Polycom Inc. said it expects to report its fourth-quarter earnings per share grew at least 16 percent when it issues its results later this month and said it will also lay off about 6 percent of its work force.

Jill Smart, an Accenture executive, was skeptical the first time she stepped into her firm’s new videoconferencing room in Chicago for a meeting with a group of colleagues in London. But the videoconferencing technology, known as telepresence, delivered an experience so lifelike, Ms. Smart recalled, that “10 minutes into it, you forget you are not in the room with them,” The New York Times reported.