Optimize Office Spaces for a Growing Remote Workforce
Office workers largely became remote employees in 2020. The result for employers was a reduction in costs to maintain office space. While many employers are bringing some back to the office, some are choosing to allow more workers to remain remote, at least part of the time. With fewer in the office or spending less time inside the building, employers need to optimize their office spaces to reduce wasted energy on heating, cooling, and lighting. To accommodate an increasingly remote workforce, consider automation in your office.
State of Remote Workforce for 2021 and Beyond
Many people in the remote workforce will transition to returning to their offices in 2021. Whether they become full-time office employees or split their time working at the office and at home, your business will see a brief increase in operating costs. To keep workers at the office comfortable, you will need to once more have regular lighting, heating, and cooling systems in operation. The more time that workers spend at the office, the longer you will have to have these systems running. However, you don’t have to overspend on keeping your office comfortable for workers who return.
Savings from Office Automation
Automation throughout your office makes your workspace smarter. In fact, setting automation to limit HVAC operation to when the building is most likely occupied reduces energy use by 6%. Plus, maintaining setpoint temperatures for day and nighttime comfort cuts power use by 8%. Using motion-controlled lights is another way to automate power consumption based on occupancy.
Find Out How to Optimize Your Office Space with Help from Experience Audio Video in Orange County
Find out how to make the most of heating, cooling, and lighting to save money and make those returning from the remote workforce more comfortable. Phone us at (714) 744-4455 to reach our professionals in automation, video, and audio at Experience Audio Video in Orange County.
Hybrid Office
Since a global pandemic disrupted work and office spaces across the globe, owners and managers everywhere are having to rethink how and where their employees are going to be working. Many companies are having a productive time while their employees are working from home.
While some companies, like Twitter, will stay remote and work from home, a lot of companies are more likely to shift into a hybrid workplace. It will accommodate both in office and remote employees. That means that companies are going to need the technology for collaboration and safety, enabling employees to interact and be productive without putting anyone in danger of getting COVID-19.
TECHNOLOGY FOR COLLABORATION
Moving into this new hybrid office environment, the layout of office spaces is likely to change to allow collaborative environments that are larger to support social distancing. What is that going to look like? Fewer cubicles and shared desks and more conference and meeting rooms.
With Unified Communications and collaboration tools you can people count. In addition to people counting the platform also has built-in reporting and cloud-based analytics which can be used to understand how employees use collaboration spaces and how they can be improved.
PEOPLE COUNTING
Because of social distancing there are new rules for how many people could be in one space, that is where people counters come in. People-counting technology has been around for decades, but because of privacy and security it wasn’t widely adopted into businesses. With the latest Unified Communications and collaboration tools, which have cameras that support people counting.
Some people counters in the UC tools can be set to detect issues. Like, if the camera detects a seventh person in a six-person max conference room, it can let facility managers and/or IT leaders know so they can intervene.
CONTENT-SHARING
A personal device content-sharing gateway is the perfect way to safely share content to another display from your own personal device. Meaning that in-person meeting participants will not have to touch anything that isn’t theirs, which will help prevent the spread of viruses around the office. Gone are the days that everyone will have to be huddled around one person’s laptop in close quarters.
Content-sharing gateways allows employees who have been working at home, to use their own device that they have been using for a while, making it less time wasted learning how to control someone else’s device on the fly. It will also allow cross-collaboration with other video conferencing systems that customers, vendors, or partners may use.
About the Author
Experience Audio Video has been serving Orange County and Area since 1999 for residential and commercial audio, video and security camera installation services. 5 Star Yelp Ratings, Thousands of Referrals, there is not a better choice than Brian Chappell and the Experience Audio Video Team (License #804783). One phone call and you will know right away the difference in working with Experience Audio Video vs. others in the area. Contact us now at 714-744-4455 or info@eav-inc.com for a Free Consultation.
Video Conferencing for the Home
We have been remotely socializing, learning and working for months now. You are probably tired of sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the corner of the room looking at a laptop screen. Or you are tired of looking at your small phone screen talking to your family and friends on zoom.
Technology is changing and adapting to the new normal way of life. Crestron has created HomeTime that is a professional video conferencing for your home. Crestron has leveraged their experience in enterprise UC to bring professional quality Zoom conferencing into your home. You can also have it integrated within your Crestron ecosystem.
CONTROL FROM ANY TELEVISION IN YOUR HOUSE
With the Crestron HomeTime video conference system it will allow you to join and host Zoom meetings using any television in your house. That is right now laptop required. The benefits of the new Crestron conference system are:
- Full-duplex, advanced beamforming microphone enables natural conversation
- See friends and family in a much larger video window
- Logitech MeetUp conference camera captures everyone comfortably in-frame – no more crowding around a laptop
- Its built-in speaker delivers high-quality audio throughout the room
INTEGRATED REMOTE CONTROL
The TSR-310 has a 3-inch color touchscreen, backlit buttons, voice control capability, and enhanced Wi-Fi. You can use a TSR-310 handheld touchscreen remote, the same one you use to control lights, shades and thermostats, to conveniently control your Zoom meetings.
The uses of a TSR-310 on HomeTime are:
- Start/join scheduled meetings
- “Meet Now” (enter your meeting ID and password from remote)
- Volume/mute control
- Select view (speaker, gallery, full screen)
- Camera control (pan and zoom)
ADD ROOMS
Crestron’s DM NVX AV-over-IP technology supports both video and USB. Because of that the Crestron HomeTime video conferencing engine can be located remotely. With the optional “add-a-room” kit, you can easily route meetings to televisions in other rooms.
About the Author
Experience Audio Video has been serving Orange County and Area since 1999 for residential and commercial audio, video and security camera installation services. 5 Star Yelp Ratings, Thousands of Referrals, there is not a better choice than Brian Chappell and the Experience Audio Video Team (License #804783). One phone call and you will know right away the difference in working with Experience Audio Video vs. others in the area. Contact us now at 714-744-4455 or info@eav-inc.com for a Free Consultation.
Quite Home Workspace
With some businesses deciding to keep a work at home environment for a while you have to come up with some creative ideas to actually get some work done. I am sure a lot of you have a similar story; your kids are at home trying to do their schoolwork online for the first time, you are at home trying to get your work done. Your kids get tired of it and start trying to get your attention, but you are on a video meeting. It can get pretty loud pretty fast.
Everyone is trying to figure out how to tell their family that they are busy and, on a call, or in a virtual meeting and to please come back without sounding rude. Well there are a few things you can do especially if you have a home office set up in a room.
CRESTRON ROOM INDICATORS
Crestron makes room status indicators that mount to the ceiling or door. A lot of corporate offices use them to let other people know that there is a meeting going on (red indicator) or if the room is free (green indicator). You may not want to go this route as it would make your house look like an office.
LED LIGHTS
Another option you could do would be putting LED lights above the door that would change colors. Red for you are in a meeting and cannot be disturbed. Green for when you are in between meetings and you can help out if someone needed you. Then when you were done for the day you can turn off the light and it would look like the outside of the room.
A lot of people use LED lighting for different parts of their houses. Cove lighting, lighting around your television, under your steps. The best part about using either of these options is that you can integrate it into your Crestron system. If you decide to use LED lights on your Crestron system to do something similar, you could have control over when the lights would be on.
If you would like us to take a look at doing this for you, give us a call and we will set you up with an appointment to go over your options. We will make sure that you have all of the information you need to make the right decision for you and your home.
About the Author
Experience Audio Video has been serving Orange County and Area since 1999 for residential and commercial audio, video and security camera installation services. 5 Star Yelp Ratings, Thousands of Referrals, there is not a better choice than Brian Chappell and the Experience Audio Video Team (License #804783). One phone call and you will know right away the difference in working with Experience Audio Video vs. others in the area. Contact us now at 714-744-4455 or info@eav-inc.com for a Free Consultation.
How To Improve The Audio In Your Conference Room For Remote Meetings
Whether you want to hold successful remote meetings or try creating videos as part of your marketing strategy, there’s one thing that can keep you back: poor audio quality.
You want people on the other end of your call to be able to pay attention to your ideas, not spend the call trying to figure out what it is you’re saying. And when you put some time into updating your office facility’s audio resources, you’ll save more time and frustration in the future.
Prepare your conference room to be as acoustically-friendly as possible and stop wasting time on your calls with these simple changes.
Make Sure You’re Heard
If you’re sitting in a large conference room and trying to have a call on your laptop, the microphone might not be strong enough to pick up your voice clearly. Instead, you can have a microphone installed that will be strong enough to handle the room’s size.
Stop Competing For Noise
When ambient sounds are surrounding you, your audio quality won’t be clear on the other end. First, survey for things like fans, window cracks, and any other sounds, big or small, that can be amplified by a microphone. Make sure telephones are on silent and devices like printers are turned off to avoid any surprises.
Put Your Walls To Work
If you’re finding that ambient noise from outside of your conference room is negatively affecting your audio, you can have sound-dampening panels installed on your walls. Plus, for commercial offices, you’re adding an extra level of privacy for anything said in that room by you or your clients.
Check Before You Start
The best way to ensure you have no surprises with audio in the middle of your call is by making sure that sound, input, and volume levels are all ready beforehand.
About the Author
Experience Audio Video has been serving Orange County and Area since 1999 for residential and commercial audio and video installation services. 5 Star Yelp Ratings, Thousands of Referrals, there is not a better choice than Brian Chappell and the Experience Audio Video Team. One phone call and you will know right away the difference in working with Experience Audio Video vs. others in the area. Contact us now at 714-744-4455 or info@eav-inc.com for a Free Consultation.