Fundamental Media solves major remote-working issue

1 April 2022 - Fundamental Media today launched its new facial recognition app

Have you ever met someone in person after numerous online videocalls and realised how different they look in real life?

Remote working became the norm for many employees during the pandemic. But as Covid restrictions are slowly being eased and abolished across the globe, huge parts of the workforce have started working from the office again on at least a flexible basis.

But as more of our own staff have started to come back in, we have noticed a concerning trend of colleagues doing a double take when seeing their close colleagues in the flesh for the first time. Or even, in some extreme cases, not recognising them at all.

“Everyone knows at least one colleague who has grown the infamous lockdown beard over the past few years, but we saw that our people were struggling to recognise even the non-beard-growers in real life,” comments Angus Maclaine, CEO and founder of Fundamental Media.

“Our workforce has grown significantly since the start of the first lockdown in March 2020. We therefore have many people who are coming into the office for the first time and meeting their colleagues in person after many months of virtual-only interactions,” he says.

“On most occasions there is only a slight hesitation on both colleagues’ part, but we have had some more serious incidents. One staff member had spoken to one of his team members on a twice-weekly basis for seven months, but when they met in the office for the first time, he thought his colleague was the postman!”

We have therefore created a new app that will spare our staff the embarrassment of introducing themselves to someone they have already known for months.

Research shows that people’s social skills have deteriorated during the pandemic and their ability to distinguish one face from another has also fallen dramatically. Our app will help our staff with this issue, by allowing them to scan a colleague’s face and be presented with not only that co-worker’s name and job role, but also their hobbies and interests. We have even added an ‘avoid’ section, which mentions any conversation topics you better not discuss with that person, if you don’t want to be regaled for hours by his love for cricket or the meaning of her cats’ every miaow and purr.

The face recognition app is available for free to our global workforce, and for a small premium to any third parties interested.

Click here to download How-D in the app store.