The World of Work is going Remote, Are you Prepared?

I’d like to make a bold claim. Ten years from now, the world of work as we know it will drastically change. More than half of the jobs that will be advertised will give you the opportunity to work remotely.

Yes, more than half of the jobs.

What do I mean by work remotely? To work remotely is to work from whatever place you think will make you more productive, most of the time outside your employer’s offices.

Many people who work remotely usually work from different countries other than their employer’s country. This remote working practise is very common in the software technology industry.

Let’s bring this home. If I have the chance of working out of my bedroom or community center in Tamale for a company based in Accra, I would be said to be working remotely.

The shift from the way we work (having to be physically present in the offices of your employer) is as a result of the expansion of access to the internet, rise in software technologies that aid remote work and the ability to monitor an employee’s output no matter where he/she is working from.

Today more than ever, an employer can assign tasks to an employee, communicate with the employee throughout the course of the work and track the performance of the employee all without meeting the employee.

Interestingly, many employees favor working remotely because it presents them the opportunity to work when they really want to and to rest when they feel like it.

Starting businesses also favor this because they do not need physical offices before they can run a team to achieve an objective.

But if companies and employers are going to allow you to work remotely, they expect to be able to monitor your performance, this means, they expect you to know how to use certain tools. How many of those tools do you know?

Let’s take a look at some of them. If you want to remain employable going into the future, you’ll need to spend some time learning the tools that are mentioned below.

Though these tools are loved by remote workers, it’s important employees at physical offices know how to use them as well.

— Task assignment tools

Asana, Trello

Task assignment tools enable your employer to specify tasks of the week/month for you and monitor which ones are being worked on or have been completed.

— Communication/Messaging Tools

Slack, Hipchat

Communication tools give you a medium through which you can communicate and exchange ideas with your employer or fellow employees as you carry out a task.

These are not all the tools you need to be fully productive whilst working remotely, but they are essential and knowing them will help you a great deal.


This post was first published on naaninche.wordpress.com.