Presenting your company in the best light

This means what we need from our working environment has changed. Hybrid styles of working like hot desking mean our offices need more communal spaces, and team collaboration is often a focus when in the office. In this modern workplace, online calls are not only critical ways to stay in touch with colleagues, they are also the most common way to connect with clients. Alongside the need to meet sustainability goals, business travel is being minimised, and so, even in sales, frequent face-to-face meetings are becoming a thing of the past.

As hybrid and online working becomes the norm, both within organisations and client-facing, how can we ensure that our office spaces are designed to match? When your video conference is a client’s first impression, it has never been more important that the space is set up to be visually appealing on camera to present your company in the best light.

So, how can lighting ensure that your working environment is happy, productive, and sustainable – while also managing different online and in person requirements and varying numbers of people on any given day?

We spoke to Henrik Clausen, Director at Fagerhult Lighting Academy about the importance of lighting design for a flexible online and hybrid working environment.

From interviews to sales presentations, video calls are the new normal

Online meetings have gone from a ‘nice to have’, to a tool that helped us navigate the pandemic, to an expected part of business, in a very short period. As it went from necessity to the new normal, the expectation that you are well presented and also well illuminated on video conferences has increased and I believe this will continue to become more important. We’re seeing recruitment conducted via online interviews, sometimes with applicants asked to submit a video before they even meet a person. How you are lit could have a huge impact in this situation.

Another factor is travel and sustainability. We design our lighting to be as sustainable as possible – and are proud to have provided lighting for fantastic environmentally designed workplaces including Unilever and Bol.com. In our own company, like many others, we’ve also moved away from as many long-distance journeys for sales meetings because of the environmental impact, cost and time. Of course, it can be beneficial to meet in person first, as I will with our upcoming launch in Saudi. But much of business is now hybrid.

Lighting design for a flexible online and hybrid working environment

We understand from our clients and our own experience that lighting is a huge part of in person and video communication. If a space is not well lit it reduces the detail we can see on video. It's important because as human beings we interact based on what we see - when I see you nodding and smiling, I feel happy. We can also pick up on cues about attention or distraction. Video is different to if we were on the phone, research shows you might receive as little as 20% of my message from a voice alone and then with a visual, it jumps to 83%.

It is about presenting people in their best light, reading body language and forming relationships. If we haven't met before, it's much, much easier to establish a relationship with video than over the phone, for example, because of the way our vision works. We can also pick up on small differences between meetings even on video, building that visual memory of each other. So that's why it's easier to establish or to keep a trustworthy relation going.

Having the right lighting that balances your skin tone and works with the background is key. Really optimising the lighting is very individual – and for a video studio for example it is even possible to design lighting that changes depending on your skin tone. But for most online meetings, positioning and location of light is the key, in the same way you’d would never sit in front of a window, if possible, on video – we all intrinsically understand that light can either cast us in shadow or show us at our best.

Light’s role in creating a positive working environment

Lighting has a huge impact on the workplaces, but also schools and universities, affecting people’s happiness, comfort, and productivity. This is of course about safety, as the common standards set by the EU for indoor workplace lighting highlight, but also that light affects us biologically and how Human Centric Lighting (HCL) and Double Dynamic Lighting (DDL) can support our health and focus. I recommend you read our article which shares research on how islands of light reduce stress.

Lighting designers are also very familiar with the need for different lighting options across a space, in an open office for example vs. in a meetings room. This might include the use of organic response smart lighting for optimum collaboration – where lighting design and technology allow us to light the people not the space – and dim it by 60 or 80% in areas that are not in use which has positive impacts on people and also environmental benefits.

Lighting can also be an important way to express your brand and communicate with people about your company non-verbally. This case study is a great example of how it helps convey the ethos of the company and create a creative hub where the team can do their best work.

With the increase in video conferencing, all these elements remain important - your workplace is on show, but added to the in-person experience, it is now vital to to consider how the lighting will appear on video.

Improve your lighting to create a good first impression – online and in person

As more and more of our face-to-face meetings happen online, having the right lighting in place can really make a difference. Not only conversations between the team, but also a sales meeting or a pitch. Being seen and being able to see others on the call means you don’t miss out on those selling signs that could go unnoticed.

In the same way we can light in ways that improve collaboration, we can also light conference rooms and offices to enable groups of people and individual workers to appear their best in online meetings. For example, for conference rooms we might recommend using diffused rather than narrow beam, such as our Tunable-White luminaire. However, every office environment is different and in order to get the right solution for your company and working patterns, it is important to get advice and guidance from a designer that understands your individual space.

While companies may be able to light their offices to support this new way of working, we’re also in an increasingly hybrid world with many people working from home. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a huge growth in new lighting options such as ring lights, but it can also be as simple as employees moving their lamp to a better location and ensuring their laptop or camera is in the right position. As a business you might consider providing best practice recommendations for your team, as you see with this example from Stanford University, and general guides are widely available from both the technology providers like Zoom.