The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the workplace from where people worked closely with their professional colleagues in large, mostly sterile environments into offices that changed the meaning of “Home Sweet Home.” Once COVID became yesterday’s news, these people expected to return to onsite work with arms wide open. However, if you are like the many who continue to work from home, it means it’s time to upgrade your home office.
Whether you crunch numbers for an accounting firm or handle logistics for a shipping company, upgrading your home office is an essential part of your professional life. You do not need to complete a comprehensive upgrade. However, there are several things you can do to make your home office resemble the office you used to work at every day pre-pandemic.
Better Posture with an Ergonomic Chair
An ergonomic chair supports the lower back to mitigate pain. This allows you to focus more on work and less on trying to figure out why working from home decreased your productivity. Working hunched over a computer keyboard triggers what starts as a mild, inconvenient pain. It then morphs into debilitating pain that prevents you from achieving daily professional tasks.
An upgrade in the chair where you work goes a long way. It makes your home office fulfill the same standards that you expect out of an onsite workspace.
Install a High-Quality Speaker System
Music is the elixir that cures the unproductivity blues. Working from home sometimes feels less like work and more like a mundane chore. Music piped in through a highly rated speaker system offers the adrenaline to keep you focused on the project at hand. Several studies linked work performance in any environment with listening to favorite tunes. Music has tremendous healing power. In addition, it does a great job of channeling your focus in a highly productive manner.
Create a Warm, Comforting Ambiance
Many workplaces exude bland ambiances of bright, incandescent lights combined with too much space colored in black and white. A desk lamp that produces a soft, textured illumination creates a comforting glow. It also makes working from home much less stressful than completing projects in an office work environment. Less stress equals a higher level of productivity.
Go Wireless with a Keyboard
The strain placed on the hands and fingers from typing potentially leads to the development of carpal tunnel syndrome. This on a good day makes it difficult to type out a short memo. With a wireless keyboard, you remove the strain placed on your hands and fingers. An ergonomic keyboard that includes a pad for your wrist to rest is the way to go for professionals that work mostly from home.
Improve Your Audio Connection
When you start working more from home, your office represents the connection that keeps you in touch with the company command center. This means you expect to participate in daily virtual meetings held on sites such as Zoom, Skype, and Google. To eliminate all distractions, use a high-quality headset. It keeps you in touch with your professional colleagues, while blocking out unwanted noise.
AirPods are still some of the most popular and functional choices. However, they lose their charges and are often frustrating to connect between phone and computer. For more frequent meetings, consider over or on-ear headsets with high quality microphones. According to Selby, the high quality headsets double for gaming or music, and business. Contemporary advances in technology produced lightweight headsets. These go easy on the neck while at the same time providing pristine audio quality.
Office-Quality Wi-Fi Router
Since virtually all of your work is based on gaining access to the Internet, you cannot afford to invest in an inferior Wi-Fi router that goes down at the first sign of an incoming storm. Make investing in a high-quality Wi-Fi router one of the cornerstones of the upgrade you make to your home office. High quality means a wireless coverage that extends more than 1,500 square feet with the capability to work with as many as 25 different electronic devices.
Commercial-Grade Chargers
With all the new electronic components hooked up to your home office, you need to purchase powerful, yet eco-friendly chargers to keep everything running flawlessly. Even if you do not convert your home office into a model for technological advances, invest in several chargers that keep the batteries supplying electrical juice to your home office charged at all times.
Invest in chargers that supply electricity to your home office electronic components, while at the same time recharging themselves.
An Exercise Mat
When you needed a break from the corporate world, you most likely either went straight to the break room or stepped outside for a temporary whiff of fresh air. One of the benefits of working from home is taking a break on your time and in a way that benefits the mind and the body. Just placing a simple exercise mat in your new and improved home office gives you the exercise platform to alleviate the tension of a typical workday.
The Bottom Line
Many companies encourage working from home by partially or completely subsidizing the upgrade of home offices. You also deduct any improvements made to where you work from home on your income tax form. Financial benefits aside, upgrading your home office improves your productivity, while making it feel like you still work alongside your professional colleagues.
