Six Skills To Be A Remote Worker During Covid-19

With the Covid-19 pandemic, many people have been sent to work from home to minimize infections. And even though some companies are returning to normal operations, they have realized the benefits of remote teams. So, the future of work may be more distant than we realized at the beginning of the year. These are qsome skills that will help you to be a remote worker during Covid-19 and after.

Strong Communication

Gerd Altmann / @Pixabay

Communication is always crucial for any job you have unless it is something that doesn’t require human interaction whatsoever. But mostly all professions require some level of contact with a manager or coworkers. In the case of remote working, communication gains even more importance.

Communication is much more than just the words we say. When we speak with people in person, we also use body language to communicate. In remote work, you don’t see your teammates or manager in person, so the communication depends only on spoken words through phone or video calling and written words.

Plus, remote teams generally have people from different parts of the country and even from different parts of the world. So, besides lacking in-person communication clues, you will be facing different accents and cultures. Because of all these, having strong communication skills is a must to be a remote worker, you will need to be an expert on getting your message across no matter what.

Proactiveness

Another aspect of remote work is that you don’t have a manager or coworker around to notice if you are doing your job or not. You won’t be able to ask questions if you don’t know how to do something or have someone always tell you what to do next. Being proactive means being independent and looking for solutions.

A remote worker has to be a self-starter on many of its tasks. If you are the kind that sits around doing nothing waiting for someone to give you direction, then you will probably fail. You have to look for things to do if your boss hasn’t assigned you your next task.

For example, if you are a social media manager and you already finish all the posts for the week, you could spend the rest of the week preparing a new job that you could suggest to bring more audience. So, by being proactive, your manager will see you work independently and are a good fit for remote work.

Collaboration

@Pixabay

Collaboration is always essential when working in a team, and unless you are in a company with only one employee, which will be you, you will need to collaborate with others. Collaboration also brings benefits like more innovative environments because everyone is comfortable suggesting new ideas.

Working remotely won’t be different in the aspect that you will need to collaborate with other coworkers. But the distance can make collaboration a challenge; this is where your communication skills will enter the picture too. Make sure to use all the tools available to communicate with team members and keep the collaboration channels flowing.

For example, if you are a JavaScript developer that works remotely, you will be working alongside other team members on the same projects. If the project is a website, you will need to continually communicate with web and UX designers to know what your next task will be.

Time Management and Organization

Another vital skill all remote workers must have is time management and organization. As mentioned before, you will be working on your own most of the time, and depending on the company, you won’t probably have a fixed schedule every day. So you need to be able to manage your time correctly to achieve all your responsibilities without having your boss checking on you to see if you are doing it.

Time management is being able to organize your time to work productively. And this includes being able to set time apart for rest and relaxation. When you go to the office, you have a lot of breaks that you don’t realize. For example, chatting with coworkers, going to another office to look for something, etc. But when we work remotely, we forget breaks are important too.

If you take a break throughout your working hours, you will probably be more productive than if you work eight hours straight. Now, organization skills are part of what will help you to arrange your time in the best way possible. Plus, if you organize your task accordingly with the deadline, you won’t need to rush the last few days and work more than you need.

Web Design

Web designers are the ones that create the beautiful websites we visit every day. Mostly they create the visuals of how a page is going to look like. They also work on the programming that makes a site functional. Web designers can also be user experience (UX) designers for websites.

This skill is handy for remote workers. They can use it to add value to their company’s platform and even create their online platforms as a side hustle. Web design is also very adaptable as a remote career. You will be able to work from anywhere as long as you have a good computer and Internet connection. And you will only need to communicate with clients to check on design and website decisions and to show results.

Digital Marketing

@Pixabay

Digital marketing is one of the most common skills for digital workers. Digital marketers help companies by having a marketing strategy mindset, but digital marketing can be a career on its own. Digital marketers are experts on all the online platforms that help create marketing campaigns and the platforms used to reach customers.

Having this skill will complement your remote profile perfectly. Plus, you can learn all the necessary knowledge quickly with a coding bootcamp or online course. Things like how to launch an email campaign or program ads on Instagram will become second nature. You will be able to help your company enhance its audience and optimize their marketing resources.

In Summary

Being a remote worker isn’t for everyone, but it doesn’t mean that you cannot adapt to this new way of working. By improving your communication skills, becoming more proactive and collaborative, and being more organized with your time, you will be successful in a remote team. Also, you can learn web design and digital marketing to complement your remote profile.

 

Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JMoBengAX5qAZgcdUYKO0UtoTY_MVslDFSiNKViRpf0/edit

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