57 Tips To Accelerate Your Career Growth While Working Remotely

The covid-19 pandemic showed us that hybrid working, or more precisely, working remotely, is the future, and several workers across the globe will get immense benefits from the same due to its terrific advantages. However, remote work comes with its own set of negative consequences, especially when it comes to the career advancement of remote workers. Your career progress shouldn’t stop even when you’re not in the office.

Thankfully numerous companies are seeking to ensure that remote employees get access to growth opportunities irrespective of where they work. A popular saying is there “If you are not growing, you are dying.” Though the statement is a little dramatic, there is truth to the saying.

Without consistent career advancement and personal growth, one can end up feeling stagnant in their life. What several professionals having worked from home suffer from is they are still in a dilemma as to where to begin their career growth. But, here in this article, we will discuss 57 tips for accelerating your career growth while working remotely. Following this article will surely help the blooming professionals to know more about career advancement strategies and thus strive forward in their careers.

What is career growth?

Before delving more into the topic of improving career growth possibilities while you work from home, let us have a look at what career growth is. Career growth refers to the proactive transition towards a promotion or big-picture career vision.

Explaining it in a more explicit way, it refers to a career ladder where someone moves from their current company job out of college to a better job and eventually becomes the team leader or leader and thereby climbing the steps of success in professional life. Career growth is a long-term process of moving towards the ultimate professional goal, irrespective of the fact whether you want to hold a good position in the company you are working for or want to open your own company.

What is career development?

Career development refers to the process of exploration, self-knowledge, and decision-making, which shapes an individual’s career. Career development requires successful navigation of the occupational options to choose from as well as training for the jobs which effectively suit the interest, skills, and personality of the individual.

Career development helps an individual to efficiently identify their own strengths, and blind spots, and thus, after identifying them, one can work to strengthen them and thereby work hard to improve their skills. Through this, one can seek out opportunities to advance altogether if they get a more suitable job position or offer.

Career Growth vs Career Development

Now before I delve deeper into discussing career growth, let’s understand the difference between career growth and career development.

On one side, career growth refers to the long-term prospects or transition in a career, whereas career development refers to the activities for career progression in a short period of time. Moreover, career development is how a company helps to develop the capacity of its employees, such as through talent management programs in the human resource department.

Focus on Your Career Growth While Working Remotely: Key Advice

Now above, we have discussed what career growth is. Moreover, often as we use the terms career development and growth interchangeably and confuse between both them, so we have discussed above what career development is and how it is different from career growth. Now let us look into ways in which career growth can be achieved when working remotely. Below are 57 tips for improving growth in a career while working remotely:

1. Set SMART Goals

The first and major step to advancing your career is to set SMART goals. Goals are a major part of our life, which provides us with a concrete sense of direction. By setting SMART goals, you are providing yourself with a particular target to aim for that will help you guide you through your way forward.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. A smart goal incorporates all the essential criteria that help you channel your efforts and focus toward a particular direction, thereby helping in your career development.

2. Take Initiative

One of the full-proof ways to advance your career while working remotely is by taking the initiative. Taking initiative at your workplace will help you put forth your value before your colleagues and managers. In other words, being proactive at your workplace is key to your promotion. Taking the initiative implies finding ways to showcase your knowledge and skills and uncovering the value you bring to your business or organization.

3. Build A Strong Personal And Professional Network

In a world of increasing complexity, it is extremely important to build a strong professional and personal network. You might have the skills, knowledge, and talent, but without a strong network, it will become difficult to reach your goal.

There are many people who face trouble in networking because they either might be an introvert or worry that they are asking for too much from a person. There are several ways to strengthen your networking skills, such as focusing on the right people, becoming a mediator, using social network sites, and becoming a go-to person for solutions.

4. Effectively Manage, And Lead Teams

When it comes to advancing your career, effectively managing and leading teams is one of the important pieces of advice that cannot be overlooked. To enhance your career growth opportunities, bringing forward your leadership skills is of utmost importance. A strong leader is someone who possesses the qualities and skills to effectively and positively interact with their team to achieve their shared goals. Strong leadership qualities are an essential and fundamental quality desired by all organizations.

5. Attend Meetings Regularly

To advance your career while working remotely, it is extremely important to attend meetings regularly. Be it virtual meetings or one-on-one communications, your regular attendance in these meetings will help in fostering productivity that will actually boost your performance, aiding in your professional growth. Moreover, your regular attendance at the meetings will offer you more insight regarding the nature of the work, thus adding to your stock of knowledge.

6. Use Technology To Grow Your Career

For your career advancement, it is imperative to acquire new skills. And using technology is one such skill that you must take seriously. Using technology to advance your professional life is an essential criterion in this digital world. Technological enhancements help in offering new skills, knowledge, tools, etc., that aids in enhancing productivity.

7. Take Accountability And Responsibility

Taking accountability and responsibility for your work is important because persons who feel responsible for their actions are likely to perform better in the future. Feeling responsible for one’s actions offers a greater feeling of autonomy and control. Moreover, taking accountability and responsibility offers various other benefits, such as a higher level of trust, clear communication, clear priorities, and higher engagement.

8. Embrace Cross-Functional Collaboration

Achieving success in a project often requires contributions from various teams with different expertise, but following through on the progress of the project can become a challenging task while working across departments or teams. Interdepartmental or inter-team collaboration is known as cross-functional collaboration.

As mentioned excellent problem-solving requires contributions from people with knowledge in diverse areas. Though at first, many remote workers find collaborating hard without regular face-to-face interaction. It is essential that employees leverage technology to address this challenge.

9. Enhance Your Communication Skills

Enhancing your communication skill will help you take charge of your career progress. Communication is the key to all interactions, and hence it is important to enhance your communication skills. Good communication skills will help to deliver precise information that others can grasp easily. Proper communication skills will help you to tailor your thoughts and accordingly execute them while clearly passing your thoughts to others.

10. Practice Active Listening And Empathy

Active listening and empathy are major leadership roles that will aid in your professional advancement. Empathetic and active listening is the practice of being attentive and responsive to others’ input during a conversation. This skill helps in fostering a culture of respect that will help in your overall progress in your professional career.

11. Build Your Reputation

Your reputation is what you are known for. And hence it is crucial to building a reputation that will broaden your chance of career development. Your reputation will have a direct bearing on your career prospects, and therefore it is essential to build a positive reputation.

12. Manage Your Time Effectively

Time management is the process of exercising and planning conscious control of various activities. Time management helps in increasing your efficiency and striking a well-balanced work life. Managing your time effectively will help you to achieve your desired goals with more effective and concrete strategies. Delivering work on time, providing better quality work, increased efficiency, decreased procrastination, and less anxiety and stress are the many benefits offered by effective time management.

13. Volunteer For Projects Outside Your Job Description

Taking the initiative for taking up projects outside your job description will open up a new opportunity for career growth. Being flexible in your job will not only add to your existing stock of knowledge but will also help you grow in your profession and career. For career advancement, it is essential to come out of your comfort zone and take up projects outside your description.

14. Take On Leadership Roles

Leadership roles go a long way in ensuring that you develop critical skills, be it team building or time management. Leadership roles enable you to take on challenges bravely and strategically work upon them. Moreover, through this, you can also get rid of any fear of apprehension, if any.

15. Embrace change

As a remote or hybrid worker, you should always be open to embracing changes effectively. Embracing changes helps to open oneself to new opportunities that you may not have even considered before. This can always lead to an exciting new possibility that you might not have experienced before.

16. Have a separate workspace

A separate workspace particularly while working from home helps you to maintain focus at work without getting distracted. Having a separate workspace from the rest of your house enables you to get detached from home life both mentally and physically and makes you productive. A separate workstation also fosters a division between your personal and professional life which in turn contributes to a healthier work-life balance.

17. Know your strength

Another way in which you can have growth in your career is by knowing your strengths. Through this, you can be self-aware and also take control of your career. If you get to know about your strength and how you can improve them, you can effectively accelerate your career progress by analyzing and finding the work that you enjoy the most and honing your skills in the relevant sphere.

18. Attend professional development events

Attending professional development events helps you to progress in your career. The professional development training enables you to develop and gain more skills and expertise in your field and also get new ideas to improve your job. Moreover, it can also turn into a moment of inspiration for you as you can meet some industry experts and take motivation and inspiration from them. Similarly, in these events, you can also get a chance to meet with new people where you can exchange your views and ideas with them and thus have a broader outlook.

19. Be a lifelong learner

Being a lifelong learner enables you to hone your skill sets more, and thereby you can become an asset to your company even being a remote worker. Lifelong learning is essential for the employability and competitiveness of an individual and also increases personal development and social inclusion capacity too.

20. Seek out mentorship

A mentor can effectively guide you by providing you with personal as well as professional advice. Not only this, but also a mentor can listen to your problems, trust you, and respond to your concerns and thereby exposing you to whole new possibilities. Often the mentor can provide you with certain insights which can prove to be beneficial for you from the viewpoint of professional advancement.

21. Maintain strong relationships with stakeholders

Maintaining strong relationships with stakeholders also enables your career progress. Communication with the stakeholders is essential for moving forward in their careers, especially for remote workers. Try to establish and have an open line of communication with the stakeholders. In this way, you will be able to get the stakeholders onboard easily even in critical projects making you shine on your negotiation skills.

22. Be punctual and reliable

One thing which every employer dislikes is an employee who is unreliable and not punctual. Even when you’re working remotely, being reliable and punctual matters most to the company or organization in which you are working. Punctuality and reliability uphold productivity. When your manager can count upon you as punctual and reliable, they can trust you more than the other people working in the same organization. Your manager will entrust you with numerous critical tasks which will give you an edge over others and will make a positive impact on your growth.

23. Develop strong negotiation skills

You need to learn how to get what you want in your career. Negotiation skills play a crucial role here. Having good communication skills, decision-making abilities, persuasion knowledge, and conflict-management experience help with negotiation.

Negotiation comes from being able to present convincingly and confidently. Developing strong negotiation skills can help you to have positive growth in your career and boost your rapport.

24. Develop public speaking and presentation skills

Developing public speaking as well as presentation skills boosts your everyday business communication skills. Knowing how to speak with clarity and concisely, you will always be able to bring your team members and key stakeholders on board easily. Speaking confidently with expertise enhances your authority and helps you build your reputation and reliability even when you are in a remote career.

Individuals who don’t work in-office every day must develop excellent communication and interpersonal skills. When attending virtual meetings, turn on your camera, use laser pointers while presenting, and schedule virtual meetings and brainstorming sessions with your remote team.

25. Develop Effective Decision-Making Skills

If you wish to climb up the ladder of success, you’ll need to have effective decision-making skills. While working in an organization, there will be times when you will face various dilemmas. And in such situations, it is crucial to develop effective decision-making skills that will allow you to take prompt actions. You must also ensure that all your decisions are made on a logical and rational basis.

26. Effectively Manage And Resolve Conflicts

Working in an office requires dealing with various kinds of people and situations on a daily basis. Effectively managing and resolving conflicts must be one of the essential skills that you must possess. This will also help you in your promotion, as it will make the employers and stakeholders believe that you will be a valuable asset to the organization.

27. Develop A Strong Understanding Of Project Management Principles

The development and growth of your career depend much upon developing a strong understanding of project management principles. An understanding of the project management principles will allow you to meet all deadlines and ensure that none of your targets is left out. Some essential project management principles include having a clear project structure, setting clear goals, creating a communication plan, allocating project resources efficiently, measuring project progress, and many more.

28. Build Your Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and regulate one’s emotions while taking into consideration the emotions of those around you. Building your emotional intelligence will help you effectively defuse conflicts, reduce team stress, and improve job satisfaction. A higher emotional intelligence will bring you close to your coworkers and upgrade your professional life.

29. Build Your Critical Thinking Skills

One of the important skill sets that are essential for a successful career is critical thinking ability. A well-developed set of critical thinking will help you build your self-confidence. Critical thinking offers a sense of introspection that will enable you to quickly process information, analyze data and gather knowledge.

30. Develop Problem-Solving Skills

Regardless of the nature of your profession, there are certain essential skills that are required by all organizations. And problem-solving skill is one such skill set that you must possess. Employees with problem-solving skills are considered to be valuable assets by all organizations. With the growing complexity of the world, the need to find solutions to complex problems has also become vital. And therefore, it is of utmost importance to hone your problem-solving skills.

31. Act Professionally

If you are really interested in moving forward with your career goals, then it is imperative to act professionally. Having a professional attitude or behavior establishes a positive first impression, which leads to successful interpersonal relationships. Behaving professionally in your workplace will increase your chances of getting included in the next big project.

32. Embrace Feedback

To progress in your career, you must identify all your strengths and weakness. Embracing feedback will allow you to identify your weak areas and work towards improvement. You must never be afraid to ask your manager to give you regular feedback regarding your work. And not to mention knowing your strengths and the value you add helps you to get promoted even while working fully remote in your home office.

33. Embrace Diversity

When you’re working remotely, you must make it a point to embrace diversity. Include workers from different teams, backgrounds, and expertise in your team so that the group gets creative ideas and solutions from various perspectives. This will ensure a rapid execution of projects and overall growth of the team.

34. Give Back To The Community

For most employers, the local community acts as a major source of revenue and employees. And therefore, one must look forward to ways to give back to the community as a token of appreciation. Moreover, giving back to the community also gives an individual a sense of purpose, bringing them close to the real world.

35. Learn From Failures

Failures are a part and parcel of our everyday life. However, not learning from failures acts as a significant drawback in the path to career progress. Learning from failures fosters creativity, re-evaluating your process, and understanding your value, which will enable you to reach career milestones.

36. Celebrate Wins

Celebrating wins is an essential factor that must remain at the top of your mind if you are looking forward to broadening your scope of success. Celebrating your wins is an excellent way to boost your happy hormones. This process helps to reinforce the learned lessons, boost confidence and strengthen your morale.

37. Set Boundaries And Know When To Say ‘No’

Boundaries are essential both in personal life and the professional world. Setting boundaries will help you address tricky situations without impacting your professional relationships with your employer and co-workers. Moreover, you must also have a clear-cut idea of when to say no, which will help you maintain your integrity in your workplace.

38. Build A Support System

Be it personal growth or professional, progress cannot be accomplished by a lone individual. Working in isolation can make you aloof, which might take a toll on your professional growth. Therefore always look forward to building a support system that will help you enhance your productivity and increase your chances of accomplishment in work.

39. Find Purpose

Finding a purpose in your work and life truly helps you to have a fulfilling work day. Working aimlessly without any goals or purpose will never bear any fruit and may experience quick burnout. Therefore you must always strive to find a purpose in whatever actions you engage in your workplace.

40. Be Resourceful

Today’s world is evolving faster, so to keep up with this ever-changing world, you must be resourceful. Being resourceful will help you handle overall career, regular work and life challenge prudently. Moreover, it will lead to the generation of new ideas and inspire out-of-box thinking, which will let you achieve all that you desire.

41. Keep up to date with industry trends

For your overall progress in professional life, you need to keep yourself up to date with the latest industry trends. Participate in conversations that happen on the current progress and technological developments in your industry. Irrespective of whether you are in a remote or hybrid work environment or have an in-person work schedule, spend some time learning the new sorted skill and know-how in your industry. This will enable you to gain experience, as well as easily identify get growth opportunities and have a competitive edge over the others.

42. Get out of your comfort zone

Stepping out of your comfort zone also increases your chances of advancement in your life and career. It helps you to increase your creativity, enhance your self-confidence, and learn more about yourself. If you want growth in your career, then it’s high time you need to get out of your comfort zone and actively seek opportunities like leadership and advanced technological know-how. This will boost your productivity and morale and enable you to relearn how to approach a routine or task.

43. Build a strong work ethic

One of the amazing ways to become a part of a valuable asset to the company is by building a strong work ethic. You can easily build a strong work ethic by consistently managing your time rationally and developing a reputation of integrity and professionalism. This will help you to stay in the positive limelight in front of the managers and stakeholders, and eventually, that will help you to progress in your career.

44. Build your personal brand

In order to have advancement in your career as a remote or even an in-person employee, you should always ask for feedback, build relationships, participate in after-work developments, become reliable, and build a personal brand. Doesn’t matter whether you work-from-home or go to the office every day never forget to seek opportunities, build meaningful relationships, and attend informative webinars.

Be known as a person who is proactive and in that way you will remain at the top of the minds of your managers or the chief executive officer. These are some of the effective ways in which you can build your personal brand and have immense growth in your career.

45. Be organized

Being organized also helps you to manage time working remotely effectively, have a work-life balance, accomplish your career goals, improve your focus significantly, and reduce the stress levels in your mind. The primary benefits of being organized and working in a clutter-free environment result in enhanced productivity and performance, and thus, you can have a greater sense of control, overall well-being, and resilience.

46. Take Risk

Without taking any risk, you cannot achieve anything in life, and this is equally relevant in professional advancement too. Taking steps in small and calculated risks can increase your confidence, courage, and also your overall-progress. Moreover, this shall also help in your long-term career success. If you do not take the risk, then you won’t be able to know what unique opportunities you could have.

47. Stay up-to-date with emerging environmental and social responsibility trends

For making positive progress in your current and future roles, you also need to stay up to date with emerging environmental and social responsibility trends. Now every company is looking forward to harnessing the human capital who have skills and expertise in the sphere of corporate social responsibility and also have knowledge of emerging environmental trends. Social impact work in the corporate sector is an emerging trend, and thus, keeping up to date with the latest news with regard to environmental conditions and joining various online courses can help you to grow in your career.

48. Learn how to manage your finances effectively

Effective financial management is crucial as this will secure future retirement, help plan expenses, and most importantly, remove money concerns from the top-of-mind. With a good financial plan, you won’t spend your income on irrelevant expenditures; rather, spend on what is necessary and save money for your future and make proper investments. Talking about investments, you must also make an investment in yourself which is vital to growing your career, through online learning and building subject matter expertise.

49. Keep your resume and portfolio updated

If you want to advance your career, you must keep your resume and portfolio updated. This will ensure that you are always aware of your skills and experience, and as soon as you get a good opportunity, you can submit your portfolio and resume without wasting any time be it within the organization or another remote organization.

50. Build a side hustle

Building a side hustle adds value to your career path and more importantly self-growth in today’s time. Turning your hobbies into a business lets you work on projects you truly care about. And not to mention the added financial stability and security a side hustle brings into your life. This will also provide you with more freedom and control over how much work you do and when you do it.

You can start with something small, like starting a blog,  within your current time and money restrictions, and later work proactively towards building your dream project. Having a side hustle not only provides you with the supplemental income flow but helps you with productivity and time management.

 51. Maintain a work-life balance to avoid burnout

Though this tip for career growth seems a little harder, as it is not always in your control. However, if you maintain a healthy work-life balance, then you do not have to make a choice between a great career and a good family life.

Maintaining an effective balance between work as well as fun and leisure will help to keep you motivated and also ensure that you will not get tired or exhausted easily. While working remotely, you should balance your time between your work and leisure so that you can become productive, spend time with your loved ones, and experience less stress.

52. Take a break

You ought to take certain breaks while working remotely. You should be sincere with your work but not at the cost of your mental health and well-being. Taking a break can help to refresh your mind and increase your productivity, and also boosts your well-being.

53. Write down your progress

At the end of the day, you may prefer to journal your progress. This will help you keep track of the things you have accomplished and regularly review the progress you have made. This is an effective way to analyze and check whether you are meeting your expectations and moving forward toward your goal of a successful career or not.

54. Take breaks from technology

Another essential tip to get successful with work and life is that you should take breaks from technology while not working. This will help you to balance your digital and real-world life. Soaking more into real-time rather the screen time will help to ease anxiety, increase happiness, and bring you new creative ideas.

55. Focus on mental health

As a remote worker, you might be facing numerous turmoil in your mental health, especially due to stress and anxiety arising from less face time and blurred opportunities for a remote worker. Mental health can have a significant impact on your overall career.

If you suffer from mental health problems while working remotely then you may become less productive and get out of sight of your managers and colleagues easily. However, you should try to have effective mental health by taking breaks, making plans, prioritizing self-care, and participating in virtual happy hour.

56. Practice mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness techniques enables you to learn how to reduce workplace burnout, absentmindedness, and anxiety. By practicing mindfulness techniques, you can also accept your present experience instead of ruminating about the past and the future, and thereby, this will help you increases of chances of having a successful career.

57. Take care of physical health

Last but not least, for having a long career run, you need to take care of your physical health as well along with your mental health. Good physical health contributes to your career success in all sorts of ways. Being physically active helps to enhance your brain health, manage weight, reduce the risk of diseases, and improve your ability to perform your everyday tasks.

Conclusion

Hence, above, we have discussed tips for improving career growth while working remotely. Irrespective of your geography of work, it remains essential for you to look out for various opportunities for remote employees at your organization, get rid of proximity bias and interact with your managers and stakeholders more, engage in various online courses, and take on leadership roles that can increase your chances of having a successful career.

You need to take charge of your career growth and development and look for opportunities that can help you to climb the ladders of success. If you are feeling stuck in your career, try working on turning your hobbies into a meaningful project. Follow the above-mentioned tips to see significant growth in your career, even if you are working remotely.