Headsets

Although I’m listing this under remote work tips, I feel it is a peripheral everyone in an office should have and use. When conducting a video conference or call the headset plays two important roles. The first is the prevention of others around you from being subjected to your conversations. The second is it improves the audio by enabling full-duplex (multiple parties can speak at once) and generally improves audio quality.

# My Experience So Far

In terms of being nice to those around you, when working from home my partner and I are located in the same room (she’s currently studying). While I am on a video call for work she is often attending a lecture or involved in a workshop. By using headsets we are both able to continue our work without disturbing the other person.

The bigger benefit is the audio quality. In a number of video calls I’ve found that I have had situations where the other party is using a speaker and they either haven’t been able to hear me, or their audio has dropped when I speak. When talking to people using a headset this doesn’t occur.

We’ve come a long way with audio technology since the Internet became capable of supporting voice and video conversations but it still isn’t perfect, so grab a headset (a cheap one is better than nothing) and use it.