Working from home doesn’t need to be frustrating or inefficient. People just need to put some planning into collaboration tools, room layouts and networks to create an optimal experience.
I read through this blog posting by Unify's Senior Vice President of Vision and Strategy, Rick Puskar on the "4 Must-Haves for Flexible Workspaces," and I thought it would be good to expand on this some. While I agree with these "must-haves" for in-office workers, it got me thinking about some of the must-haves for remote workers.
Being an independent analyst I work exclusively from home (when not traveling), and even when I was with Yankee Group, I worked remotely a few times a week so I've done plenty of experimenting with remote worker technology. Here is what I deem to be "must-haves" for remote workers:
• Video technology - It's been proven both quantitatively and qualitatively that video-based meetings are more effective than voice-only interactions. Also, many remote workers suffer what I call "social isolation" from not having regular day-to-day interaction with co-workers. Video can go a long way toward helping workers build a more personal experience with fellow employees. Workers should have the capability of joining scheduled multi-party video meetings, but also have the ability to spontaneously communicate over video with a single individual. Ideally, the worker would have a dedicated video endpoint, but PC-based video can be effective as well. If PC-based video is being used, I would recommend having a second screen – either a tablet or standalone monitor - to create more screen real estate. Also, if you're doing PC-based calling, invest in a high quality USB microphone - the people on the other side will certainly appreciate it.
• "Modern" phone service for home offices - Workers of larger companies may not need to worry about this if a soft phone or remote phone is used. However, for small businesses, individuals (like myself) or anyone that gives out a home office number, choose your home office phone provider carefully. Make sure they have good remote tools such as transcribed voice mail, mobile connect capabilities and Web-based tools to manage the calls. For example, I use Vonage, which emails me all voice mail so I no longer need to spend any time checking voice mails, and the mobile client enables me to make calls over Wi-Fi when I'm traveling. This is especially useful if you travel overseas -- I get killed by European roaming charges from my cell phone provider.
• Chat and presence - These are other tools that can help overcome social isolation. Chat and presence are great complementary features to video and conferencing. They can help facilitate side conversations during meetings and be used to build stronger bonds between coworkers.
• A cellular extender - Unless the cell coverage in your house is perfect, a good investment is a cellular extender. If you're working remotely, you probably rely heavily on your cell phone, and that makes dropped calls frustrating. For a couple of hundred bucks, you can pick up a cellular extender to get "five bar" coverage in the home.
• Bluetooth speaker for cell phone - Home workers will likely use a headset for most calls but what happens when someone calls on the cell phone and you want to put it on speaker? The built-in speaker on a cell phone is adequate for short conversations, but for longer calls a Bluetooth speaker can make a huge difference.
• Optimized placement of video endpoints - This is something I've struggled with for years in my home office. Any kind of window or bright light behind the worker can overexpose the background and have the worker look dark or totally blacked out by contrast. This can change from morning to afternoon as well. Ideally the remote worker would have a wall, bookcase or some other non-light bearing object behind them and a bright light on the other side of the desk. This wasn't an option where my desk is positioned, so I found a good "fix" for the backlighting problem was to put a desk lamp above my video endpoint. When I'm doing a video call, I switch it on and that makes the light shining on me brighter than any other light source in my home office.
• Wi-Fi with a plan - What I mean by this is that most people at home don't really think about their Wi-Fi. The norm is to go to Best Buy, purchase a cheap access point and leave the out-of-the-box configuration in place for home access. That may work fine most of the time, but not when other people in the house start competing for bandwidth. For example, an X-Box Live is a bandwidth hog, as is Netflix. A likely scenario at my home is that my lovely little wife, Christine, likes to stream "Matty in the Morning" over her iPhone while she gets ready in mornings. There are numerous ways to handle this. One is to just go into your wireless settings and throttle down the specific applications. You could also create a separate Wi-Fi network for the rest of the family to use that has limited throughput, giving the "business" network more available bandwidth. Another issue with wireless is coverage. If you have a home with multiple floors or even a large single floor, it may be hard to get coverage everywhere. I tried using the Mac Airports with the extenders and the Belkin extenders, and the one thing I concluded is all of the extenders are crap. My solution was to put up a 5-node Aerohive network in the home to get coverage throughout the home and outside where I need it.
Working from home doesn't need to be frustrating or inefficient. People just need to put some planning into collaboration tools, room layouts and networks to create an optimal experience.
Follow Zeus Kerravala on Twitter and Google+!
@zkerravala
Zeus Kerravala on Google+
