Ho Ho Home Office

Welcome to the holiday season and the precipice of living in a third calendar year of a global pandemic.?Despite the plentiful horrors and tremendous losses, we’ve learned a lot by living through this period of forced business transformation.?Are you personally ready for the hybrid working future??Here is an eleven step guideline that will help.

As background, I’ve written before about the realities and value of remote and hybrid working.?Every day that passes, more and more people and organizations realize that this is not a temporary glitch in the Matrix, but rather a societal realization that we had the model for knowledge workers wrong all along.?Yes, there will always be nay-sayers shouting we ‘must return to an office’ or that ‘remote knowledge workers will not have the same opportunities for promotion,’ but most of us now see those statements for what they are – desperate cries to return to a past where some people and companies had the order and control only they desired.?The proof is in the pudding.?All the surveys of organizations that utilized remote and hybrid knowledge workers during the pandemic showed both that productivity is up and employees are happier when they are treated like the adults they are.?Imposed in-office schedules and formulas are just failures to recognize the truth.?No one is more qualified to decide where a knowledge worker should be on any given day than that knowledge worker.?The ability to create a balance between personal needs and work needs is optimized only when the individual affected is free to make those calls.

So, having reminded you of all that, the question remains – are you ready to thrive in a future where you may be spending most if not all of your working hours at home?

In the early days of the pandemic, when you had to grab whatever was around to connect to a call, anything you had was sufficient.?Now, entering a reality where there will never be a ‘return to normal’ because this is now our normal, how should you approach setting up your home workspace??Here is the eleven-point guideline for success.

1)?????Pick a Dedicated Location:?It is important for the knowledge worker’s mindset to have a ‘place to go to’ that subconsciously tells family, pets…and themselves that they are ‘at work.’?In some cases this is obviously not possible, but it should be the target state for everyone.

2)?????Ensure That There’s Enough Bandwidth For All:?Once you’ve committed to the idea that your home will often be your place of work then you need to make sure there is enough bandwidth for everyone that may be on-line at the same time. I’m actually stunned that the industry hasn’t already published guidelines for employees, college students, grade-school students, preschoolers, etc.?As a basic guideline from me, you should have at least 15Mbps up and down per person who might be on-line from your residence at any time.?Personally, I’d feel more comfortable with 25Mbps up and down per man, woman and child of any age.

3)?????Have A Roomy Desk: ?Whether it is a sit-down desk or one that allows you to stand while working, make sure you have a surface area that not only holds all the needed gear but also gives you room to lay-out any papers or devices that you may need to look at during the course of a day.

4)?????Get A Great Camera:?When you’re actually mobile (for example sitting in your yard, at a park or on a train) then using the built-in camera in your mobile device is sufficient.?However, when you’re at your home office you are most definitely not mobile. Get a high quality external camera.?Clients, co-workers and supervisors are human and cannot avoid the human nature of judging you based on the quality of your image.??An external camera can be set at the optimal height (eye-level) independently of any screen it is attached to.?If you get a really good one it will also produce clearer pictures and truer colors.?If you work for a large enterprise make sure you check with them before purchasing one.?Many firms will provide cameras that are within their standards and can be remotely updated and diagnosed if there are problems.

5)?????Get More Than One Great Audio Device:?There will be times when you will want to wear a headset in your home office – like when you don’t want other people to hear the conversation or when there is noise that is distracting you (like sounds from nearby construction, vacuuming, gardening, etc.)?There will also be times that you don’t want to wear a headset.?Good hands-free systems will be able to make you sound good and will prevent any unwanted noises (typing, pets) from reaching the other end of the call.?Whatever you do, don’t use the earbuds that came with your mobile device.?Again here, you’re not mobile so you can do better, and in addition, it makes you look unprofessional.?(As a personal note, the firm I work for makes the best combination home system camera and hands-free speaker microphone device. Check it out if you like.)

6)?????Use Dedicated Lighting:?Great video is created through illumination using a process that is known as three point lighting.?There are many on-line documents and even master classes on how to get lighting right.?For your home office it is important to realize that while you should definitely use this process, you don’t need to invest in expensive video lights or the now ubiquitous (and silly) ring lights.?On-line merchants sell many lamps that cost only about 30 bucks and are both dimmable and color-temperature adjustable.?Color temperature is also an important topic with plenty of on-line education, but at a high level, just make sure all your light sources match each other (either daylight at ~5200 degrees – or indoor lighting, historically called “tungsten,” at ~3200 degrees.)

7)?????Use More Than One Display:?When you work remotely you will often be on video calls and need to share content.?That means, at a minimum, you will need to both see your personal computer screen and share another computer image.?Having two displays – one for you and one for them – makes this process much easier.?If you’re in a tech job or are someone who constantly creates content then I’d recommend three displays at a minimum.?As for me, on a typical workday I keep one display on my email, a second display on my team chat suite, a third display on my current tasks, and still have my fourth one free to share any raw content I want to drag over to it.

8)?????Use A Background That Says What You Want:?I’m not a huge fan of virtual backgrounds – although they do serve to cover what may be a bad background when needed.?I’m also not in the mainstream that says you need to have a boring, businesslike background.?Just make sure the camera sees what you want the people you communicate with to see.?Maybe it’s your college degrees; maybe it’s how tidy you are; maybe it’s your company logo; maybe it’s a pop-culture conversation piece (like I use.)?In any case, just make sure the far-end view is intentional.

9)?????Use A Comfortable Chair:?You’re going to be at your home office desk a lot.?Don’t let yourself be uncomfortable.?Get a chair that you can sit in all day if needed.?Try out a few at your closest office supply store before buying one.

10)?Watch Out For Glare: ?If you wear glasses like I do, make sure you get a pair specifically prescribed for computer use (18 to 24 inches distance) and purchase the top of the line anti-glare coating on the lenses.?You won’t be distracting people on your video calls with reflections of your screens and lights.

11)?Have A Window On Life:?If you can set-up your home office in a room where you can look out a window then you definitely should.?It is important for our soul to see if it is daylight or evening outside, if it’s raining or if it’s sunny, and to look at the occasional car driving by or squirrel climbing a tree.?If you can’t set-up near a window then do what I did.??My home office desk is in my windowless, finished basement, so I put an IP camera on my front window and I watch it from an old tablet.?It is a superb reference I can always peek at out of the corner of my eye…and I also know when the mail has been delivered.??

Whether you’ve already fully accepted the fact that as a knowledge worker you’re going to be working remotely much more often, or are just realizing that truth now, take the time this holiday season to adopt as many of the above eleven points as you can.?It will improve both your experience and those of your employers and clients.?Make your Ho Ho Home office the best that it can be.

==============================================================

Please click the "like" button if you liked this blog as it will allow others in your network to see it. Feel free to comment / share as well.

Follow @NJDavidD on Twitter for real-time collaboration news and insights, business travel insights, and the occasional social media snark.

==============================================================

This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions. David has over four decades of experience providing problem solving leadership and innovation in media and unified communications technologies for various firms in the corporate, broadcasting and academic worlds including AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase. He now works as The Director of UC Strategy and Research for Poly. He is also the IMCCA’s Director of Emerging Technology. David can be reached at [email protected] and his full bio and other blogs and articles can be seen at Danto.info.