Accepting Smart Home Solutions

6

October

2021

5/5 (1)

In 2017, there were 141,91 million Smart Homes worldwide and it is expected that this number will grow to 478,22 million (!) in 20251. Smart Homes are homes where households have domestic appliances installed that enable home automation and can control and monitor households functions. Examples can be smart lightning and smart voice assistant speakers, such as Philips Hue and Google Nest, which, in combination, allow you to control all the lighting in your home by voice.

The statistics mentioned above provide evidence on how the world is accepting smart home solutions. Companies, such as Google, Amazon and Apple are continuously developing new smart home devices, which decrease the effort required by residents in their domestic life. Not surprisingly, many households find these innovations more than welcome, as it allows them to relax more in their homes with simple tasks, such as turning on lights or setting the temperature, being automated for them. However, not only the comfort of having everything in your house automated is a reason to accept smart home solutions.

A voice assistant in your home can be a lot more than a simple device that can turn on the light. Devices like Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Nest can actually speak to you with weather forecasts, jokes or even bedtime stories. Given this fact, these devices could be well-suited to help fight loneliness and isolation of elderly people, which are serious risk factors in these peoples lives2; especially in recent pandemic times. The AARP foundation in the U.S. have executed studies that saw them handing out smart home speakers to seniors in order to find out whether these devices can help reduce this loneliness3. The studies’ results have come out very positive, as the participating people have been able to quickly adapt to the speaker and some even calling the device “their best friend at times”.
Other than fighting this feeling of isolation, having a helping hand in and around the house is also very beneficial for the elderly. Since this group of society is assumably the most limited in physicality and mobility, domestic automation can be a perfect addition to their home.

In conclusion, not only having a fully automated home, allowing residents to have a more relaxed domestic life is one of the benefits of smart home solutions, it can even help to prevent or fight serious social and health issues. Loneliness can be a big issue for elderly people and offering them a smart speaker can help them improve their social situation by a distance. Moreover, seniors are the perfect group who can use some assistance with their domestic life and its tasks.

References

  1. https://www.statista.com/forecasts/887613/number-of-smart-homes-in-the-smart-home-market-in-the-world
  2. https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/social-isolation-loneliness-older-people-pose-health-risks
  3. https://www.aarp.org/home-family/personal-technology/info-2018/isolation-loneliness-technology-help.html

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Work From Home: How Covid Has Revolutionised Businesses

24

September

2021

5/5 (1)

The global pandemic of the last 1,5 years has left the world with some significant consequences that we, one way or another, have to deal with. When talking about these changes in our daily life, society seems to consider them as negative by default. However, the covid crisis has brought some opportunities to light that are not as malicious as we first thought. Working from home is definitely one of them, as companies worldwide have accepted this new concept and it seems here to stay.

The Work-From-Home concept is not necessarily something completely new, as some companies have already accepted the method with open arms1 and during the pandemic, it was no surprise that it were these companies who thrived more than others. As we are (hopefully) approaching the end of this global crisis, business are starting to see the advantages of this working strategy, rather than just having to adapt to it, because of regulations.

One big advantage is naturally the reduction of traffic in and around cities. In recent covid times, we have seen immense global reductions in air pollution, due to less activity in the transportation sector2. The fact that employees were more at home than even before played a significant role in this reduction. Moreover, not having to deal with traffic every day leads to reduced amounts of stress3, which will come te improve the quality of work later that day. Furthermore, companies do not need as much space in the office as they did before, which should lead to more financial health of the organisations, as well as more room for other construction to be build, such as more houses.

Besides these economical reasons, working from home has proven to have its personals reasons as well. Employees tend have a higher job satisfaction when they can work from home4, less sickness is reported with remote workers5 and, partially due to the eliminated travel time, people have more time for personal activities, such as fitness. On the other hand, critics may say that the quality of work reduces once an employee works from home, but in a Chinese experiment conducted in 20146, it was found that remote workers were 13 percent more efficient than colleagues based at the office.

Naturally some of these benefits can vary per business and employee, since there are also companies where physical labour is performed who simply cannot work remotely. Eventually, it is up to the business to decide whether their employees can work from home, fully or partially. With the developments we have seen and the benefits they clearly lead to though, it is not unlikely that will see more office-styled homes in the future.

Reference List

  1. https://5ca.com/customer-experience-solutions/
  2. Venter, Zander S., et al. “COVID-19 lockdowns cause global air pollution declines.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117.32 (2020): 18984-18990.
  3. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/upshot/stuck-and-stressed-the-health-costs-of-traffic.html
  4. Golden, Timothy D., and John F. Veiga. “The impact of extent of telecommuting on job satisfaction: Resolving inconsistent findings.” Journal of management 31.2 (2005): 301-318.
  5. https://www.pwc.nl/nl/actueel-publicaties/assets/pdfs/pwc-the-costs-and-benefits-of-working-from-home.pdf
  6. Bloom, Nicholas, et al. “Does working from home work? Evidence from a Chinese experiment.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 130.1 (2015): 165-218.

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