When working from home, certain telecommuting equipment can be regarded as essential, with examples including a computer and a smartphone. Yet, if you are going to be working from home regularly, or if you have more complex requirements, you may need to invest in some more advanced telecommuting equipment, which can help you to do your job more effectively, or improve the remote working experience.

Read on to find out more about advanced equipment and its various uses.

If you take a moment to think about telecommuting equipment, chances are you think about the basics, like a laptop or desktop computer, headphones, a microphone and a webcam. Yet, work tasks can differ significantly from one job to another, as can individual habits. On top of this, you may need different equipment to work from home on a regular basis than you would if you were only going to be working from home on rare occasions, or as a last resort.

Regardless of whether it is intended to make working from home easier, to improve the quality of your work, to enable you to carry out more complex tasks, or simply to make you feel more comfortable, you may require more advanced telecommuting equipment. In this article, we explore some of the best options for taking remote work to the next level.

Dual or Ultra-Wide Monitors

For the majority of job roles, it is possible to work from home using a single screen. However, there are benefits associated with using a dual-screen setup, including the ability to multi-task more effectively. For instance, when you have a second screen, you can view two applications at the same time, without needing to switch between them.

This can pay dividends in terms of productivity and can also make it easier to make side-by-side comparisons. Your second screen may be a second computer monitor – and this is often the preferred option – but you could equally deploy a tablet as your second screen and use it to perform supplementary tasks, such as calculations.

One potential alternative here, and a concept growing in popularity all the time, is the use of ultra-wide monitors and the advantages and disadvantages of this, when compared to dual-screen setups, has been the subject of some considerable debate recently, with ultra-wide screens removing the ‘bezel gap’ associated with two monitors. When you pair this with a screen-splitting software solution, like ViewSplit, it provides the same benefits.

A Project Management System

In organizations with a large number of employees, or in job roles where collaboration and delegation of tasks is of the utmost importance, it can be useful or even essential to have some form of project management, task planning or productivity software. This will then allow you to organize work tasks, create work plans and manage larger projects.

Often, the chief benefit of a project management system is the provision of a project hub, where communication can be centralized, allowing all members of a team to sing from the same hymn sheet, even when working independently.

The precise project management system or productivity software you opt for will depend on the nature of your work, the demands associated with managing your tasks or projects, and the types of applications you may need it to integrate with. For example, the Microsoft Planner package can be effective for organizing teamwork in a visual way and might be an ideal option if you already use other elements of the Microsoft Office 365 platform.

Digital Whiteboarding Solutions

Put simply, digital whiteboarding solutions are software solutions, which recreate the functions associated with the digital whiteboards you might see in classroom or training environments, or in office meeting rooms. When faced with the challenge of how to work from home as effectively as you do in an office, they may just hold the key.

One of the major challenges associated with a switch to remote working is learning how to give presentations with the same effectiveness you would have in-person, as an article from Fortune points out. Nonetheless, with the right telecommuting equipment and a digital whiteboarding solution, this is an obstacle that can be overcome.

It is also worth noting that digital whiteboarding solutions like myViewBoard can hugely improve remote collaboration efforts, because the screen can be shared between different remote workers, with real-time annotations added. With that being said, a touch screen will be required, and the larger the screen, the better.

Final Thoughts

The basic equipment for working from home, such as a laptop and a smartphone, may be sufficient for some workers, but many will have more complex needs. Advanced monitor set-ups, digital whiteboarding solutions, and project management software are just a few examples of more advanced telecommuting equipment that may be useful.