Working from home was already an increasing trend before the coronavirus upended our daily lives and forced much of the workforce to do their job from home.
Some — probably most — of the workforce accustomed to going into work life will return to the office once the pandemic is over, but many companies are already saying they plan to increase remote work to help save costs. However, judging by the rush to purchase home office technology last month, those companies have some work to do to ensure employees have the right tools they need to work effectively and productively from home.
As soon as the Commercial Integrator staff was told to stay home, I went to some big box retailers to find myself some equipment that I needed to replicate my office setup, which includes two monitors, a laptop dock, wireless accessories and more.I had also been looking for a decent camera for video calls and microphone for the My TechDecisions podcast, but I was a bit late.
Nothing I needed was in stock. I then turned to online retailers like Amazon, and found a monitor that could be shipped within a week. Everything else I needed would have taken weeks, if not months to be shipped to me.
According to other media reports about empty shelves, organizations weren’t very prepared to send their employees to work from home.
The Verge reported that quality webcams have been impossible to find, and online third-party resellers are marking up prices.
Bloomberg reported similar trends:
Some of the top product searches on Amazon.com Inc. last week were for hand sanitizer and other products to prevent the spread of the virus, but webcams and monitors are shooting up the rankings now, according to analysis by Marketplace Pulse.
“Computer monitor” rose 410 spots and “webcam” shot up 1,297 places on the list of most widely used search terms, according to the market researcher. Docking stations from Dell and Microsoft, which connect laptops to monitors and other tech gear, have also risen the ranks of best-sellers in Amazon’s electronics categories.
AV integrators have the ability to help enable remote work, offering work from home technology like webcams, microphones, headsets, displays and a bevy of other solutions that could make working from home easier.
We already know that when a vaccine is developed and the world tries to return to normal, the office won’t be as full as it was before the coronavirus, so AV integrators should take this opportunity to be the work from home partner that many companies need right now.
