In unchartered territory, you might be wondering how remote work will impact your career growth – but if you use the opportunity to your advantage, you’ll enhance your career prospects, says Neal Taparia
A dangerous virus has changed the way we work forever. Just like that, out of the blue, many of us were suddenly forced to start working from home.
Now in unchartered territory, you might wonder how remote work will impact your career growth. Now that we’ve moved fully remote, it’s a topic that my team at my brain training startup Solitaired regularly bring up. Far from being a barrier though, with more companies with flexible or all remote policies, remote work can actually be a catalyst for career growth.
Global opportunities
Often your career opportunities are a function of where you live. If you dream of being a car engineer in Springfield, Illinois, your options of finding an automotive company is limited. Instead, you have to move to Detroit, Michigan – the automotive capital of the world – to find your dream job.
Remote work changes this. If you’re aspiring to be a digital marketer, for example, your opportunities aren’t limited to local companies. Instead, you can seek opportunities globally with companies that offer remote positions.
If there isn’t room to grow or advance within your company, you have opportunities to look elsewhere. For example, if you’re ready for a managerial role, but there are no available ones at your current company, you can look globally for that ideal role. Not only can you find roles with more responsibility, you can find ones with higher pay.
Finally, it’s hard to predict how your interests will evolve. While digital marketing may seem like a promising career path, your passion might be in product management. You can more easily switch career paths by seeking remote opportunities in different fields. While there may be one product management role for you locally, there can be hundreds of remote ones worldwide that you have a legitimate shot at.
Remote work opportunities are only growing, and throws open a world of opportunities for you that a regular office job cannot.
Flexibility to learn
Compared to the fixed work hours of a regular job, remote work often gives you the flexibility to choose your working hours and schedule. Thanks to communication and collaboration tools, you don’t have to be working the same hours as your colleagues to be on the same page as them.
Just as important, you save valuable time skipping a commute. You no longer have to drive or take the train to and from work, saving your hours of time
This newfound time is a huge opportunity. With it, you can enroll in academic or micro courses. If you’re pursuing a marketing career, you can take a digital bootcamp to learn about ad copy and social media marketing, all of which can improve your daily work. If you’re hoping to pursue management roles, you can even take executive training courses to learn what it takes to be a successful manager.
When you join a company as a remote employee, be sure to ask if they offer professional development courses, or products like Linkedin Learning where you can learn on your own. With remote work, you can make time for additional learning.
And if you want to change careers, having a remote job gives you an opportunity to do this. With your added time and flexible schedule, through platforms like Coursera, you can build the skills needed to make a career switch. Moreover, you have time and the ability to discreetly look for new roles.
Growth through autonomy
Most successful leaders and professionals have one thing in common – the ability to work unsupervised. They are self-motivated individuals who understand company goals, and find a way to meet those goals with little oversight.
Remote work creates an environment, where to succeed, you have to learn to work autonomously. Asking your manager questions in person is very different than doing so online. Slack messaging or requesting Zoom meetings throughout the course of a project can be distracting and hinder focus. It also shows that you don’t have a full grasp of how to move your responsibilities forward.
Instead, you have to learn how to ask the right questions from the beginning to get the right direction. Additionally, through the course of a project, you have to first try to solve questions and problems yourself before asking others. This is what it takes to be an independent worker.
Not only does autonomous working help teams function effectively, you learn more on the job. You’re not immediately asking colleagues around you for help, but first you’re exercising critical thinking and problem solving skills to get through your work. These are the intangible skills that separate the wheat from the chaff in the workplace. Moreover, because you’re learning on your own as opposed to being instructed, you retain knowledge better.
Management preparation
Remote work allows you to develop processes and schedules that maximise your productivity.
Interestingly, this is what effective managers do. They build processes that allow their teams to function like clock-work. As you hone in on how to be an effective remote worker, you’re also getting field training and perspective on what can make other remote workers productive. For example, you might find that sending end-of-day updates is a great communication tool, and something you’d bring to your own team.
You also learn first-hand how to delegate and empower your employees. Successful remote managers do not micromanage. Asking for updates through the work day creates context switching and is counterproductive. Instead, you have to give your team the right direction coupled with freedom to execute and to learn on their own. In fact, such autonomy is also tied to greater workplace satisfaction.
As a remote worker, you’ll understand what successful and unsuccessful management looks like. This experience, which teaches you how to trust your team, prepares you to be a great manager not only for virtual, but in-person teams as well.
The value of deep work
Cal Newport, in his top-rated book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World writes: ‘To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.’
A distraction-free environment is hard to come by in an office environment. There is always chatter and movement that can throw off your focus. Distractions can lead to poor work and lost time.
Remote work gives you the space and environment for deep work. Of course, in a home office there are distractions too. However, you have greater flexibility to control your schedule, setting the stage for deep work.
A few hours of deep work can put you ahead of schedule and drastically improve your quality of work. This can help you stand out among peers leading to new work responsibilities.
Relationship building
Building strong relationships is important to advancing in the workplace. Trust and friendship can lead to new opportunities.
In the office, you interact face to face with your colleagues, helping build connections. It can work in your favor, or not, especially if favorites are played with other individuals.
However, when you’re working remotely, your work speaks for itself. Poor work can’t be confused with likability.
Additionally, no matter how introverted or extroverted you are, good online communication rewards itself. Keeping your colleagues regularly up to speed with your work through group chats or daily emails is a differentiator in remote teams.
Lastly, the natural lack of face time is an opportunity. Go above and beyond to set up video conferences with managers and colleagues, and develop relationships that others aren’t.
Parting thoughts
You might think that with remote work, you’re out site and out mind. While there may be some truth to this, it’s also an opportunity. Everyone is out of site and out of mind. Use this to your advantage and you’ll accelerate your career growth.
Neal Taparia is CEO of Solitaired, which specialises in ringing brain training and classic games together.
