Overview

It stands to reason that anyone working from home must have all the skills that they would need if they were doing the same job from an office. However there are certain skills that become particularly important to the remote worker:

• Time management

• Self-organization

• Self-motivation

• Communication skills

• Problem solving and decision making

This chapter looks at these skills in the light of remote working. We make no apology for including a long section on time management since this was the prime skill identified by the remote workers we interviewed.

Janet, a remote worker with a company specializing in research for the oil industry told us: 'After many years working in a well run office, I became a remote worker two years ago. Bearing in mind that most of the work I do is desk- and Web-based I thought it would be easy to transfer my job to my home workplace without much alteration. I was really surprised to find how many support tasks I had taken for granted in the office. ...