Great Gadgets For New Remote Workers

Some people have found that they can work for hours on end at home without too many problems. However, for other people who are just now starting out with working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, working in their new remote home office can be a significant adjustment.

Your kids are yelling in the other room. You can barely hear your employees on the conference call because of poor sound quality. To top it all off, you don’t have one chair in the house that’s comfortable enough to work in.

We hear you—working remotely has its benefits, but it also has many challenges. Because there’s no telling how long the coronavirus will keep us working from home, we’ve compiled a list of the best gadgets to improve productivity and make working remotely easier.

Standing Desk Converter

A standing desk may sound like a costly investment. Plus, if you already have a desk, you might not think you have enough room for it. Instead of buying a whole standing desk, look for desk converters, which you can place on top of any existing desk to make standing an option.

A standing desk converter is ideal if you aren’t sure whether you want to stand full-time. You don’t have to commit to using it for 8 hours a day. Instead, you can stand to stretch during a conference call or in the middle of your afternoon slump. Then, return to sitting when you need a break.

On the low end, you can find standing desk converters for under $50, while some nicer ones can cost between $100 and $250.

Noise-Cancelling Headphones

If you have to contend with loud neighbors, bored children, or unwanted outside noise, consider investing in a good pair of noise-canceling headphones. You’ll likely find yourself using these headphones beyond the home office.

Quality noise-canceling headphones can be a sound investment for frequent travelers, fitness junkies, or anyone who wants to drown outside static for a personal concert.

You can also invest in a headphone-microphone set if you want something that can pick up your voice while cutting out background noise. This equipment is essential for people in sales positions or employees who want to sound professional even when they are home. It is hard to listen to a sales pitch if the presenter’s voice cuts out or gets overshadowed by a screaming child or barking dog.

On the low-end, you can get a pair of headphones for under $50 that will get you through the pandemic. However, if you see yourself working remotely more frequently and want this purchase to be an investment, you can buy a quality pair for $350 or more.

Lumbar Support Cushions

The wrong chair can cause back pain, headaches, posture problems, and other issues that last long after you clock out for the day. If you are working at the kitchen table during the pandemic or in a makeshift office, order a lumbar cushion or other office chair support system. You may even want to order an office chair that you can use if you need to work from home again.

You can find a number of lumbar support cushions for sale online between $20 and $50.

Wi-Fi Extender

If you and your significant other are both working from home, you may try to work in different areas of the house to prevent distractions. Similarly, your kids might need to use the internet in another spot to do their schoolwork. Your Wi-Fi may not be able to extend throughout the house and keep everyone’s gadgets running equally.

If one part of the house has slower Wi-Fi than the rest, get a Wi-Fi extender or booster. This device can give your wireless connection the extra life it needs so everyone can log on wherever they are.

If you’re looking for a simple Wi-Fi extender, you can expect to pay between $20 and $40, but if you want to cover the entire house, you might want to consider a mesh system that can be upward of $200 or more but is far more efficient and the investment won’t be a waste.

More and more things in the home call for Internet access – home assistants like Alexa, streaming gaming platforms like Google Stadia, smart gadgets and much more – so better WiFi will never be a bad thing.

Desk Scanner

When you work remotely, it’s not easy to run a few papers over to a co-worker or ask your boss for a signature. Fortunately, a desk scanner can help you quickly scan papers and send them to your team members so they have the content they need. If you want to go paperless in your remote office, a desk scanner is a good place to begin your transition.

These scanners don’t take up as much space as you would think. This option is ideal if you have a limited room and don’t want to buy bulky office equipment just for the pandemic. Plus, you can pick a scanner up for less than $40 at Staples or Office Depot.

If you are looking for a more advanced desk scanner, their prices range from above $100 to almost $300.

Find What Works for You

You don’t need to buy all of these gadgets to work from home successfully. Instead, identify a few problems you have and see if any of these options can solve them. For example, if you have a hard time hearing webinars and speaking up during conference calls, then a more advanced headset and microphone could significantly improve your productivity.

Need help with your WiFi or Internet connectivity problems? Contact us, we’ll be happy to help determine your options for improvement in your home.

Strategies for Keeping Confidential Information Safe – Even When Working From Home

For many businesses large and small maintaining the integrity of confidential data is a must.

In some cases they are strictly legally mandated to do so – the healthcare industry springs immediately to mind here – and in others while the actual ‘rules’ might be a bit of a gray area the ‘leak’ of confidential information often spells disaster.

With many employees working from home right now due to COVID-19 restrictions this data security is an even bigger issue

To help prevent this an increasing number of companies are quite sensibly making a deliberate effort to ‘beef up security ‘ around such information, by making use of innovations like two factor authentication, biometric identification and other data access protections.

What many do forget though is that most businesses have one more potential data security threat that needs to be addressed; the employees that access it. And given that many are ‘out of sight’ right now, aside from the occasional Zoom check in, the issue is one that has to be addressed.

Although there have been cases of confidential information being compromised deliberately by disgruntled employees most such breaches are unintentional.

That having been said they can still be very harmful. With this in mind here are three actionable steps you can take to help prevent the integrity of your confidential data being accidentally sabotaged by your employees.

Focus on Proper Training

According to an Infowatch report, 66% of the data leaks the logged were the result of an internal, rather than external breach. Further research however determined that over 40% of those leaks could be attributed to a simple lack of training on the part of the people responsible.

To address this businesses need to ensure that every employee understands what confidential data they are actually handling to prevent accidental disclosure.

This training should constitute more than just a few pages in an employee handbook that may never be read or a company wide email that may get lost in an overstuffed inbox.

A formal Zoom based training session – or sessions – is a far more effective way to try to ensure that everyone gets the message who needs to, and occasional testing may even be a good idea, especially in healthcare or customer service settings where a data breach can have serious legal ramifications for the business.

Emphasize Email Encryption

Insecure emails were a big topic of conversation last year in the run up to the Presidential election, but although there is no doubt that most people noted the issue a recent Echoworx study found that only 40% of companies were making use of email encryption to safeguard confidential data. For those businesses that do not that leaves a big hole in the security of their confidential information.

The fact is that once your team has been properly educated about just what confidential information means, this is a step should come naturally, just ensuring that employees know to – and have the ability to – encrypt any email they send that contains sensitive data. There are a number of tools available to do this and most of them are easy to implement and not particularly expensive either.

Make Security Easier

The easier a set of information protection protocols is the more likely it is they will be adhered to, so ensuring that whatever precautions are put in place are user friendly is another must.

One way to determine this is simply to ask for feedback from the employees being asked to use them. Are they still having trouble even after a formal training session? Are the tools slowing them down? If so it may be time to look at a different solution that better takes user experience into account.

Need help finding data management solutions? Contact us, we’ll be happy to help.