Within the span of a week or two, millions of people transitioned from working in a business office to working from home. For many of us who made the transition, our workspaces at home were not prepared for the regular ‘9-to-5’ hours. They were spaces meant for shorter periods of work. For example, perhaps you had a laptop in the kitchen counter for banking or paying the bills online or on the side table in the living room for looking at the kids’ school reports & schedules. Maybe you did your online shopping from a tablet while lounging in bed. These types of workspaces are not conducive to the long-term productivity required in a regular workday.
Consider setting up your work computer in a designated workspace or in a home office. An assigned working area will help you keep connected and comfortable for working productively, for a longer period of time. Once you’ve got a spot to work, consider these enhancements to your workspace:
Managing emails, multiple browser windows, instant messaging, and documents needs visual space. If your laptop is your main display screen, its smaller size might not allow for multiple windows open at once to efficiently access all the information you need. Adding a monitor, or dare we say two, increases your visual real estate exponentially.
Aesthetics is everything. Nothing sucks the productivity out of a workspace like wild tangles of computer cables weaving across the desk, draping onto the ground and snaking across a room. There are simple cable management items that can help you get started to minimize the grove of cables in your home office.
Often our computers don’t have enough ports to support the myriad of peripherals and accessories that are required for our office jobs. These include external keyboard, mouse, speakers, webcams, printers, monitors, scanners … etc.
By connecting a USB hub to your computer, it expands the number of available USB ports. Similarly, a multiport adapter provides additional ports of various connectivity. For example, added USB ports, plus video outputs and ethernet port all in one adapter.
Spending long hours sitting at a desk can take a toll on your body. Adjusting your desk set up to help you maintain ergonomically correct body positions will help to relieve some strain.
Consider a monitor mount or monitor arm. Though most monitors are height adjustable, a monitor mount/arm can take it to the next level. It can provide additional height, forward and backward adjustability, and angle of view changes left, right, up and down.
Being sedentary has a negative impact on your health and productivity. It is recommended we get up from our seated work positions regularly to help maintain our mobility. A full sit-stand desk is gives you the opportunity to stand and allows you to keep working, but it can be expensive. A more budget-friendly alternative is a sit-stand mount that can attach to a regular stationary desk. These adjustable mounts lift your monitor (or monitors) and keyboard to a standing height and back to seated whenever you feel like changing positions.
Read about 5 Ways to Add Movement to Your Work From Home Routine, by our partners at Ergotron.
The above recommendations are just a few samples of the available enhancements to create a more comfortable, connected, and productive workspace. There is a solution for almost every workspace issue. Let us know if we can help you improve your work-from-home experience.
Is your home network experiencing connectivity issues? Read our related article: Adjusting to the New Normal – Optimizing Your Home Internet
Your home network environment may not be as secure as your work environment. Read our related article: Practices for Working Securely from Home.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. We make I.T. easy.
info@pccorp.com | Calgary: 403.266.3000 | Edmonton: 780.428.3000
We’ve changed the way we work – COVID-19: Business UNusual