In the 21st century, more individuals prefer to work remotely rather than perform tasks at the office. As a result, the Working from Home (WFH) environment has experienced shifts, facilitating the process of incorporating smart home concepts. Device manufacturers, utility companies, and house planners all try to market their products and services as techniques to make life simpler and save time. As a result, employees can access all corporate features, incorporate sustainable approaches, and digitalize the household. Though there are specific challenges that make smart home systems vulnerable, the benefits of such a concept are found to optimize work and operations for both employees and businesses.
Remote Work and Smart Home
Nowadays, a series of events led industries and numerous businesses to adapt to the new reality, exploring new ways of employment. Meanwhile, employees explore the concept of a smart home that involves utilizing in-built technologies that can be controlled remotely, and some of the digital equipment does not need human monitoring. The benefits of such an approach are the increase in productivity. Thus, remote work and the smart home concept might be considered a successful combination that has a possibility to gain more popularity in the future.
Methodology
The study used a systematic approach to analyze and synthesize the smart home material. In order to gain an insight into the interconnection of remote work and smart homes, six sources were analyzed. Furthermore, the given study discusses the concept of the smart home, its advantageous sides for remote work, and possible threats. The objective of the study is to identify the future trend of smart homes and their influence on remote work.
Discussion
To start with, smart homes are gaining immense popularity due to their helpful features. According to Strengers & Nicholls (2017), improving productivity and making everyday tasks easier has always focused on consumer advertising. The concept of a smart home is no different in its goal of making life and work simpler through technological and integrated commerce (Strengers & Nicholls, 2017). The incorporation of internet-enabled products and equipment into the design of the house is at the heart of this strategy. Smart home supporters believe that a significant positive aspect of this time-efficient way of life is connected with energy-efficient usage, which may be reached via simplicity and streamlining.
There are still two basic ways to categorize and understand smart houses, based on whether they begin with living spaces or power systems. Marikyan et al. (2019) establish the first category by identifying it as homes with Information and Communication Technology (ICT). As per the scholars’ perspective, such houses have linked devices that can be digitally monitored and simultaneously adapt to homeowner demands. The second category is smart houses and other structures that are viewed as dynamically interconnected and interactive aspects of energy networks on a bigger scale (Marikyan et al., 2019). These two perspectives may be regarded in views of usefulness to individuals and the whole power system, as well as demands imposed on homes and systems.
At the individual level, ‘smart’ can incorporate electronic products and equipment, such as heating system, lighting, or security, for remote control by the residents or another operator. Progressing further, detectors and processing units can also obtain and utilize knowledge about the residents, operating independently of immediate human decision to alter controller parameters, in applications such as learning thermostats (Marikyan et al., 2019). Electronic equipment in households has the opportunity to assist with system and grid control as components of models that depend progressively on power generation, storing, and load control (Marikyan et al., 2019). This implies deviations from regular demand patterns in reaction to providing availability (Marikyan et al., 2019). One justification for smart homes is that they can improve system productivity by minimizing peak usage and matching demand with supply instantaneously. This facilitates the incorporation of more dispersed renewable power into power grids. Consequently, such home concepts not only make daily tasks easier but make working conditions more efficient and sustainable.
Many scholars agree with the statement that a remote work environment will become optimal in the near future due to the increased adoption of smart house systems. According to Guan et al. (2022), smart will imply a home workplace environment where data flow will be rapid and simple. Existing options include integrating a secured WFH setting with the latest intelligent gadgets “sitting” on the same network (Guan et al., 2022). Users at home subsequently obtain features such as user and remote access, multi-level network security, web filtering, customer support available 24/7, and a corporate management dashboard, all available via an easy-to-use smartphone app (Guan et al., 2022). Additionally, smart home systems are beneficial for businesses whose expenditures on office areas and equipment might decrease drastically (Guan et al., 2022). Thus, the concept of a smart home and remote work will grow in demand.
Nevertheless, many researchers also claim that the smart home concept can be detrimental to both employee and business’ privacy. Because of WFH’s unique contextual consistency, more specifically, surroundings, it should be noted whether these remote conditions are influenced by personal smart home products (Abdi et al., 2021). For example, while a client is in a secret conference, the smart home gadget might possibly capture voice recordings or even confidential material (Abdi et al., 2021). Butt et al. (2021) further claim that cyberattacks on remote employees working from home have significantly escalated due to the global epidemic. Cyber attackers have identified the vulnerability of both corporate and private users and abused customers for monetary gain and espionage purposes (Georgiadou et al., 2021). Perpetrators intend to exploit unprotected smart homes via the Internet of Things to obtain access to enterprise networks (Butt et al., 2021). This implies that homeowners must be especially cautious about this modern technology.
Results
The results of the literature review indicate that the concept of a smart home involves the usage of digital equipment, promotion of sustainability, and security. The scholars agree that there are benefits of a smart home for remote employees that imply time-efficiency and productivity. However, researchers claim that smart homes involve technological vulnerability that can be abused by cyberattackers who can obtain private data for personal gain.
Conclusion
As a result, incorporating smart home concepts is predicted to increase due to helpful and accessible features. Employees who work from home can obtain such features as remote network access, network security, web filtering, and a corporate management dashboard. The concept of the smart home provides time-efficient features that facilitate the successful implementation of work tasks. Moreover, it is beneficial to companies since smart homes for employees and remote work decrease business’ costs.
Recommendations
It is vital to understand that the challenges of smart homes extend beyond security problems. Smart home systems might be costly, which might not make such a concept ubiquitous. Moreover, another challenge of such systems is their maintenance and power source. Smart homes that utilize renewable energy tend to be more sustainable and are not vulnerable to power failures. As a result, researching the possible sources of maintaining the smart homes, ensuring cybersecurity, and lower costs will create more demand for such systems.
References
Abdi, N., Zhan, X., Ramokapane, K. M., & Such, J. (2021). Privacy norms for smart home personal assistants. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14).
Butt, U. J., Richardson, W., Nouman, A., Agbo, H. M., Eghan, C., & Hashmi, F. (2021). Cloud and its security impacts on managing a workforce remotely: A reflection to cover remote working challenges. In Cybersecurity, Privacy and Freedom Protection in the Connected World (pp. 285-311). Springer, Cham.
Georgiadou, A., Mouzakitis, S., & Askounis, D. (2021). Working from home during COVID-19 crisis: A cyber security culture assessment survey. Security Journal, 1-20.
Guan, A. L. C., Manavalan, M., Ahmed, A. A. A., Azad, M. M., & Miah, M. S. (2022). Role of Internet of Things (IOT) in enabling productive work from home (WFH) for environmental volatiles. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 26(1), 1-11.
Marikyan, D., Papagiannidis, S., & Alamanos, E. (2019). A systematic review of the smart home literature: A user perspective. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 138, 139-154.
Strengers, Y., & Nicholls, L. (2017). Convenience and energy consumption in the smart home of the future: Industry visions from Australia and beyond. Energy Research & Social Science, 32, 86-93.