5 Important Reasons Your Office Should Consider a 2-Monitor Setup

If you’re looking for technology investments that will give you the most “bang for your buck,” a fairly inexpensive hardware purchase can equate to a big boost in office productivity. While using two monitors at every workstation may seem like an extravagance afforded to large tech companies, it’s a smart workflow. It also has a short payback and ongoing rewards. Today, employees are using more apps than ever before.

Approximately 76% of surveyed employees say they use more apps than they did five years ago, and that continuous app switching makes performing their jobs harder. Sixty-eight percent of them say app switching is costing them at least 30 minutes per day. That’s a lot of lost productivity from not having enough screen space. You see more companies switching to a dual-monitor setup because it provides the additional screen area that today’s employees need to juggle multiple apps and windows on their computers. These are some of the main reasons to consider moving your offices to a two-monitor workflow.

Increased Productivity

Studies show that workers can get tasks done faster and find that using two monitors makes for a more pleasant working experience. In a study by Jon Peddie Research, users increased their productivity by 42% after switching to a two-monitor setup. A report by Dell found a 44% increase in productivity for text-based tasks. They also found a 29% boost for spreadsheet-based tasks when users moved from one monitor to two monitors. That’s a big boost in productivity for one simple move that can be done in a day.

Short Payback & Ongoing ROI

For some technology investments, you have to wait a while until they reach payback. This can make certain technology purchases less attractive once you factor in your budget with the expected payback time. But a switch to two monitors for a desktop or laptop can be paid back in productivity in less than a month. It can even provide ongoing ROI after that. In the Dell report, it was found that people being evaluated for task completion on one-monitor versus two-monitors accomplished a work task about 2 minutes faster. Extrapolating that out to an average of 5 minutes saved per hour equates to 40 minutes saved per day, per employee. For an employee making $20 per hour, that’s a ballpark of $267 per month in productivity savings. That’s roughly the cost of a quality monitor.

User Satisfaction

When employees have tools that enable them to do their work without problems, they are happier and have a better attitude throughout the day. When participants in a Wichita study scored one monitor (even large ones, like a 22”) against a two-monitor workflow, they preferred having two monitors. Average scores on a scale of 1-10 were:

• The Usefulness of Configuration:
  • Single monitor: 5 out of 10
  • Dual monitor: 7 out of 10
• Easy to Find Information:
  • Single monitor: 4 out of 10
  • Dual monitor: 7 out of 10
• Configuration Pleasant to Use:
  • Single monitor: 3.5 out of 10
  • Dual monitor: 7 out of 10

Conduct Video Presentations More Efficiently

One of the scoring areas in Microsoft Productivity Score for Microsoft 365 is how well participants handle video meetings. Conducting meetings via Teams or Zoom has now become the norm due to the pandemic. This means how efficient your use of video is while giving a presentation and sharing a screen can have a big impact on overall time management and the success of the meeting.

A challenge when screen sharing is that everyone can see what’s on your computer. This limits your ability to refer to notes, jot down notes, and even keep your eye on your email for anyone that couldn’t find the meeting link. Then, there are always those unexpected popups that happen when people forget to turn off things like Slack notifications or incoming email or banners. Using two monitors allows you to share one of your two screens during a video call. This leaves the other one unseen by the meeting participants and allows you to use it for things like:

• Presentation reference notes
• Note-taking during the meeting
• Keeping an eye on incoming emails

Easy to Set Up & Start Using Right Away

One of the other benefits of boosting productivity through the use of a 2-monitor workflow is that you don’t have to go through a time-consuming transition. There’s no data to migrate and no long training sessions that have to be conducted. Adding another monitor to a computer is pretty straightforward. You simply plug it in, configure your computer’s display settings to see it, and choose which side you want it on (left or right). Users can then drag documents and app windows between screens, just as if they had one giant display.

Get Expert Guidance for Saving Money Through Smart Technology Use

Copperband Technologies can help your southern Kentucky or Middle Tennessee business find the most affordable ways to save money and improve efficiency through the smart use of technology. Contact us today to schedule a consultation! Call 931.263.8000 or email us.