Telecommuting has become so commonplace over the last several years for knowledge workers in publishing, high-tech and many other industries that work-from-home situations are even featured in popular advertisements for cars and pretzels. Through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and video web-conferencing systems, technology has provided an easy portal making it almost as if those employees are still in the office.

Of course, in light of recent events, most employees are now working from home. The influx of traffic is flooding internal systems and crashing remote servers. More staff than ever are learning how to focus in a home environment where you can’t have a casual brainstorming chat with the person next to you. And the first 10 minutes of meetings is seeing who is on and if their mic is muted.