Key ingredients for the home office

Since March 2020, we transformed from an “on-site” company to a remote company, not particularly because we wanted to, but because the corona pandemic forced us to. Our office is not suitable to ensure transmission safety, so I decided that work from home is the lesser problem. When I say “transform” and “decided”, please bear in mind that these are retrospect notions. The decision was made at Monday, March 16th 2020 and the transformation happened in the next two days.

But there is a real difference between being operable and fully equipped for the situation. We were operable in the remote situation within 48 hours. But we still work on improving our equipment to match the situation that seems to linger a lot longer than initially anticipated. This blog post tries to summarize what we’ve learned since March 2020 in regards to equipping home office workplaces past the makeshift phase.

The fundamentals

The most fundamental ingredients of any office workplace are the table and the chair. If any of those lack in necessary ergonomic features, your comfort will never be the same as in the office (provided that your equipment there is adequate). And this constant discomfort will permeat everything you do.

The chair was easier to detect because it shows up in the video calls, it is part of the “zoom room”. Still, it took some time to order new chairs or transport existing office chairs to the home offices. If you experience back pain or mechanically induced headaches, review your chair thoroughly.

The table was more tricky, because it is typically invisible during video calls. My approach was to retrieve a photo of every home office space and talk about the possible improvements. During these talks, we came up with two solution categories that I want to present.

The notebook workplace

We all had work notebooks as secondary computers before the pandemic. So it was not a problem to start with working from home on that notebook, we’ve done it before. But if all you do is to work directly at a notebook, you might have the best chair and table, your body posture will be suboptimal. We equipped the notebook-based workplaces with the following extras:

• An external keyboard
• An external computer mouse
• One (or better: two) additional monitors
• A matching docking station, at least to connect to the monitors
• A notebook riser stand

The last item, the notebook riser stand, was the game changer when it came to multi-monitoring (two or three monitors). It elevates your notebook to the same height as the other displays and might even change its angle. This transforms your notebook from being the CPU unit with cumbersome monitor to a secondary monitor with a CPU. The riser stand doesn’t cost much (if you don’t go overboard with its design) and provides you with more table space and improved displays.

The existing computer workplace

Because we are software developers, we mostly have a very decent computer already fully equipped at home. The only problem: The computer is for private tasks and should stay that way. We want to separate our work environment from our leisure environment as much as possible. But several developers wanted to use their usual “battlestation” for home office work, too.

In this case, we bought a lavish SSD as an additional boot drive for the home PC. This separates the work operating system from the leisure drive as much as the notebook approach. And the existing hardware can be used for both timeslots, much to the comfort of the developer.

The video conference equipment

But regardless of your approach (notebook or existing computer), there are still some things missing that improve the quality of work of yourself and your colleagues tremendously:

• A good headset, preferably with top-notch comfort and active noise cancelling (ANC)
• An at least decent webcam

Most notebooks provide a mediocre webcam and some low quality microphone. Do yourself (and your communication partners) a favor and invest in a good microphone. Oftentimes, it is coupled with good headphones. The difference between a good audio setup and an echo-prone makeshift solution is the deciding factor when essentially all communication with your colleagues go through this channel.

The webcam is not as essential as the audio equipment, because it “only” affects your communication partners, but it adds a nice touch to your other equipment. You don’t have to go overboard on it, a model for one hundred euros is already an improvement.

The bottleneck

One thing that can really invalidate most of the other improvements is a small internet connection. This is probably to hardest thing to fix in a timely manner, but give it some thoughts. If your internet connection is too slow for your daily work and communication pattern, it will be a constant annoyance. Just because it takes some time to improve doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

We will probably remain in this situation long enough to still reap the profit of our effort. And even if not (at least we can hope), nobody ever complained about an internet connection that is a bit oversized.

TL;DR

If you didn’t read the article, here are the major take-away points neatly summarized:

• Ergonomic chair and table
• Notebook with external keyboard, mouse and monitor
• Notebook riser stand
• SSD for dual boot systems
• Good headset
• External webcam
• “Broadband” internet

If you miss an item from this list for your home office, give it a thought. And if you plan to only think about one item, think about your chair first.

What are your experiences with working from home? What accessory makes your work life better? Give us a hint by writing a comment below. Thank you!