Workplace technology is increasingly able to respond to its surroundings without waiting for an employee or IT team to step in.
A meeting room can adjust its cameras and audio. Sensors can flag changes in air quality or temperature. Device-management platforms can identify a fault, recommend a fix and, in some cases, resolve it automatically.
For organisations dealing with hybrid working, busy IT teams and inconsistent meeting-room experiences, that capability is attractive. But it also raises a harder question: when should technology be allowed to act independently, and when should a human remain responsible for the decision?
Speaking to UC Today, Rob Lay, CTO for Cisco UK & Ireland, said workplace autonomy has a clear role when it is used to remove routine friction. However, he said organisations need stronger controls when systems touch recording, privacy or other higher-risk decisions.
“There’s a lot that we can do,” Lay said.
“There’s a lot of things from the perspective of adapting the actual technology itself and allowing the technology to adapt to the scenario.”
Automating the meeting-room experience
One of the most immediate examples is the meeting room itself.
As hybrid meetings have become a permanent feature of working life, organisations have invested in cameras, microphones and audio systems designed to improve the experience for remote attendees. The next step is to make those technologies more adaptive.
Lay said room systems can coordinate cameras, microphones and audio automatically to improve how participants are seen and heard. The aim is to reduce the difference between being in the room and joining remotely.
Cisco refers to this as “distance zero”: the goal of making remote participants feel as though they are present in the meeting space.
That could mean cameras framing speakers more effectively, microphones adapting to the room or audio systems responding to changes in the environment. These are largely low-risk uses of automation because they are focused on improving the operation of the meeting rather than making decisions about the people in it.
The same applies to smart-building functions. Workplace technology can monitor temperature, humidity and air quality, then respond where it is connected to building-management systems.
“If the meeting room is getting too hot for the number of people that’s in it, then why don’t we just turn down the AC a bit?” Lay said. “Or, even better, if the building is so equipped, maybe we change the shutters on the outside of the windows to stop the sun streaming in, rather than bringing the AC down.”
For facilities and workplace teams, these applications could help make offices more comfortable and efficient. But they also highlight the expanding range of stakeholders involved in workplace tech decisions.
The surveillance question
The more sensitive issues emerge when data gathered from workplace devices and spaces is connected to employee activity.
Occupancy data, device telemetry and meeting-room analytics can be useful for understanding whether technology is working and how space is being used. But without clear safeguards, the same data can create concerns about monitoring employees.
Lay said organisations must distinguish between using technology to optimise a meeting experience and using it to make privacy-sensitive decisions.
“If a human has initiated a meeting, then by all means, let’s have the autonomy so that the camera can be fine-tuned [and] the speakers can be fine-tuned,” he said.
However, he added that organisations should be able to prevent autonomous systems from activating cameras or recording activity without being directed to do so.
“We ought to make sure that we have the ability to stop the agents and the AI or the autonomous systems going, ‘Yeah, we’ll turn the camera on even if we’ve not been told to or asked to.’”
