It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since many of us began working from home full-time. Over the last 12 months we’ve seen a rapid change in how and where we work.
We’ve moved from offices to working on kitchen tables. To setting up sit-stand desks, webcams, microphones, and backgrounds for video calls.
Some have left big cities to work from small towns, while others are working from remote office locations of their choosing. A co-worker of mine regularly works from Lake Tahoe, and a friend taught his students in the US via Zoom while he was traveling South America.
At first working from home was going to be temporary, but more and more it’s being considered for the long term. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Nationwide Insurance have announced permanent work from home policies with many others like Google, Intel, and Salesforce looking to do hybrid models.
While working from the office won’t fully disappear anytime soon, there is no denying that remote work is here to stay and how we work has changed forever.
Over the past year I’ve seen firsthand how people have adapted to excel in this new world. Here are five of some of the best ways to boost your career while working remotely:
- Set Your Workspace Up for Success – Your workspace has a direct influence on your motivation, productivity, and wellbeing. Set your workspace up for success by: carving out a personal space for your home office no matter how small, setting your workspace up ergonomically to avoid injuries, decluttering and organizing your work area, putting up photos that inspire you, relocating your desk to look out the window, and on a nice day taking your office outdoors.
- Super Charge Your Network – Networking is a powerful tool to boost your career, and even more important with remote work. You can super charge your network by: regularly networking with people you know, creating or joining a lunch club, hosting online social events, attending webinars and online events, and connecting and engaging with others on social media.
- Over Communicate – Communication matters. It helps you stay in sync with co-workers, grow your visibility, and reduce feelings of isolation. Good communication looks like: taking time to write well, proactively communicating, using video to build connection, and moving complex or difficult conversations out of email and to the phone.
- Share Your Wins – While we would like our results to speak for themselves, the truth is if you don’t share your wins few people will know about them. Wins create and show momentum. So when you communicate your wins you demonstrate that you get results while you generate excitement and momentum. It also enhances your visibility, keeping you top-of-mind while working remotely.
- Plan for Interactions – When you’re not in the office you lose out on the face-to-face collaboration and interaction that’s so important. That’s why it’s critical to plan for this. Planning for interactions looks like: setting up video coffee chats, holding on-line team builders, setting up office hours, and carving out time for deliberate collaboration.
Remote work is here to stay, and putting these five techniques into practice will give you a significant edge.