As Northern Ireland’s civic university, Ulster University is grounded in the heart of the community and strives to make a lasting contribution to society as a whole. Renowned for its world-class teaching, Ulster aims to transform lives, stretch minds and develop the skills required by a growing economy. The outcomes of its research have global significance with local relevance, and contribute to the social, economic and cultural betterment of the region.

Ulster University provides teaching and learning to approximately 27,000 students across four campuses and has a national and international reputation for excellence, innovation and regional engagement, making a major contribution to the economic, social and cultural development of Northern Ireland. Its core business activities are teaching and learning, widening access to education, research and innovation and technology and knowledge transfer.

It is supported in this by 2,700 staff, comprising academic and professional services colleagues, and a private telephony network that spans the university’s four campuses.

With its original PABX supplier decommissioning their telephony system, Ulster University wanted to optimise its approach to working on an entirely unified comms (UC) based platform. Prior to the pandemic, Ulster University had already migrated its 2,000+ staff to Skype for Business and was in the process of a soft transition to Teams. However, it needed a Microsoft-certified headset solution that could easily replace staff dependence on desk phones.

After testing a wide range of headset solutions from leading audio equipment providers and following highly positive staff feedback, Ulster University decided to invest in over 2,000 units from the Jabra Evolve Series of headsets – including the Jabra Evolve 40 MS Stereo, Jabra Evolve 65 MS Stereo, the Jabra Evolve2 40 MS Stereo, and Jabra Evolve2 65 MS Stereo.

Donna O’Kane, UC Manager at Ulster University, said: “We always encourage our staff to use professional audio solutions for work and the Jabra Evolve range ticked all the boxes. We knew we were getting a future-proofed solution that was built to last, and would work straight out of the box.”

Compared to competing solutions, Jabra Evolve took up the least amount of desk space, with certain models providing wireless operation. Evolve also stood out for the customisable status lights positioned on both earcups. With coloured indicators for ‘Available’ and ‘On a call’, users are better able to self-manage and indicate their status to colleagues or family while working flexibly.

Donna continued: “We always had trouble interrupting each other when we were busy or on calls. But this isn’t a problem anymore as the coloured lights make it very clear when you’re free to talk. Many suppliers just didn’t offer that kind of functionality at the time we went to market.”

Another advantage of the Evolve series is its plug-and-play nature. The headsets are UC-ready and fully certified with Microsoft Teams. Software updates are consistently being rolled out and staff can download them easily through Jabra Connect, a managed software centre that also notifies staff when it’s time to update their firmware.

“When we send new equipment out to our staff we can expect queries and some teething problems,” Donna commented. “But that just wasn’t the case with the Evolve headsets. They just work. We were confident that colleagues would be up and running with their Jabra device straight away, with little need for further support or intervention.”

With UC, staff can easily collaborate and hold virtual meetings using Jabra headsets from home or in the office, without the need to travel. Not only does this reduce time wasted, it also limits the university’s carbon footprint.

Staff also don’t need to depend on conferencing phone systems and meeting rooms, jumping on a virtual meeting or call instead. This saves precious time wasted on booking and coordinating conferencing rooms to hold calls. These inherent productivity gains allow employees to be more efficient with their time.

Ulster University is continuing to roll out the Evolve2 Series headsets to all of its staff. This audio device solution will support the adoption of Teams, post the transition from Skype for Business. It will also help facilitate hybrid working at the University’s new Belfast campus, which will be fully digitised and designed with a ‘work anywhere’ culture in mind.