No one has been spared the impacts of COVID-19, but it can be argued that the last year and a half placed the greatest strain on women, work, and family. The pandemic accelerated long-existing challenges for women in the workplace such as having to take unpaid leave to balance personal and professional responsibilities, as well as various impacts to mental health. One in 10 women have had to quit their job due to pandemic-related matters, according to a 2021 report from KFF, and millions have yet to return to work.

No one has been spared the impacts of COVID-19, but it can be argued that the last year and a half placed the greatest strain on women, work, and family. The pandemic accelerated long-existing challenges for women in the workplace such as having to take unpaid leave to balance personal and professional responsibilities, as well as various impacts to mental health. One in 10 women have had to quit their job due to pandemic-related matters, according to a 2021 report from KFF, and millions have yet to return to work.

In order to attract more women into the world of technology, there needs to be more opportunities for successful women to pass on their experiences. This is a huge focus for Avaya and the IAUG user group, at our 2021 ENGAGE user conference, where we will be featuring a three-day “Women in Tech” program that focuses on the current state of women in technology and how to make it stronger.

Avaya ENGAGE 2021 – taking place December 12-15 in Orlando, Florida – draws attendees across all organizational types (business leaders and decision makers, CXOs, customer care/contact center staff, developers, IT) for four days of inspiration, networking, and innovation to address today’s critical business challenges and create experiences that matter. Here’s an overview of what attendees can expect from the week’s “Women in Tech” series.

Day 1: Women in Tech: Navigating Challenges & Capitalizing on Opportunities – Monday, December 13 from 10:20-11:20 am

Join community leaders for a panel discussion moderated by Janet Schijns, CEO JS Group and Top 10 Influencer in Technology, to hear how women have navigated emerging as a leader and an authentic career path. Some discussion topics will include:

  • Can you really “brand yourself” as a leader? The realities of brand in a social media world.
  • For me to win does someone else have to lose? Bringing others along on your journey.​
  • How do we overcome the mass exodus of women in business caused by the pandemic?​
  • How do you achieve the nirvana “work life integration” that leads to success?​
  • What are the secrets to communicating effectively and getting your point across without alienating others in the room?​
  • What are the keys to navigating career progression while still staying true to your authentic self?​
  • How do women help and hurt other women in their journey to the top?

I spoke with Sheila McGee Smith, Panelist and President & Principal Analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics, L.L.C. who is excited to join the panel saying, “Being a woman in technology means that you have chosen an often-difficult path. Being a man in tech working with women means you sometimes face unique challenges. Join us to learn something new or gain some new insight on how to advocate for yourself, the other women in your workplace, and the women you work with. There will be a message for all in this series of sessions at Avaya Engage this year.”

Day 2: Alone at the Table: A Roadmap to Success in a Male-dominated Industry – Tuesday, December 14 from 10:20-11:20 am

How can women take action to excel in the traditionally male-dominated world of technology? This exciting session will be presented by Janet Schijns, senior executive at multiple Fortune 500 companies and renowned go-to market technology expert, who will share with attendees her secrets to navigating their career for maximum gain and minimal personal stress. This will include:

  • The five brutal realities about the tech industry and how to navigate the resultant potholes.
  • Managing unconscious bias present in the industry with the goal of advancing your career.
  • Navigating the “Queen Bee Syndrome” without damaging your career.
  • Creating win-win situations that inspire others to sponsor your leadership journey.
  • Asking for and getting the compensation and rewards you deserve.
  • Creating a winning strategy to take back to your career when you leave to ensure success is in your future.

One lucky attendee will also win a free mentorship session with Janet, so be sure to save your spot!

Day 3: We’re Already Empowered…it’s Just Time to Activate it! – Wednesday, December 15 from 10:20-11:20 am

Living our best-empowered self-starts from within. When we quiet that inner critic, when we tear down obstacles that hold us back, when we bring our whole self…we become unstoppable and find a renewed motivation to keep moving forward. Channel Maven’s Akilah Murrell, Sr. Director, Channel Marketing, will share intentional steps attendee can take to position themselves for purpose by doing what they love, finding the inner strength to keep going, practicing healthy self-reflection habits, and believing positive affirmations. The result? Living your best (not perfect) empowered self! ​

In addition, a panel of channel industry leaders will share their experiences: ​

  • How to identify obstacles that block you from moving forward.​
  • How to listen to the voice of perception.​
  • How to identify your passion.​
  • How to make the inner critic work in your favor.​
  • How to identify that pivotal life-changing moment when you ​activate your empowered self.

Women are invaluable in the world of technology, and significantly strengthen any team. The inclusion of vision and leadership from different perspectives and experiences will only contribute to a richer, more well-rounded industry. Sign up for Avaya ENGAGE 2021, we hope to see you there! Learn more about Avaya’s programs for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

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POLY CLARITI – JITC CERTIFIED VIDEO CONFERENCING

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Poly Clariti is a private, all-in-one video conferencing and collaboration solution utilized by large enterprises, federal government agencies, financial institutions, and healthcare organizations that need to deploy, manage, and monitor from within their own data center or privately hosted cloud. Clariti can be deployed or hosted by the customer, a managed services provider, or Poly Managed Services, which means the customer retains 100% control. 

Poly Clariti is Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) certified by the United States Department of Defense’s (DoD) non-service operational test agency for Information Technology (IT) and National Security Systems (NSS), a requirement necessary for deployment within government institutions that require stringent security and oversight. 

DEPLOY, MANAGE, MEET 

Poly Clariti is for any customer that needs a private, all-inclusive video conferencing solution that they wish to own end-to-end. Poly Clariti gives you access to and full control of your organization’s all-inclusive collaboration software. Deployment models give you the ultimate flexibility to secure your solution on-premises in virtual machines, or in a private cloud with Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services. This means your online meeting rooms are secure and protected. 

Managing your organization’s collaborative solutions can be overwhelming, especially as they have scaled so quickly. From networking to room systems and end-user accounts, each component offers its own level of complexity. Poly Clariti gives you the tools you need to inventory, manage, and monitor the full solution for an optimal end-user experience.  

Poly Clariti enables end-users to easily schedule and enter meetings with a single click, sending email notifications to all participants with the meeting room assigned, audio dial-in details, help desk information, and other meeting information.  

HOW CLARITI WORKS FOR YOU 

Supporting a distributed workforce in the era of hybrid working requires collaboration solutions that deliver on security and privacy, which is where Poly Clariti comes in. Large-scale organizations that have already invested in standards-based hardware can easily deploy Clariti to get the most out of their investments.  

Clariti supports backward compatibility for those customers looking to get the most out of their prior investments in infrastructure and video endpoints. Poly Clariti scales to 1,000 call participants making it one of the leading high-scale solutions for two-way conferencing. 

POLY CLARITI WORKFLOW LITE ADD ON 

Poly Clariti Workflow Lite is a software app installed as an add-on extension to Microsoft Outlook. The app enables users to easily create calendar invites and join meetings with Poly meeting rooms or a browser from within a Poly Clariti solution deployment.  

Poly Clariti Workflow lite makes scheduling and joining meetings a breeze and drives better adoption of video conferencing and collaboration within your organization. Poly Clariti integrates and works natively with both Microsoft O365 Outlook client, stand-alone Microsoft Outlook app, and Microsoft Outlook Web Application.  

READY TO DEPLOY? 

Poly customers can easily upgrade to Poly Clariti with an existing service agreement to realize the new levels of security, compliance, and rich end-user experiences available. The all-inclusive solution has incredible scalability and is ready to be deployed on the Poly devices you already have such as the Poly Studio series, the Trio series, the CCX and VVX series, and more!  

GO SMALL AND GO HOME– THE NEW POLY SYNC 10

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While the discussion rages about when we will return to the office, many companies are realizing that they now need a defined strategy to support home working, and hybrid working. Over the past two years, we’ve made do – working on the kitchen table, making calls with the microphone and speakers on a laptop, and yes, telling people they are on mute… 

We’ve now reached a point where “make do” solutions for home working and hybrid working just aren’t cutting it. It’s time to look at how you set up a dedicated area at home for working – either for permanent home working, or for the days you are at home as part of a hybrid working approach. 

For many home workers, support from IT is a long way away. They are using new tools, learning new ways of working, and need to ensure they have equality in meetings when everyone else is gathered in a meeting room in the office.  

The ideal technology for home working that delivers this has three attributes: 

  • Lets you hear and be heard  
  • It is simple and easy to use 
  • Matches your workstyle 

Poly’s new Sync 10 delivers on all these challenges. 

Clear audio delivers enterprise-grade acoustics in a compact design, turning your home workspace into an impromptu conference room. A two-microphone steerable array works in the background to ensure conversations focus on your voice and not the background noise. Audio is further enhanced with full-duplex audio for simultaneous conversation flow to ensure you don’t miss a word. 

The Sync 10 gives you everything you need in a speakerphone, and nothing you don’t.  Easy to use touch-sensitive controls with clear LED indicators help you control calls and ensure your speech will have an impact. It works with all major communication and collaboration applications and is certified by Microsoft and Zoom so you know it will just work when plugged in. It’s USB powered so you have no concerns about battery life. And you are keeping hydrated, aren’t you?  Don’t worry…. the Sync 10 can get hydrated as well. If you spill your water or coffee on it, it’s IP64 dust and waterproof.  

Working from home gives you the option to start and end your day differently – music, a podcast, a webinar? No problem with the Sync 10 as it has a Hi-Fi quality music speaker and power amplifier, so it serves as a portable speakerphone and high-performance music speaker in one. The Sync 10 is also ready for any future technology updates as it comes with USB-A and USB-C connectors and can be updated with new software via the Poly Lens Companion app. And if you feel the urge to get into the office, the Sync 10 is small and light enough to fit into your bag when you need to travel. 

The Sync 10 is an ideal product for individual home workers looking to enhance how they work at home. For IT departments it’s also a great complement to the existing Poly Sync family and provides more choices for devices optimized for different workspaces with a consistent interface across all devices. 

The Poly Sync 10 is available now in all countries at Poly.com, Amazon and select resellers worldwide.

Empowering the Connected Agency

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If you’re reading this as a decision-maker within a government agency – and we hope that you are! – you’re likely what we refer to as a “savvy” cloud user. You’re experienced. You understand cloud communications perhaps better or more so than your counterparts. When we think of government agencies and cloud strategies, we don’t often correlate the two – but in your world, we should.

Digital Transformation

By now, you’ve realized that your agency relies on digital transformation which can adapt and grow through uncertain times when everything is constantly in flux. Siloed, legacy technology is a thing of the past – now more than ever, digital transformation needs to and does occur through modernized agency communications, moving past outdated technology and into the future of empowered agencies.

Hybrid Work is Here to Stay

In nearly every industry, the need for remote workers has increased dramatically since 2020. We can apply that sentiment not only to our co-workers or even cohorts in the government sector but also to our constituents. With more and more people working from home – and that fact not changing anytime soon – it makes sense that government agencies are finally accepting digital transformation as an integral part of their constituents’ journey and their overall total experience.

As previously mentioned, agencies are moving away from siloed technology – however, that doesn’t mean that new siloed deficiencies cannot develop as we move towards a more technologically-advanced future (I know – it gets somewhat complicated, doesn’t it?)! Identifying these moments can help aid your agency to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks as you transform into a heightened version of your former agency.

The Benefits of Cloud-Based Strategy in Government Agencies

There are quite a few benefits to establishing a cloud strategy within your agency – namely, modern communications can do away with collaboration gaps in employee communication, end legacy tool inefficiencies, and overcome negative customer/constituent interactions. Taking the stress out of communication leads inevitably to increased employee happiness and a more positive work environment and workflow. Additionally, a modern workflow can incorporate voice calls, messaging, meeting over video, and contact centers seamlessly. How, exactly, does this improve employee happiness?  Let me answer that. Allowing employees to utilize simple-to-use hybrid work environments increases their overall happiness and workflow efficiency because it takes the struggle and frustration out of communicating their work by making it smoother, easier, and more natural. Empowering employees to share files on virtually an all-in-one, cloud-based platform that integrates easily with current programs is key to creating a unified communications workforce. When employees and constituents can communicate on a reliable platform, cost reduction, efficiency, and goal achievement go up. And that is important because employees affect customer experience. Within government agencies, not only are they representing their agency, but also the government itself (at least, that can be how constituents see it).

Secure Connections + Collaboration = Operational Efficiency

To ensure your digital transformation is seamless, you need to have a secure communications platform for your employee and constituent communications. You could argue that security is one of the biggest factors to consider in any new technological advancement in the government sector; therefore, unreliable legacy phone systems should become a thing of the past. With Cloud UCaaS technology, those old phone systems can be replaced with new, easy-to-use solutions in which user adoption can be managed in an accessible way.

Technology should be available to all constituents; so much of government work involves caring for those who need technological advancements the most. Ensuring that technology barriers are removed is also key to equitable service. Multiple interaction channels should be offered to those that need them.

Let’s Talk Technology

When constituents have better experiences, it builds trust in their government agencies. Avaya has a long-standing history of working with such agencies and helping them to achieve better results through the use of communications technology. Talk to an Avaya representative today about how your agency can benefit from a cloud-based communications strategy.