According to the World Economic Forum, in the United States – before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic – only about 7% of the working population were able to work from home. Now, according to statistics released by Clutch, owing to the coronavirus, 66% of Americans work from home at least for a portion of the week.
As Covid-19 is going to be around for the foreseeable future, so preventing people from going back to the office full time, people will need to set up their home offices properly so that the productivity is not affected. Here is some of the tech that you will need to have so that you can set up your home office properly.
A Good Internet Connection
There are no two ways about it. You’re going to need a good Internet connection and the higher the speed, the better, and preferably uncapped. You don’t want to be conducting a video conference and not be able to hear the participants properly because you have a terrible signal as you’re operating off mobile data. You don’t want to be suddenly cut off because you’ve run out of data.
A Web Cam
A staple of working from home is video conferencing. Some organisations prefer to conduct off-camera discussion while others prefer participants to have their web cameras on. Assume that you’re going to need to conduct video conferencing with a webcam on so if you don’t have one, you’re going to need to get one.
Laptops come built-in with a webcam, so if you’re working off this type of machine, you don’t have to worry about going to the added expense. However, even if you have a laptop and you work off additional screens, you’ll probably want to get yourself an additional camera anyway because as you’re not looking directly at the camera – as you would if you were working off your laptop screen – the image that other participants will see of you could become quite distorted.
Design Your Ergonomics Well
Although not strictly part of tech, ergonomics plays an incredibly important role in your home office. You’ll be spending a lot of time here – possibly more time than you did in the company’s office – so you need to make sure that your set-up allows you to maintain a good posture because if you spend hours on end hunched over your desk, you’ll end up developing back and neck tension as well as headaches.
Physiotherapists say that when you sit on your chair, you feet need to be flat on the floor and at right angles to your hips. Your elbows need to rest comfortably on your desk with your keyboard in reach of your fingers. It would help if you didn’t stretch to reach it. Also, your screen must be eye level – you shouldn’t be bending your head either up or down to see what you’re typing.
These are some of the basics that you need to kit your home office out. If you have more budget, you can do more but remember to only spend within your means.