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 4 Skills to Master

TIME MANAGEMENT

No secret here. Let’s get more done in less time. Our ability to own the 24 hrs in each day will help stave off burn-out, lower stress and increase effectiveness.

ORGANIZATION

Maintain focus while handling multiple tasks. Focus your energy, strength, mental capacity and physical space effectively to achieve your goals.

SELF-DISCIPLINE

Focus with purpose. A corner-stone to your overall success, self-discipline is the one that produces sustainable success over time.

COMMUNICATION

We’re not robots… emotions and intentions matter. Listening to gain a full understanding of what’s being shared makes everyone feel heard and valued.
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While going remote provides the freedom to work when and where you need – there are many challenges that can pop up now and then. Below, we share some of the most common strategies to  stay engaged when you’re out of the office.

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CONNECTIONS MATTER

To thrive in a remote work setting, it’s important to explore all ways to communicate - video conferencing, in-person meetings (when restrictions allow) and messaging. When team members stay in touch, work hours are more productive and workers are more engaged. It’s a big change for everyone and finding innovative ways to build connections is the key to success. 

HINT: 

Get ahead of it. Work collaboratively to build and frame how everyone will work remotely together. Communication is key as a remote worker. Remember: An email is great for a to-do this week, a text for today, and a call for right now.

BE ACCOUNTABLE

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how to be adaptable. One minute we’re required to be in the office, then suddenly we have to learn to be productive working alone, at home. The key to staying successful as a remote worker is to be accountable - to your team and to yourself. 

HINT:

Consider implementing a project management solution or accountability chart to know who is responsible for what and use different methods of communication for escalating urgency. Work with your teammates to find the communication methods that work best for you to get the results you need.

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LONELINESS AND ISOLATION

If you’ve been working from home throughout 2020, you may have found yourself feeling lonely and missing the happy collisions that an office provides. While remote work gives us less face time with our coworkers, it also gives us more time with family and friends.

HINT:
Consider planning a biweekly lunch where work is off topic. You can also create a virtual breakroom through messaging software where managers aren’t invited, but staff can blow off steam, share stories, and have a laugh around the digital water cooler. Share your challenges and successes with your coworkers to create a bond around the value of your work.

FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS

The massive shift to work from home in 2020 has many of us thinking that the general experience of a remote worker is one rife with distractions, from babies crying to dogs barking. While some remote workers have a dedicated workspace and reasonable childcare solutions, still more struggle to create an office environment that allows them to focus. 

HINT:

The reality is that not everyone has extra space for work. If this is your situation, talk to your employer about how they can support you by providing access to an on-demand workspace outside the home.

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Essential Tool Checklist

Need to master remote work software? Visit Software Advice.

Communication

Slack – A chat room for your whole company, designed to replace email as your primary method of communication and sharing. Its workspaces allow you to organize communications by channels for group discussions and allows for private messages to share information, files, and more all in one place.

Mattermost – An open source, self-hosted Slack-alternative. As an alternative to proprietary SaaS messaging, Mattermost brings all your team communication into one place, making it searchable and accessible anywhere. It’s written in Golang and React and runs as a production-ready Linux binary under an MIT license with either MySQL or Postgres.

Microsoft Teams – A persistent chat-based collaboration platform complete with document sharing, online meetings, and many more extremely useful features for business communications.

Time Management

Timely – A time tracking app that helps you to stay on top of your schedule and records exactly how you spend your time. It includes an automatic tool that tracks your activity so you can correctly record timesheets or just review your schedule to see how you can improve your productivity.

Toggl – A time tracking app that allows you to track your daily activities across different platforms; providing you with detailed insights and an opportunity to optimize your workflow by identifying areas where you can improve.

Everhour – A time tracking software in the form of a web application, browser extension and an iPhone app that helps to measure hours for your daily tasks.

Video Conferencing

Zoom – A cloud-based video conferencing service you can use to virtually meet with others – either by video or audio-only or both, all while conducting live chats – and it lets you record those sessions to view later.

Microsoft Teams – A persistent chat-based collaboration platform complete with document sharing, online meetings, and many more extremely useful features for business communications.

Google Hangouts – A unified communications service that enables text, voice, or video chats, either one-on-one or in a group. Hangouts is built into Gmail, YouTube, and Google Voice, plus there are Hangouts apps for iOS, Android, and the web.

Join.me – A web-based collaboration software application for screen-sharing and online meetings.

Project Management

Basecamp – Basecamp is a real-time communication tool that helps teams stay on the same page; it’s less for traditional project management tasks (e.g., resource planning and long-term scheduling). With to-do-lists, calendaring, due dates and file-sharing, Basecamp provides a way for teams to keep track of priorities and actionable items.

Monday – monday.com is a cloud-based project management solution that caters to small to midsize businesses across various industry verticals. The solution helps them manage different projects and facilitate knowledge-sharing among team members.

Asana – Asana is a cloud-based project and task management solution that enables companies to manage and organize tasks and projects, communicate and collaborate. It is helpful for teams and companies that handle multiple projects at one time, and it can serve companies of any size.

Trello – Trello is a visual collaboration tool for planning tasks and projects. While commonly used by agile software development teams, the solution is also used in other departments such as marketing, sales, support and HR. The web-based solution provides tools to define projects, their requirements and the workflow to ensure projects are completed in a planned sequential manner.

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