12 Essential Skills for Working With a Flexible Schedule

Flexible jobs have a lot of advantages, but getting one is not easy (and for some professional fields, impossible at all). To have your dream job, you need to master some basic skills. That’s what this article will talk about.

Don’t you love your job? Maybe you like what you do or like the people you work with, but when you consider all aspects, you realize that your job is not what you need. Probably the reason you don’t like your job lies on the surface – the lack of a flexible schedule.

Working with a flexible schedule allows you to be freer in terms of schedule and location. You decide where and when you work.

12 Essential Skills for Working With a Flexible Schedule

A flexible schedule is an amazing opportunity. It’s the ability to spend mornings with your kids and work when your spouse is taking care of them. Flexible schedules help you strike a balance between the work you love and the personal life you love.

Self-organization skills

Having a flexible work schedule means managing yourself as you see fit. The boss does not peek out of his office every half hour to check, the manager does not remind you hourly that the deadline is approaching.

But with freedom comes responsibility. No one is controlling your every move, you need to do the management by yourself. Therefore, you need to develop the following personal qualities.

Communication

When you work away from the office or other hours or change projects frequently, you lose all the “unplanned” communication: the occasional chatter in the break room about a new project launch or rumors about your colleague’s wonderful vacation.

With a flexible schedule, you need to be able to build relationships with other employees. You know that if you get along with your team, the job becomes more than just a paycheck.

Know how to set boundaries

Be careful not to go too far. Sure, working online allows you to stay connected 24/7, but no one will want to answer you even an interesting question if a notification woke them up in the middle of the night.

Be mindful of your schedule, be mindful of your colleagues’ personalities. 

Independence

Finally, to realize the dream of a freelance job, you must be proactive and active. Because it doesn’t matter that you are in a different city or in a different time zone, your boss and your colleagues need to be confident that they can rely on you in times of need.

You need to be able to do your job and take responsibility for results.

Also Read: How To Improve IT Support Efficiency In The Workplace?

Organizational skills

When you work independently, you need to make sure you’re in control. It’s all for the same reason: You don’t have a secretary or manager to remind you to get rid of the paperwork chaos and get on with your current tasks. Make sure you have the organizational tools you need.

A task manager or task list app

Fixing all your tasks and making sure they are ready for deadlines is key to becoming a successful employee. Your company can offer its tools to solve this problem, but you need to make sure they are right for you.

Prepare yourself and, before you get the job, try a few task managers at work. You’ll learn the basics of working with them and eliminate the need to keep all the information in your head.

Project management software

When you need to go beyond personal responsibility, you need a tool to help coordinate your team to tackle a voluminous task. Most project management software works on the same principle as task managers.

But specialized software has many more features that help keep everyone in the loop and coordinate the schedules of all workers in one place. 

Cloud storage

Every company stores information electronically, often directly in cloud storage.  To learn how to use them on your personal computer, so you won’t have problems on your first day on the job transferring files or making a spreadsheet to the cloud.

Communication skills

In any job, it’s important to be able to collaborate with other people. If it’s a job with a flexible schedule, your communication skills need to be doubly developed.

You can’t see your interlocutor’s gestures, facial expressions, or hear the tone of voice. To a certain extent, modern tools can replace this, so talk to your friends.

Email

Email doesn’t surprise anyone these days. But to work remotely, it’s not enough to know how to get rid of spam or send a funny gif (although sometimes a funny picture can come in handy when you need to make a colleague smile).

You need to be able to write clear and concise messages that help get your point across quickly and effectively.

Work Chat

Services that allow you to chat in group chats are like private messaging rooms in your company. You can send a quick message to anyone: the whole group or a specific person. Work chats help reduce confusion in email chains.

A chat room is a virtual place at the water cooler where everyone shows up at least once a day. It makes it easier to connect with colleagues – both business and informal.

Video communication

Another communication tool for companies with flexible schedules is video calls, video chats, or video conferencing.  The difference between regular conversations and work conversations is that in the latter, you have to do it professionally.

Clean up your surroundings, look presentable, get rid of visual noise in the background, and focus on the task at hand.

Technical Skills

The last group of skills on our list, but not the last in importance. You do not need to be a programming guru to master these skills.

But everyone, without exception, needs to know the basics of the web and tools for working with web content: with this knowledge, your position on the list of employers will rise significantly.

Have you ever seen a manager, a banker, a programmer, or a designer who doesn’t work with computer programs? No, a designer needs to develop a new idea, and how do banks verify income for an auto loan?

The best way to improve your technical literacy is to learn the three fundamental skills suggested.

HTML

HTML, aka Hypertext Markup Language, sets the structure of web pages, websites, and even emails. So if you know what the div tag is used for or how to put a non-breaking space, you can control the presentation of content. 

CSS

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is a great add-on for HTML. With CSS, you can make your HTML document look impressive. 

CMS

With knowledge of HTML and CSS in your arsenal, you can surprise your employer with a good CMS – a content management system. A CMS allows companies and organizations to store all sorts of data – documents, photos, videos, and so on – that can later be published online. 

Also Read: The Technical Benefits of DevOps

Conclusion

Perhaps a job with a flexible schedule is what you need. But, in addition to professional knowledge, you need to have at least a minimum of skills that will help you not only get the job but also cope with your responsibilities in a quality way.

To learn and improve, and you are sure to get the job of your dreams.

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