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One growing talent issue I have increasingly become concerned about, is observing people whose career development quickly nosedives when they isolate themselves\u00a0in a work-at-home model.<\/p>\nOne growing talent issue I have increasingly become concerned about, is observing people whose career development quickly nosedives when they isolate themselves\u00a0in a work-at-home model.<\/p>\n
I personally believe being able to work effectively within a virtual environment warrants\u00a0a completely different skillset and attitude, if you want to advance your career and keep developing your potential.<\/p>\n
So here’s my guide to being an effective virtual worker in six easy steps:<\/p>\n
1. Use voice and video as much as you can.<\/strong> \u00a0Staring into a computer relentlessly typing emails for 16 hours a day with little voice contact with your clients\/co-workers makes anyone miserable – and anti-social over time. \u00a0Make considerable effort to talk to people as much as you can. \u00a0Use video for conference calls too – it forces everyone to pay attention (and get dressed) and have a much more personal series of dialogs.<\/p>\n 2. Sort out your voice technology.<\/strong> \u00a0There’s nothing worse than communicating with people who have a crappy wifi connection, with whom you can never get a clear skype\/google conversation without the echos, constant disconnections etc. \u00a0If your wifi’s garbage, you can get great quality Skype (for example) over 4g LTE these days on your iPad or iPhone. \u00a0Oh, and while we’re at it, stop slurping coffee and eating into your microphone on calls, it’s disgusting…<\/p>\n 3. Stop using email for every bloody communication.<\/strong> \u00a0Email is a tool for passing along information and instructions. Learn how to be cordial, get your message across and use voice as much as possible to communicate. \u00a0Never use email for heated conversations that have emotion (especially negative emotion).<\/p>\n 4. Buy an exercise machine and work out everyday. \u00a0Without fail. \u00a0<\/strong>You’re sitting on your bum most the day burning zero calories and likely visiting the fridge on an hourly basis. \u00a0You have<\/em> to exercise, or you will balloon and die. \u00a0Buy yourself an elliptical trainer, exercise bike or treadmill, use it everyday, and after a while you’ll get so fit you can even take calls while you get even fitter. \u00a0I would recommend going to a gym, but who has two hours to carve out when you’re an overworked virtual nutcase glued to your machine all day and night?<\/p>\n 5. Invest more time getting out to see your clients, your peers and do more networking.<\/strong>\u00a0 When you see noone bar your family, pets and the plumber on a daily basis, the only way to stay motivated and continue to develop yourself is to go to more conferences, make more effort to visit your clients \/ peers etc. \u00a0You learn the most from your collective discussions with others, from having discreet conversations. \u00a0Everyone’s fed up with social-media – meeting people and being social is back<\/em> in vogue. \u00a0Really – get<\/em> out of the house!<\/p>\n 6. Stop complaining about how stressed and overworked you are.<\/strong> \u00a0Boohoo – just suck it up, we’re all over-bloody-worked. \u00a0It’s all in the mind<\/em> – so get healthy, get social again, start enjoying your work and you’ll forget about stress and go with the flow. \u00a0Just go with the flow, it’s the only way to survive these days.<\/p>\n There endeth my lesson for the day. \u00a0Go back to your weekend…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One growing talent issue I have increasingly become concerned about, is observing people whose career development quickly nosedives when they…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,51,78,80,832,97,98],"tags":[303],"organization":[],"ppma_author":[19],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-absolutely-meaningless-comedy","category-cloud-computing","category-hfsresearch-com-homepage","category-hr-strategy","category-sourcing-best-practises","category-talent-in-sourcing","category-the-as-a-service-economy","tag-enterprise-irregulars"],"yoast_head":"\n