Grow in Your Current Role While Working From Home
Are you looking for ways to learn, upskill and grow in your current role, even when working from home? Despite the challenges of remote work, there are a few simple ways to make the most of your opportunities:
First, determine the following…
Ask yourself what skills, behaviours and actions do I need and want to develop to be more productive in my role.
What do I want to learn for future responsibilities and opportunities?
What are my strengths and gaps?
Insert yourself into a different team ( virtually)
Despite working from home, there are still ways to be social and active within teams even with the distance. Create opportunities where you can talk to team leaders outside of your department to find out if they would be happy to have you dial in and learn how their team functions and produces work.
Add value
When working on a team project, take the initiative and go one step further by going above what you’re generally required to do, this may mean doing extra research, collecting data or leading team briefings.
Create social events to get to know people
Plan online staff events and group activities. Look for tasks to broaden your knowledge of the business, or industry and to make you excited about work. Use these events to show the people you work with that you’re learning and willing to go the extra mile, even when working from home.
Look into reshaping your role.
If you feel there are holes or missed opportunities in your current role, plan out your ideas, keep track of what you’re currently doing day-to-day and quantify your thoughts and take them to management. Propose modifying the limits of your role by taking on more or fewer responsibilities or by changing how you perform them.
Continue to communicate openly with your team leader
Be transparent about the skills you want to learn or improve in order to grow in your current role. Pitch several suggestions about the tasks that interest you and ask them for their input. Work together to analyse which responsibilities have the most promise, are mutually beneficial, are less disruptive to others and develop a plan from there.
