6 Career Development Strategies For Remote Workers
Publié le 22 June 2022
Take charge of your professional life while continuing to work from your home office by utilizing 6 career development strategies for remote workers.
Since the whirlwind days of March 2020, many of us have been dropped into a remote career for the first time. And while the COVID-driven bounce of home working has begun to recede with the return of normality, remote work is now around 5 to 6 times more prevalent than before the pandemic, with thousands of workers opting for remote roles and hybrid working arrangements for the first time.
This brings its own challenge: what does a remote career mean for your career development? It requires unlearning and rethinking how you interact with your colleagues, managers and business leaders without ever sitting in the same room as them. Taking the time to plan exactly how to tackle your career development goals is a crucial step for anyone leaving the office behind.
Here are 6 career development strategies for remote workers as they build a remote career development plan and hunt for the next stage in their professional life from their home office.
6 Career Development Strategies for Remote Workers
- 1. Plan your day to work at your best
- 2. Turn your regained time into professional development
- 3. Make your achievements visible
- 4. Involve your manager
- 5. Don’t neglect the little things
- 6. Learn how to communicate
1. Plan your day to work at your best
Maximizing day-to-day performance and work quality should be the first and core step of any remote career development plan. After all, it’s ultimately the value you add to your employer that will drive your career trajectory and let you hit your career development goals.
Luckily, the autonomy and flexibility of a remote work set-up empowers you to structure and plan your working day in a way that plays to your strengths and supports your long-term remote career strategy.
Ask yourself:
- Is 9-5 the best working structure for me?
- When do I have the most energy and focus in a day?
- How can I align my day around my natural working preferences and non-work demands?
This could mean starting and finishing later if you’re not a morning person, scheduling a walking break to combat the 3:00 pm slump, or keeping yourself (and your partner) happy ensuring you pick your children up from school and spend some time with them every day.
Above all, a successful long-term remote career rests on knowing how to keep yourself sharp and productive – and that means being on your guard against signs of burnout, fading motivation or unhealthy work-life balance and acting accordingly.
2. Turn your regained time into professional development
Your remote career development strategy should include clear and achievable professional development goals. Ditching the time sinks of the commute and conversations around the office watercooler gives you the perfect opportunity to dedicate yourself to growth in these areas.
Consider your weak areas, improvement opportunities, things you’re curious about, even any soft skills you’d like to sharpen, and feed them into your remote career development plan.
Then ensure you allot time and headspace in a consistent way. If you used to spend 8:00-9:00 am on the road to the office every day, for instance, spend that hour on an online course, upskilling with a book or kick-starting a side project instead.
Not only are you making yourself stronger and more effective in your role, you’re also gaining an advantage on everyone else still tied to the old time-consuming rhythms and rituals of traditional office work.
3. Make your achievements visible
Our next remote career development strategy : don’t let your vital day-to-day contributions get lost in the ether of a remote business.
Spontaneous huddles, feedback and conversations with your manager might not be possible without a shared office, so any remote career development strategy should include conscious consideration of how to keep your work achievements and contributions visible, valued and seen.
Steps you can take to record your achievements might include:
- Setting time to run through your weekly accomplishments in 1-2-1 sessions with your manager
- Keeping a record of completed work, and its impact, to refer to in review sessions
- Building a ‘scorecard’ of your performance, perhaps linking it to broader departmental or organizational goals and how you contributed
Don’t be overly promotional or self-congratulating; just ensure you give yourself a consistent channel for publicizing your activity and for referring to it when needed in those big career conversations. Being able to provide an example of your tangible successes will not only help during performance reviews, but will also keep you motivated to achieve more.
4. Involve your manager
Don’t overthink it. The old-fashioned approach of being humble, friendly and open to feedback from your manager still applies for any remote career development strategy.
Discuss your career development goals with them, and encourage them to provide actionable guidance to help you on your way. This means you have to be completely open to their feedback, even if it is negative. Remember that getting an honest appraisal is the only way to learn and improve, and with the right mindset this is only a step to a better result.
Whether it’s learning new skills (see #Tip 2), taking on new responsibilities, helping with a big new quarterly project, or even stepping up to a new position, any decent manager should know instantly how your role fits into the wider business operation, and how you can augment it.
These discussions can be invaluable stepping stones to your next promotion and should form part of your remote career strategy.
5. Don’t neglect the little things
While remote work does offer the possibility of working from anywhere with a strong Internet connection, the reality is that the majority of your time will probably be spent in your own home.
There’s no real mystery here – the more comfortable and happy you are, the better your work will be. So arm yourself with as many small comforts as you can to keep yourself focused and productive throughout the working day. This could mean keeping your comfiest pajamas on as long as you can, keeping your favorite snacks close, and even getting the lighting right. If you’ve a view you enjoy from one of your windows, consider setting up shop there. And if you have a needy pet who loves cuddles, don’t feel you have to keep them locked out of your home office. Stroking a pet is proven to reduce stress, while about half of U.S. remote workers said their day-to-day stress was helped by a co-worker’s pet appearance on Zoom.
Think of your remote career as the combination of thousands of working days spread across years. The marginal gains of ditching cubicles, desks and boardrooms for your own space, filled with the things that make you happy, will, by extension, boost your job satisfaction and your remote career development pathway.
6. Learn how to communicate
Written communication is everything in a remote environment. While you’ll doubtless spend lots of time on Zoom or Teams, the vast majority of your day-to-day communication, and the general record your company houses of your contribution as an employee, will be written in the form of email, chats, and texts.
Bad grammar, ambiguity or curtness (accidental or otherwise) can all damage your reputation. Take time to craft your written communication style to keep things clear, concise and helpful for your colleagues. Bullet-point actions, assign tasks and responsibilities clearly, and let your personality shine through your communications in the same way you would with your actions in a physical office.
That being said, sometimes writing is unsuitable for longer, more complex asynchronous conversations – diagrams, voice memos and good old-fashioned video calls are all your friend here.
Ensuring your colleagues know how to work with you, understand what you mean, and agree on how to best collaborate together will help your entire team flourish remotely.
Conclusion
Like any career, your remote working future should be underpinned by a clear and actionable career development strategy with achievable goals.
By putting these 6 career development strategies for remote workers into action and combining them with hard work and dedication, there’s absolutely no reason your remote role can’t offer the same exciting opportunities as a traditional office-based position. The future of your remote career is up to you!
