Over the past few years, Vanhoutte has researched and globally implemented radical new workplace changes to support growing trends in agile work communication. These efforts led to the publication of Vanhoutte’s book, “The Smarter Working Manifesto” in 2014, which offers employers and employees insight into the freedom of work movement— the ability to identify and determine when and from what environment will yield the most productivity, and flexibility, for individuals, and teams.
“At Plantronics, we went through this Smarter Working journey and saw huge benefits in terms of employees’ self-empowerment, well-being, productivity, and confidence in management; as well as organizational cost savings, and the ability to attract and retain talent,” said Philip Vanhoutte, senior vice president and managing director for Europe and Africa at Plantronics. “The right technology, along with a shift in behavior and company mindset is essential for organizations that want to establish a culture of agile communication and collaboration.”
Plantronics was invited to join the Unify Customer Advisory Council during the summer of 2014 to be one of the first companies to deploy Circuit. “We’ve experienced, first hand, how Circuit brings the social and collaboration capabilities to any company who wants to adopt this New Way to Work,” continued Vanhoutte. “Our own beta-testing team recognized the rich sound quality users enjoy with Circuit when using Plantronics headsets.”
“Vanhoutte and his progressive team provided invaluable feedback during our Circuit beta customer program,” commented Bill Hurley, chief marketing officer at Unify. “Plantronics was impressed by Circuit’s underlying principle that continuous conversation and keeping a contextual history of communication exchanges, which are synchronized across devices, makes collaboration simple and efficient, even with a team that is split across two continents. Vanhoutte’s foresight makes him a progressive thought leader in future of work technologies.”