Most of remote workers are still not equipped properly to work this way
New research conducted by Currys PC World and Canon found that a large proportion of employees across the UK still don’t have all the right tools and equipment to work from home effectively.
It has been now over a year from the first lockdown and when people were forced to stay at home and work remotely due to coronavirus pandemic, many workers are still lacking vital hardware such as printers, monitors, even proper desks and chairs !
Majority of people admit that they like working from home as this improve their life style however they still didn’t took it seriously enough to do some investments and/or modifications to their living space, creating a work environment, if you are reading that and finding yourself in that majority is time to make some significant changes.
Work area
Wherever it’s a dedicated room, or temporary setup, you are spending most time of your day working in this place. It will be important to find a place with good access to natural lighting, comfort as well as the place where you can be left alone to yourself without being bothered by anyone or anything. Once you find and claim this space to be your work-dedicated space you need to look at the proper desk as well as the chair, your posture and wellbeing will be a priority so you may want to invest in best possible solution. Standing desks becoming trendy, I haven’t tested one myself yet but that is definitely on my list. The chair must be comfortable but I would avoid anything which only looks good, you want something which will take care of your posture.
Work tools (hardware)
Once you have your work area ready, you need to create a simple shopping list to include following equipment (again this will vastly depend on your job profile so please proceed with caution and make sure things you are buying are relevant to the work you do) : computer/laptop/tablet, a monitor or set of monitors, keyboard + mouse/trackpad (it is worth to have a backup keyboard and mouse too in case of equipment failure, the same goes for computers), phone, headphones (I recommend noise cancelling headphones, they are the best if you talk a lot with clients/coworkers and it helps a lot limiting the noise surrounding you otherwise), make sure when you setting everything up to do a proper cable management, it will help you keep everything clean in the long term plus that kind of job would likely not be tackled when you get comfortable with your setup.
Mentioning your work tools we have to remember about appropriate backup solution, you should have some sort of backup in case your machine you working on fail so you can be up and running within minutes, but also you should have a backup in for of a hard drive or if you thinking about that seriously – think about NAS (Network Attached Storage), you can contact me directly as I can advise on what will be the best for your setup. Get that plant you always wanted to this way your working space will become more lively.
Work tools (software)
You need to have proper set of applications such as email client, calendar, to-do list organiser, note gathering app, communication tools such as FaceTime, Zoom, Skype, word editor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, PDF editor is very useful these days, you may also consider getting a VPN client as well as some access to the Cloud backup for peace of mind.
Organise yourself !
Even having best office, equipment and furniture in the world there is no guarantee that you will succeed ! You need to sort yourself out and create a workable agenda which will provide you with a solid plan for your work as well as it will give you fair work-life balance.
I’m focused in this BLOG to provide you as much value as possible to improve your “work remotely” skills making you working efficiently, being productive as well as have a happy meaningful life !
Are you missing any tools which will improve your work from home setup? Feel free to let me know in the comments section below.
All the best,
Lucas
