Simplifying the Home Office Toolset in Complex Times

Designing the Home Office for Remote-first

The typical home office continues to feature a default array of cables, docking stations, speakers, adapters, power supplies, webcams, and microphones scattered across a desk. Many of these components have a single use, and weren’t designed for the realities of working exclusively from home. Additionally, these devices are often sourced from different vendors. Too much variation in home office equipment can be difficult for IT to manage, especially from a distance.

This inconsistent and reactive approach to provisioning has multiple consequences:

• Overspending on components that have limited value
• Complaints from frustrated employees, especially during onboarding
• More IT support tickets and troubleshooting
• More time spent on device maintenance and support
• Increased security risk
• Employees left with setups not conducive to collaboration, productivity, and well-being

Creating a More Equitable Remote Work Experience

The problem goes beyond IT and operations. By default, employees have been tasked with setting up their own home office spaces. Without prescriptive guidance from IT, many employees are left with setups not conducive to collaboration, productivity, and well-being. This is a big deal, given the fact that collaboration, teamwork, and employee happiness are more critical for success than ever before.

Furthermore, not all employees have equal circumstances - far from it. Some employees are more tech-savvy and have a better eye for design than others. Some have more resources than others. Some have support systems that others do not. Some have living spaces that are better suited to remote work than others.

An employee’s ability to set up a high-functioning home office space should not affect their job performance. Organizational leaders must take a more active role in ensuring that all employees have a high-quality home office setup. Addressing these inequities will improve the employee experience and drive better team outcomes.

Achieving Remote-first Home Office Success

For employers, provisioning for the home office can be costly and inconsistent. For employees, it can be inequitable and even exclusionary. To mitigate these risks, remote-first work requires a new category of products, built from the ground-up for the home office for the first time in order to facilitate connection, collaboration, well-being, and productivity all in one place.

IT should evaluate whether or not their employees’ home office equipment meets the criteria for being truly remote-first. What does this criteria look like?

• Purpose-built for personal use
  
• Optimized for virtual collaboration and communication
• Easily deployable and manageable at scale
• Certified to easily integrate with organizations’ existing applications

While some components offer some of these features some of the time, a more sophisticated home office setup emerges when all of these factors are centrally-realized, solving for multiple challenges at once.

It is clear that to ensure resilience in unpredictable times, the home office experience must be simplified, putting remote employees on more equal footing and consolidating the process for employers.