A new survey finds that hybrid meetings consistently sideline remote participants, and the hardware running those calls is part of the problem.
The study looked at hybrid work environments and found that in-room colleagues frequently lose track of remote participants mid-meeting. Outdated audio and video equipment makes it harder for remote workers to be clearly seen or heard. Meeting fatigue, a persistent side effect of video-heavy workdays, compounds the issue: participants already checked out are less likely to notice when someone on a video tile is trying to contribute.
Hybrid work has been standard at many companies for several years, but meeting room infrastructure has not kept pace with that shift. The effect is a two-tier experience: one group in the room shaping decisions, and another watching from a thumbnail. When forgetting that remote colleagues exist is common enough to show up in survey data, that is a design failure, not a manners problem.
Companies have spent heavily on collaboration software licenses; this survey suggests the bottleneck is not the apps but the rooms.