of a perk and sometimes came with less gravitas.
But now that people are working remotely, and see the possibilities of how work can be done remotely, habits will change. Work styles in the office will change to complement, with more adaptive use of space and technology, and Zoom is very excited to help business leaders see what could be possible moving forward.
Video-conferencing will also become increasingly important. For me personally, I see that video is a platform that is consumable more than meetings, but a whole line of applications, such as helpdesks to help with tickets. Zoom’s SDK allows users to trigger a video conference the moment video is required, such as in the use in courts. Once all the information is shared between the participants, a hearing can be triggered for a hearing for all its participants with appropriate controls and settings.
Phil Haynes is the Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Zoom.
He is a transformational Talent Acquisition leader who builds, inspires, and engages high performing teams in fast-paced, high-pressure, and ambiguous growth environments. Phil uses a deep understanding of business challenges and goals to deliver measurable success within resource constrained organizations.
Finally, he takes a consultative approach and is adept at turning abstract talent acquisition/recruiting needs into practical strategies and solutions to ensure the desired results.
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