How Smart Home Assistants Can Help With Remote Work

It’s now been a decade since Disney’s Smart House premiered, and it feels as though the once fantastical world depicted in this childhood film has become our everyday reality. Per our previous piece on the perfect smart home, just about every application found in a home is now available as a connected device – from your thermostat to your vacuum cleaner. Naturally, it’s been a great deal of fun to see these appliances becoming available and to live through the transition to “smart home” environments. 

However, there are also practical benefits. You hear a lot about how a smarter home can reduce your electric bill or provide more peace of mind about security. But another practical benefit is that a modern home with automated and connected applications can also provide a better work environment for the growing number of people who work from home. 

If you count yourself among that number, or you at least have the flexibility to work from home, you’ve probably spent some time and effort creating the perfect home office. Doist presented some of the typical upgrades that comprise the modern home office, including things like an ergonomic desk chair, comfortable lighting, and fast WiFi. Sometimes live plants, candles, and other aesthetic boosters are also included to help people feel peaceful and grounded while they work. But Doist also included the idea of a smart assistant in a home office, which speaks to our broader point here. 

Laptop with blue mountain screensaver and Google Home Mini on desk | Photo: Kevin Bhagat via Unsplash

Indeed, a modern smart assistant like Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa is an affordable and convenient way to recruit a second “employee” for your at-home operation. These assistants can take down notes, make phone calls, and complete many other tasks a real-life assistant would ordinarily be able to help you with. They can also help to keep you comfortable (say by adjusting the temperature via a smart thermostat), give you alerts for appointments or other scheduled events, and even remind you to take a break now and then. 

For example, having a smart speaker set-up on your desk can help with numerous tasks, whether you are wanting to make a phone call, set a reminder, or take down notes, having this sort of smart device at your disposal can pose highly beneficial during the workday. You may wonder what can a smart speaker do that your computer or phone can’t do already? Well, having a device which is stationary at your workspace and used primarily as an assistant to support with your work agenda, can save you time, cut out the hassle of having to pick up another device, and help to create a more productive environment. 

This would sound nice to just about any type of employee. But somewhat ironically, it’s often work-from-home jobs that demand the most focus, which is why these smart home innovations might be particularly significant. Consider the following common remote-work jobs, for instance: 

Writing: 

Many writers – whether they’re contributing web content on a freelance basis or fulfilling book deals – work from home. And no matter what kind of writing is at hand, these people will invariably work best in an environment that fosters a clear head and creativity. After all, nothing stifles a clear thought or interrupts a beautiful paragraph quite like recognising the room is too cold, or realising you’ve forgotten to make a call or keep an appointment. Smart home innovations can keep these interruptions to a minimum and thus help a writer to do his or her best work. 

Digital Marketing: 

The digital marketing industry tends to involve a lot of contracted work, and thus many in the business are accustomed to working remotely. In some cases, this work may, in fact, overlap with some writing work – however, there’s also a far more technical side to modern digital marketing. In its kit for modern marketing for small businesses, Ayima Kickstart points to technical SEO analysis, through website examination, and external link development as components of an effective digital marketing effort, which speaks to the complexities in this industry today. Granted, different employees will often have different tasks. But it’s hard to pay attention to things like site analytics, SED data, and content strategy in an environment that isn’t free of distractions. 

Startup Management: 

This a broad category, but also a necessary inclusion provided how many startup managers and small business owners are working at home today. Suffice it to say, when you’re trying to get a company off the ground, an automated assistant can be a godsend. People in these positions tend to be guarding their work budgets closely, which makes time all the more valuable, and which also means a human assistant may not be on the cards. An extra set of hands – robotic ones, in this case – can be incredibly beneficial. 

There are many more people for whom smart features in a home office can be very helpful. But hopefully, these examples effectively demonstrates the value of an automated environment for remote workers.  Setups of this kind can improve quality of life and productivity simultaneously, and should thus be considered a must as sophisticated smart applications become more widely available. 

Now that you are aware of the benefits, why not check out our full range of smart home devices to enhance your remote working experience? 

Author Bio: Lisa Friedrich is a marketing consultant who is passionate about bringing technological trends closer to the workforce. When she’s not busy with a client, you’ll find her walker her labrador, Mickey.