Bringing Home Offices Up To Speed

Telecommuters make up nearly three percent of the U.S. workforce. That might not sound like a lot, but that’s over three million people we’re talking about. Technology makes it not only easy for employees to work from home, but desirable for employers to let their staff work from home, at least some of the time. People who work from home tend to be more productive and enjoy more job satisfaction. It’s a win-win situation. But you have to ensure some consistency across remote and on-site work spaces and methods. Your company might be scattered, but the work should be the same no matter where your employees are. Consider the following solutions for keeping remote employees up to speed.

 

Your first priority should be providing a simple and intuitive way for your remote employees to connect and collaborate. Prime Call Cloud MeetMe 2.0 facilitates quick and easy connections for everyone in your organization, no matter where they are. As long as your remote employees have internet access and a camera, they can join a conference in the cloud. With one simple click on a URL link, participants can enter the virtual conference room and get down to business. And when your remote employees visit the office, they can bring their own device and connect in the ways that have become familiar and productive for them.

 

Home office spaces will likely not require a giant screen. Odds are pretty good that your remote employees can (and should) have a standard desktop display. But it can (and should) be a display that facilitates video collaboration. Cisco’s TelePresence EX90 fits the bill. The EX90’s 24-inch HD display can be used as a PC monitor and a telepresence system, so remote employees can easily transition from individual work to video calls. And with one-touch sharing and a built-in document camera, the EX90 keeps collaboration flowing smoothly.

 

Home offices aren’t always the most quiet places. It’s one of the pitfalls of telecommuting: kids can get noisy; dogs act up; garbage trucks rumble by at inconvenient moments. Polycom RealPresence Desktop removes such annoying distractions with its Acoustic Fence technology, which listens for and then eliminates unwanted audio disruptions while you’re on a video call. It’s an ideal solution for remote workers who can’t always count on peace and quiet.

 

No matter how sophisticated your telepresence solution, there is still a time and a place for good old fashioned telephone calls. And your remote employees shouldn’t have to rely on their cell phones for business calls--audio quality just isn’t always up to snuff. Consider the audio conferencing solutions provided by Cisco and Polycom, which ensure peerless audio for calls that can’t risk being dropped.

 

Explore additional home office and desktop video solutions and learn more about Prime Call Cloud MeetMe.