Supercharge Your Work-From-Home Experience Using Smart Gadgets

If you had to unexpectedly work from home back in March due to the coronavirus, you’ve likely settled into the “work from home” environment by now.

For many employees, the transition will be a permanent one as employers have been made aware of the benefits of using a remote workforce as a side-effect of the COVID-related stay-at-home orders.

Remote work benefits include things like:

• Increased productivity
• Fewer sick/personal days taken
• Less stress
• Lower costs related to physical office needs
• Higher morale
• Fewer distractions

Cloud technologies, like Microsoft 365 and G Suite, have made it possible for remote teams to stay connected and work together as effectively as they did when in the same office.

74% of surveyed companies plan to move some employees to permanent remote work post-COVID.

For those people settling into their new office-at-home environment, it’s time to optimize to make your experience even better. How? By employing the use of your smart gadgets!

Be More Efficient Working at Home with Help from IoT Devices

IoT devices have been skyrocketing in use over the last five years. There are currently an average of 127 new IoT devices connected to the web every second and each household has an average of 10 internet-connected devices.

How about improving your work-from-home experience by tapping into all that AI and smart gadget power? Here are some ideas!

Use Alexa as Your Work Assistant

Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and other smart speakers can be very efficient work assistants.

Need to add a new contact to your phonebook? Just tell Alexa! Need to be alerted when your next video conference call is coming up? Your smart speaker assistant can do that too.

Connect your smart speaker to your calendar and contacts list for voice activated search, add, and more. You can even use an Alexa smart skill for IFTTT and connect Alexa to hundreds of other types of apps and services.

Smart Plug

How many times were you on a video conference that ran long and needed to turn something on or off. Maybe you started smelling the coffee maker burning those last grounds in the pot or you needed to turn on the crock pot so dinner would be on time.

You can make that balance between home and work life easier by using a smart plug. This is a plug that you can control with an app on your phone, allowing you to turn anything plugged into it on or off remotely.

So, you could easily start dinner by turning on your crock pot from your smartphone without skipping a beat in your video meeting.

Smart Mic

One of the legacies of the pandemic has been the rise in video meetings and webinars. They’ve been a way for everyone to stay connected even while working apart.

But trying to facilitate the sound and voice can be problematic. Do you just use your computer’s audio? Use a headset, which can make you look like you’re getting ready for a helicopter newscast?

A smart microphone can give you clear sound and give you a way to still look great. This one from Sabinetek is just a small device you can clip on your shirt and advertises excellent sound and noise cancelling capabilities.

Smart Lighting

There is an entire psychology around lighting and colors showing how they impact mood. You can use that to your advantage by using smart colored lighting in your home office.

• Need some stimulation for creativity? Try an orange hue.
• Looking to cheer yourself up after a road bump at work? Use yellow.
• Want to convey a sense of trust to a client on the other end of a video call? A blue lighting might do the trick.

Video Calling Smart Gadget

One thing that remote workers have to juggle is that home and work are in the same place, which means family members may come in and interrupt from time to time.

“Mom, do you know where my soccer ball is?” or “Dad, how long do I cook those pizza bites again?”

You can stay available without having the physical interruptions by using a video calling smart device, such as Facebook Portal. This can allow you to be there when you’re needed while still keeping a semblance of separation between your “at work” and “at home” modes.

Time Tracking Cube

One way that employers keep track of remote worker activities is to ask them to report the time spent on a particular task. If you’re a freelancer that works from home, you likely need to keep track of time spent per client project. Time tracking manually can take up unnecessary time.

Using this time tracking cube smart gadget called TimeFlip makes tracking time for different activities as easy as flipping a multi-sided die. Just flip to start or stop timing and the smart gadget keeps track of your times per each activity for you according to your preset categories.

Does Your Wisconsin Home Office Have the Technology Support It Needs?

Quantum PC Services can handle a number of PC and software issues completely remotely. Just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean you can’t have great tech support!

Contact us today to learn more! Call 920-256-1214 or reach us online.

 

 

 

Video Text:

 

Supercharge Your Work-From-Home Experience Using Smart Gadgets

 

 

74% of companies plan to move some employees to permanent remote work post-COVID.

 

If you’ve already settled into your office-at-home environment, it’s time to optimize.

 

How? By employing the use of smart gadgets!

Be More Efficient Working at Home with Help from IoT Devices

 

• Use Alexa as Your Work Assistant
• Smart Plug
• Smart Mic
• Smart Lighting
• Video Calling Smart Gadget
• Time Tracking Cube

Does Your Wisconsin Home Office Have the Technology Support It Needs?

 

Contact us today to learn more! Call 920-256-1214 or reach us online.