It’s unlikely that the world of work has ever changed so profoundly across the course of a calendar year as it has in 2020. This year, businesses have gone from working in offices to working from home. They’ve gone from using legacy technology, based on office servers, to using cutting-edge technology and apps, based in the cloud.
They’ve moved everything online, and they’ve learned how to manage workers that they cannot see. All of this change has taken some getting used to – the following skills will help you work even harder and smarter in 2021:
Communication
Business skills have always revolved around effective communication. While it’s less important in today’s world to be charismatic in person, as you’ll be meeting fewer people in person across your weeks and months of work, you now need to be better at a range of skills. You need to know how to talk on a conference call, a messaging app, and a co-working platform. Your phone and email manner need to be superb.
Plus, you need to get used to managing a huge amount of communication per day, the kind of communication that you weren’t used to when you were working in an office. From your managers checking up on you in the morning, to your colleagues asking you for tiny tips and favors, learning how to manage the volume of communication you’ll receive next year will be a key skill to onboard.
Cloud Skills
Most of us think that we know and understand the cloud. We’re aware that it’s where our files are stored, allowing us to access them at any time in any place. We might even know a bit about the security that keeps our cloud files safe and what we can do to enhance that security. But only a handful of people can claim to be experts in the cloud.
If you’re interested in getting to know the most important technology of the coronavirus era even better, it’s worth taking a course that’ll leave you with cloud certification. This will help you make sense of the digital infrastructure your firm uses – useful for IT professionals and laymen alike.
Time Management
The temptation, when you work from home, is to take plenty of time to relax. If you’re able to complete the right amount of work in a shorter time frame than you would in the workplace, then you’ll be able to spend more time with your family, or more time relaxing in front of the TV or on your favorite games console.
The same can be said of the time you need to be working non-stop. Those peak times, when work is fast and furious, require good time management skills too. And these skills cannot necessarily be taught – you need to concentrate on learning from your mistakes in order to make your approach a little better each time you find yourself running up against a tough deadline at work.
There you have it: the absolutely key skills that you’re going to need to polish up as this year draws to a close and 2021 approaches.
Interesting related article: “What is Training?“