The redrawing of working life means that we often have to work in a limited space that may also be shared with others — from hot desking colleagues to home schooling children. Most of us have known the embarrassment of online meetings interrupted by someone who is unaware we're on a call. But there is a way to protect your privacy and do more in less space — turn your monitor into a communications hub. Innovative features from traffic light alarms to people sensors and full-scale VoIP can boost productivity and wellbeing while saving you time, trouble and money.
We’ve all experienced it to some degree. The embarrassment of being in an important online meeting that’s suddenly disrupted by a child clamouring for attention or someone in the same room deciding to share what they’re planning for lunch.
It is part of the blurring between home life and working life that has been accelerated by a vast increase in remote working.
So how do you stop your home workplace being overwhelmed by everyday life around it? How can the two coexist better?
It’s a dilemma that’s especially important to resolve now, as more people work from home and the time spent in front of a screen gets longer. The answer is a comfortable, high quality display that allows your users to focus on the task at hand, ignoring other more homely distractions. Not only will it boost productivity, it will also improve well-being, generally.
The monitor, monitoring your workspace
The latest smart monitors can monitor your workspace, to prevent interruptions as well as protect privacy. They are complete communication centres that encourage collaboration and multitasking.
For example, a Smart Traffic Light system – like the "on air" lights that show when a live broadcast is on — can warn everyone, whether colleagues or excited children, not to disturb you when you are in conference or just busy.
More than that, these monitors use technologies like Smart Guard to detect where you are looking. So, whether at home or in the office, it blurs your screen when you look or move away. As a further aid to privacy it will also blur the screen if it detects someone looking over your shoulder.
Put the focus on you
So what about the chatter that’s coming from those around you, while you’re trying to present online?
Front facing microphones in the newer displays are designed to pick up sounds from the front of the screen. Sounds on either side are ignored, so people get to hear you, clearly, no-one else.
If you decide you want to shut out the sound around you completely, to aid concentration and cut out background noise, you can grab the headphones from a convenient hook at the side of the display.
The newest monitors also banish the fatigue and gritty eyes that are often the sign of a long hard day at the screen. Eyesafe displays reduce damaging blue light to minimise eyestrain while maximising colour accuracy — making screen time more comfortable and productive.
Sustaining a greater sense of wellbeing
As well as increasing general wellbeing and productivity, the latest monitors are designed to be green. They will not only help meet your sustainability goals but also bring great savings through energy efficiency and lower power consumption.
For example, our ThinkVision monitors include Smart Energy that has a human detection sensor, which turns off the display, to conserve power, when you move away.
All newly released Lenovo ThinkVision devices are made from 85% recycled plastic resin, reducing landfill waste. They are also mercury free, arsenic free, and have GREENGUARD certification.
The new monitors put everything you need, close at hand, to save you time and energy. In particular, the ThinkVision VoIP family integrates smarter collaboration tools into the monitor to provide a compact workspace, for the home or office. So you can work flexibly and conference with confidence, whatever’s happening in the environment around you.
