Remember the Office? Here’s a Refresher on How to Work There

Ah, the office — how absence has made the heart grow fonder! As people make their way from the home office back to the actual office, some of us might need a little refresher on how to actually work there.

So we’ve put together a few reminders on how to get back into the office groove.

Step 1 Change out of those sweatpants or pajamas.

Step 2: Read these tips below to be more productive in the office.

With many organizations supporting a hybrid workstyle, the practice of hot desking, or reserving desks in the workspace, has become a popular strategy to provide greater flexibility in the workspace. 

Workspace Reservation, Zoom’s hot desking solution, enables users to view floor maps, see where their coworkers are sitting, and reserve available desks and meeting spaces in a variety of ways, including on the Zoom web portal, Kiosk, or Zoom Rooms for Touch devices. 

Here’s how to use Workspace Reservation:

1. Sign in to your Zoom account on Zoom.com
2. Go to My Account
3. Select Workspaces 
4. See a location and floor plan and view available workspaces to reserve
5. Select your preferred date and time
6. Make a reservation
7. When you arrive at the office, if there is a device compatible with Workspace Reservation at the desk, scan the QR code to check in

And be sure to bring a laptop, mouse, or keyboard if your workplace doesn’t provide those as part of health and safety protocols.

Fellow workers, Rejoice! Your important meetings no longer have to take place at the kitchen table, from a spare bedroom, in the garage, or that not-so-walk-in closet that you’ve transformed into a workspace. You can once again enjoy all of the modern amenities available in conference spaces! Here are a few conference room functionalities you can use to streamline and enhance your experience: 

• Wireless sharing - Don’t have the right connection type? No sweat! Share content right from your device, including laptops and mobile devices. 
• Digital whiteboarding - Bring your ideas to life with digital whiteboards, which allow you to draw, annotate, and collaborate with others in digital space. 
• Join from Room - Select the Join from Room option on your personal device to join a meeting from a Zoom Room and gives you more ways to use in-meeting chat, the ability to participate in polls, a better view of screen sharing, and more. You can also download the Zoom Rooms Controller app to control the Zoom Room directly from your mobile device.

To book a conference room for a meeting, use your organization’s calendar integration to add the desired room to the meeting. You can also use the scheduling displays outside your conference room to book the room, look at the meeting schedule for that room, or see if it's available for an instant meeting.

For those returning to the office, the everyday hustle and bustle of the office presents a welcome relief from the quiet solitude (or unbridled chaos) of the home office. But the sound of phone calls and meetings and coworkers walking by can also create distractions during your meetings. Here are a couple of ways to keep things focused during your workday: 

• Adjust your meeting audio settings - To avoid distracting or embarrassing background audio disrupting your meetings, you can enable the suppress background noise feature to help ensure you come through loud and clear to your participants. 
• Adjust your lighting - Sometimes the lighting in our offices is less than ideal — get your lighting just right by enabling “Adjust for low light” in your video settings to make sure your meeting participants can see you clearly. 
• Leverage the latest technology - The office can naturally be a noisy place — create your own personal zen space with noise-canceling headphones, which can help create a peaceful and quiet atmosphere, even in the busiest of offices! 
• Use a virtual background - A virtual background creates a neat and organized background during your meetings that keeps the focus on you instead of what’s happening behind you. Research shows that a blurred background keeps a participant’s attention best, so be sure to enable it in your video settings to get an extra edge in your meetings! 

Organizations across the world have been hard at work to help their employees make a safe and healthy return to the office. And just as technology can help us communicate, it can also help us stay safe while we’re at work. These innovations in workspace health and safety can help keep you and your teams safe while you’re on-site:

• Take a gander at Digital Signage - It can be difficult to keep up with new workspace policies and strategies, especially as they change to meet employees’ needs. Keep an eye on your organization’s Digital Signage resources for important updates regarding cleaning schedules, health and safety policies, room closures, and more.

• Take control with native voice commands - Reduce the sharing of touchscreen devices and create safer shared meeting spaces with native voice commands for Zoom Rooms. Use your voice to wake the room, start a scheduled or instant meeting, or stop your meeting!

For more insights on how you can make a safe, productive, and healthy return to the office, check out our guide.