Less than 5 years ago, no one could have imagined a successful company whose full-time employees work from home, a coworking space or a coffee shop. Rather, the surprise today is a company that doesn’t have remote workers and unified communications platforms. Conferences in Skype and Slack, online documents, chats for staff members who almost never show up in the office are commonplace in small companies and large international corporations nowadays.
The number of remote workers all over the world is growing day by day. But remote work has some nuances. First, remote work is not for everyone. Some people are more productive in the office, surrounded by colleagues. Secondly, remote work requires certain skills from employees. That is why it is important to know how to organize it to be as productive in the end as possible.
Tip 1. A remote employee must be able to work according to the company’s work schedule. If you are not a freelancer, you must work according to the plan your company has set for the whole team and adhere to the work schedule.
Tip 2: Master the tools for remote work. To become a useful member of a virtual workgroup, a remote worker must be familiar with modern collaboration applications. Slack, Skype for Business, Zoom, Google Documents, etc. – using these and other tools should not cause any difficulties for the employee. You have to use applications that will save your time for more important things. If you deal a lot with the emails (in a big company you definitely do), use an email unsubscribe and management app, like Clean Email. You will be surprised how intelligently this application can sort and categorize the messages in your email inbox. As a result it won’t take you more than 2 seconds to find what you need in your email inbox.
Tip 3. Develop communication skills in a geographically dispersed team. Separately, it is worth mentioning that the remote employee must use professional audio peripherals specifically designed for unified communications. A consumer-grade headset is not enough for day-to-day communication in a geographically dispersed team. The worker will need a device that is optimized for Skype for Business, Teams, and other UC platforms.
Tip 4. For some people, working from home, coffee shops or coworking spaces can be challenging due to their inability to concentrate. However, statistics show that there are not many people experiencing such difficulties. Focusing your attention is a skill like any other, but individual approach is important here. If you find it difficult to focus at home, look for factors to help focus your attention. Background acoustics, workplace organization, and even lighting all affect the remote worker’s ability to focus on everyday tasks.
Tip 5. Develop time management and self-organizing skills. The ability to manage your own time is perhaps the most important skill for a remote worker. The principles of good time management are well known, and free time management tutorials are plentiful on the Internet. Plan your working day in advance, make lists of important tasks, correctly prioritize – these are well-known recommendations. The main thing is to learn how to follow them.