Remote Working

68 videos, 3 hours and 33 minutes

Course Content

Workstation overview

Video 6 of 68
4 min 1 sec
English
English

If you are going to be working at home, you need somewhere to work, you do not really want to be sitting on a sofa or something like that, it's very bad posture and you are not going to be able to get work done. We work here is a desk in a spare room, now if you've got the spare room, great, if you haven't then you can maybe work from your dining room table, it's a good idea to keep your work area separate from your personal life. So here we could work in the bedroom, we close the door off, the dog keeps away, and it just makes it an easier place to work, and when we close the door at the end of the day, we can leave work here.

So we are just going to have a quick look at the sorts of things we have here, and you do not have to have a workstation that looks like this, it may well be that yours looks a little bit different or very basic. It might just be as simple as a laptop computer, so if we start here, what we have done here, we have put the screens up onto the stands, if you don't have screens up here, you still need to think about your display screen equipment and the best way of making sure that that equipment is at the right height for you.

Now, we will look at this in other videos, but here the screens are at eye level, it makes it a lot easier when you're working. And also, we work with two screens, and if you haven't worked with two screens before you should give it a try, you can do it just with a laptop and a second screen or if you are working with a MacBook, you can use your iPad as a second screen. That works really, really well. But the screen-wise here, we can tilt them, we can angle them, we can make sure there's no sun coming on them and it makes it a nice, easier way of working.

Now the actual main box of the computer is underneath the table, it gives us a little bit more free space at the top, if I was working with a laptop here, then the laptop can be here, you can also get stands for the laptop, so we can actually lift the laptop up, and then you could use a secondary keyboard, just maybe a Bluetooth or a wired keyboard, so you can still keep your posture correct and have the screen up higher even when you're using a laptop, also using a full-width keyboard is a lot easier because if you're using a full-width keyboard, it's better on your joints. A laptop, you do tend to be pulling your arms in, and again, that can cause shoulder and neck problems that make it a little bit harder.

Otherwise, we try and keep the work area clear. Over this side, we've got the paperwork that's kept in a rack, so it's out of the way, which gives plenty of room here, if we do need to lay anything out, we can do. We have used these pads as well, these help, if you're using the mouse or the keyboard for a long length of time. It just enables you to rest your wrist onto them, which avoids problems with your wrists and tight fingers. Otherwise around here, we have got phones, the phone we got on this one is a VoIP phone, so it just literally plugs straight into the Internet, you can get those as WiFi phones or you can get them hardwired in. Because we were quite a lot from home, we've actually got ethernet ports underneath the desk here, so we can hardwire the computer directly into the router so we get a better signal, but if not, wherever you are working, you do need to make sure you've got a good WiFi signal if that's what you're relying on.

Other things around here, we have got a printer on the right-hand side here, we'll look at those in a separate video, but with the printer, it's a good idea to have one that does scanning as well, because you will find that you are scanning back to the office, however, use one of the apps if you haven't got that just to scan documents should you need to.

There are lots of other ways you can change things around. This is a slightly different mouse, the idea is, if you're doing a lot of work with the computer, because of the shape of it, it makes it a lot easier to use for longer periods of time, so it's really important to take breaks because you will find yourself working up here because there's nobody in the office who is going to come and interrupt you, then it's going to be a situation where you can find yourself just sitting here, so do take breaks, do have a walk around.

Go and let the dog out, make coffee, bits and pieces like that. But also when you are working, tell the rest of the family, friends who'd like to visit that yeah, you might be at home, but you are working, so there's no problem with that, they will soon leave you alone.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Remote Working LO 1.2.1