Flailing With Remote Work? Your Employer May Be to Blame

For happy, healthy, productive remote work, the role of the employer is critical. Make sure your organization gives you these five things.

I’ve been contributing to PCMag since 2011, at times as an analyst and currently as deputy managing editor for the software team. My column, Get Organized, has been running on PCMag since 2012. It gives advice on how to manage all the devices, apps, digital photos, email, and other technology that can make you feel like you’re going to have a panic attack.

(Credit: Vicky Leta)

No one is born knowing how to work remotely. We all learn through trial and error, read on up on tips for working from home, and experiment with the best way to maintain work-life balance. In this whole discussion, however, there is so much undue emphasis on you, the individual worker and what you should be doing. We need to acknowledge and raise more attention to the role of the employer. What employers do or don’t do can make or break your ability to be successful at remote work.

I’ve written about remote work for years, starting well before the COVID-19 pandemic, and I wrote an in-depth book on the subject called The Everything Guide to Remote Work (Opens in a new window) . So much of the bad advice I’ve seen about remote work ignores or downplays the role of the employer. It’s much easier to blame employees and make them feel personally responsible for whether they are productive and happy, which is incredibly shortsighted. Employers play a crucial role, and employees need to be informed about what they should expect or demand from their organizations.

So here are five things employers need to provide employees for their remote work to be happy, healthy, and productive.

1. A Remote-First Culture

The single most important thing an employer can do to make remote work successful is to have a remote-first culture. Remote-first here means that regardless of how many employees work remotely, the whole organization puts into place practices and attitudes that fully embrace and support remote work. Sometimes that means the needs of remote workers trumps the preferences of in-person employees. An example is holding a remote meeting where everyone is in front of their own computer instead of allowing in-person employees to gather in a conference room for the call. This shift can make executives and management bristle, especially if they are firmly rooted in the old ways of working. What can I say? Change is often uncomfortable.

Culture is a broad term that includes everything about how people work together, how they communicate, the mood and level of formality among workers, and more. Here are a few specific things you should look for (or demand) of your remote culture at work:

Overcommunication, meaning everyone lives by the belief that it’s better to repeat yourself and make information explicit and sometimes intentionally redundant than to leave people with questions or feel unsure they heard a message.

Encouragement for everyone to step away from work fully and completely during their non-work time.

Norms for giving and receiving feedback.

Best practices for holding remote meetings and collaborating remotely, such as making meetings accessible for everyone.

Support for asynchronous work, meaning as long as it fits with the work that you do and is within reason, you and your colleagues should have the flexibility to work different hours.

2. All the Equipment You Need to Do Your Job

If you’re a full-time or part-time employee of an organization, it’s your employer’s responsibility to give you the equipment you need to do your job effectively, comfortably, and safely. Equipment doesn’t just mean a computer. It also includes the peripherals, such as a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, plus the software you need to get your work done, and some of the furniture, too.

You might request a new router if you need one, but check your contract first. It’s common for remote organizations to specify that internet connectivity is the responsibility of the employee, in which case a router would not be covered. though it never hurts to ask.

Depending on the nature of your work, you may need to ask for even more, such as a phone and dedicated phone number, webcam, microphone, headphones, lamp or ring light, notebooks, pens, a printer, and printer paper. What would you expect your employer to provide you if you were working on-site? You should get all the same supplies.

Furniture can be a tricky topic if your organization only went remote during the COVID-19 pandemic and thus doesn’t have a lot of formal policies in place for what is covered and not covered. A proper chair really should be covered for seated work, and maybe a desk too. If not, ask for a back cushion, foot rest, keyboard tray to attach to your existing desk or table, and any other add-ons that would make your setup https://jiji.ng/ more comfortable.

For software, beyond the apps you need for getting your day-to-day job done, your employer should provide you with a VPN for securely connecting to its remote servers, as well as keeping your connection secure more generally speaking when you’re away from home. Ideally, an organization should also roll out business-grade password managers, antivirus software, and adequate training and support for using them.

3. Expert Ergonomic Guidance

In all likelihood, you are not an expert in ergonomics. The best remote organizations give employees access to advice and guidance for setting up an ergonomic home office. Ideally, it’s a session with an ergonomics professional who comes into your home or remote workspace and adjusts your setup with you. This person might make additional recommendations for equipment you need, and they should definitely advise you on your posture, frequency of taking breaks, and other points related to your health and safety while working.

If an in-person ergonomics fitting isn’t in the cards, then your employer should provide you with other resources that will help you do it yourself. Request a remote session with an expert or at the very least some documentation, such as a video made by an ergonomics professional that guides you to a safe and effective setup.

4. Training for Your Job and Your Career Development

Your employer should give you the appropriate training you need not only to do your job, but also for your career development. It’s true for both in-person work and remote work, but in remote work, where people literally see each other less often, training can be overlooked or forgotten about more easily.

When it comes to getting training, employees may need to advocate harder for themselves than they do for other resources. Your boss will make sure you have a laptop, but they might not ever think to offer you training. Be ready to ask for exactly what you want, list the cost, and make a case for why you need it.

The Top Tech and Tools You Need for Taking Digital Notes

These are the best note-taking apps and accessories for annotating PDFs, sketching diagrams, recording your next class lecture, and more.

I’ve been contributing to PCMag since 2011, at times as an analyst and currently as deputy managing editor for the software team. My column, Get Organized, has been running on PCMag since 2012. It gives advice on how to manage all the devices, apps, digital photos, email, and other technology that can make you feel like you’re going to have a panic attack.

(Credit: René Ramos)

For work, school, and creative endeavors, you need to take notes. Lots of them. Short written descriptions of ideas you have. Math equations copied by hand. Pictures of whiteboards. Audio recordings. Sketches.

Pen and paper aside, you can take copious, beautiful notes on your computer, tablet, or another device if you have the right kind of accessories and apps for the notes you need to take. We’ve collected our top tips and recommendations here to help you figure out what works for you.

What Kinds of Digital Notes Can You Take?

You need different tools to take notes depending on what kind of notes you’re taking. So what kinds of notes can you take? Let’s look at some of the most common note types and what you might need to make them.

Typed Notes

For typed notes, a laptop or tablet with a tablet keyboard works best, as long as you know how to touch-type. The Logitech Keys-To-Go Ultra-Portable Bluetooth Keyboard (Opens in a new window) is a lightweight keyboard that’s supremely portable, making it a great companion to a tablet for taking notes.

If you’re a student on a limited budget, definitely see our list of the best laptops for students for advice on what to buy. And if you’re in the market for a tablet, there’s no need to spend as much on it as you would a computer—most of the best cheap tablets cost less than $200.

Handwritten Notes

You can certainly make handwritten notes on paper with the pen or pencil of your choice. And you can write by hand on a tablet or any device with a touch screen, like a Chromebook or even a smartphone, as long as you feel it’s big enough and sits comfortably in a way to get the job done. Some note-taking apps can turn your handwriting into typed text. If you like to read your handwriting, you can also upload photos of your final handwritten pages to a digital note-taking app. (I talk more about the different note-taking apps in the next section.)

You could also get a digital notebook, sometimes called a smart folio or hybrid ebook reader–tablet. They’re niche devices that theoretically look and feel more like paper than a screen when you use a stylus to write on them, and they digitize what you write. A company called reMarkable has made a few of these notebooks, and so has Onyx. A partnership between Moleskine and Adobe created one a few years ago, and Wacom put out several with the Bamboo brand name. These products are unusual in both look and feel, so try to get some hands-on time with them before you think seriously about buying one.

Annotation

Annotation essentially means marking up or writing notes on another file, like a PDF or JPG. Sometimes you need to scribble your own notes on a file, mark where you want to make changes, or highlight important information. While there are a few ways to edit a PDF, it makes sense to have annotation tools built into a single note-taking app that you can use for all kinds of notes so that you don’t end up with notes in multiple places.

Drawings and Sketches

Notes that contain drawings and sketches are often used in classes related to life sciences and math, and they also show up for mind-mapping, prototyping, and many other use cases. As with handwritten notes, you can make drawings and sketches on paper and then take pictures to digitize your work, or use any touchscreen device or a digital notebook. For the latter, you ideally want a stylus. The Apple Pencil (2nd generation) is a favorite among iPad users and scored very highly in our tests, though there are other inexpensive options. MEKO (Opens in a new window) has several affordable options for iPads. The Logitech Pen, which is compatible with USI-certified Chromebooks, runs about $65. And if you have a Microsoft Surface, you might look at the Microsoft Surface Pen (Opens in a new window) . Always double-check that any stylus you buy is compatible with your tablet or notebook.

Audio-Recorded Notes and Dictation

Some people prefer to record personal audio memos, or the audio of a lecture or meeting. You can listen to the recording as many times as you like, which is helpful on its own. Playing back an audio file can help you clarify any notes that don’t make sense when you review them, too.

Laptops, phones, and tablets all record audio, usually with some app that comes included with the device for free. You might also want to make use of an included audio recorded function in a note-taking app, if yours has one. The reason would be to keep your notes and the audio recording together in the same file so you don’t have to search for one or the other.

Similar to audio-recorded notes are dictated notes. Dictated notes are similar to audio memos, only you have your device turn your words into typed text in real time as you speak them, and there are plenty of speech-to-text apps and tools that do this, often for free.

Photo Notes

How are photos notes? For starters, snapping a picture of a whiteboard after a meeting or lecture is an efficient way to capture its contents. You can also take pictures of any notes you write on paper as a way to digitize them and back them up. In some of the physical sciences, investigative work and journalism, or even in the creative fields, it’s supremely useful to have actual photos of whatever you observed and want to remember in detail later. Similar to audio notes, you can add photo notes to a note-taking app and keep them alongside other types of notes, like typed or handwritten notes.

Which Apps Are Best for Taking Notes?

General-Purpose, Cross-Platform Note Apps

The best note-taking app for you will really depend on all the points made above about what types of notes you take. You also want the app to work on all the devices you own: Macs, Windows computers, as well as Android and Apple mobile devices. I always give bonus points to apps that you can access from any web browser, too.

Overall, the very best general-purpose note-taking app is Microsoft OneNote. It does everything, works on pretty much any device, and is free. If you have a paid Microsoft 365 account, even if it’s a work or school account, you get a few extra special features, such as Ink replay (Opens in a new window) , Researcher (Opens in a new window) , Math Assistant (Opens in a new window) , and stickers.