Author: <span>Les Roberts</span>

Are you working from home, perhaps due to coronavirus restrictions at your workplace? Do you check your work emails from home? Answer business calls on your day off? Or even maybe just catch up on some office admin when you’re at a loose end?

If so, you could be doing damage to your health!

Work from home

Are you suffering from tech stress?

It’s a question we frequently ask ourselves, particularity as our over-reliance on phones and tablets and espousing of an ‘always-on‘ culture mean that tech stress is becoming an increasingly common problem in people’s work life and home life – if you’re constantly checking your devices for emails or social media posts, or you lose it when your phone battery loses it, then you’re probably already a sufferer.

It’s a problem that may well have got a lot worse during lockdown, as people turned to their devices even more in an attempt to stay connected with the outside world.

But what are the signs of tech stress, and what can you do to stop it?

Guides & How-Tos Technology

Whether it’s phishing, Trojan Horses or a DDoS attack, cyber crime is getting more and more complex and efficient

All of which is obviously concerning, but have you ever wondered how hackers actually make their money?

Technology

As the UK creeps out of lockdown, so more and more people are getting back to work – some going back to the office after weeks of working from home, others coming back after being away from work as part of the government’s furlough scheme.

And even more will be getting back to business in the coming weeks, as changes to the furlough scheme are set to kick in by September and business owners have been offered a £1,000 per-employee bonus for each staff member they bring back from furlough. Then there are the people who lost their job and are looking to get back into a new job.

But lockdown will have impacted each of us in different ways, especially if it’s been spent completely away from work. So it’s vital you get yourself set for returning.  Here’s how to get back to work…

Guides & How-Tos Work from home

The coronavirus lockdown has revealed many things about they ways in which we work, while some have seamlessly adapted to the work from home life, others are struggling to cope without the day-to-day interactions of office-life.

And given that we all have to hold meetings remotely now, it’s also thrown up the following question – Why do some people find starting a conference call so difficult?

It should like any other meeting or telephone call, a quick introduction before launching into the main topics up for discussion, but instead we have stilted greetings, multiple introductions and excruciating silences.

So if you’ve ever wondered how to start a conference call, the following set of dos and don’ts will help you out…

Conference calling Guides & How-Tos

How are you coping with working from home? We currently live in a world devoid of the daily commute, where the working day isn’t necessarily bound by the nine-to-five, and office politics are a thing of the past, other than the odd faux pas on a video or conference call.

If you’ve ever dreamed of working from home, lockdown may have shown you that it’s not quite the carefree employment existence you’d imagined – the commute has been replaced with a lie-in, the working day stretches well into the evening, an the office politics are replaced by the distraction of daytime TV.

You see, not everyone can cut it when working from home, it can take a lot of drive and discipline that you just don’t need when working in an office.

So before you hand in that remote working request, work out whether you can actually cope with working from home…

Flexible working Work from home

Conference calling

Social distancing measures designed to help stop the spread of coronavirus have meant that more and more food and retail outlets have been asking for contactless payments. If you’ve ever wondered how this tech works, it’s all down to NFC – an easy and intuitive technology that allows you to use your mobile phone for special purposes.

Still none the wiser? Read on…

Technology

Being stuck at home all day during lockdown means many of us will have become even more attached to our screens – regardless of whether we’re working from home or not, many of those long hours at home will be spent checking phone, tablet and computer screens.

And that’s before we even get onto the box-set binges.

Guides & How-Tos Inspiration Technology

The coronavirus pandemic will hit business hard, long after we’ve all gone back to whatever normal looks like in life after lockdown. As a business owner, this could see you looking to cut costs wherever possible, which could even mean giving up your business premises.

If that’s the case, you might need to think outside the box for a suitable solution – or maybe inside the box, that solution comes in the form of a storage unit.

Work from home