Don't Let Working From Home Stall Your Career

Don't Let a WFH Schedule Stall Your Career

I had a conversation with a colleague this week about whether hybrid or 100% work-from-home scheduling cuts against an individual's ability to advance in their career. Without getting into the merits of whether it SHOULD be a disadvantage or not, for many, it CAN and often DOES become a marked disadvantage. The good news is it doesn’t have to be if you are willing to make the necessary adjustment to your communication strategy. Here are a couple of ways to address the two main areas where “out of sight out of mind” can impact your career.

Lack of Exposure to Situational Opportunities

If you do not work in close physical proximity to key decision-makers when unplanned opportunities pop up that need quick decisions, your name may never seem to surface.

Explanation: When someone has to back out of a major conference or event, individuals around the office are typically tapped first to substitute in. The primary reason is the understood likelihood that someone who already commutes into the office regularly will not be as inconvenienced by a last-minute invite as someone who does not have standing arrangements to be away from home and may have childcare, pet care, travel, and other arrangements to situate before they can say yes.

Overcoming this hurdle: Make sure that you are vocal with your leadership and your team about your willingness and desire to participate in in-person opportunities despite your work-from-home schedule. Proactively mention conferences and events that you know are coming up and you would like to attend. Do not wait?for your leadership to identify opportunities for you. This approach takes the guesswork out of whether it is ok to ask you to participate in something that departs from your typical schedule and demonstrates your interest in continued education and exposure. Understand that sometimes you will have plenty of lead time for these opportunities and other times you may not. Remain gracious when you have to decline.

What’s the point? Conferences and events translate into incredible networking and industry exposure for a rising careerist. Indicating a desire to participate in and attend such events is critical to maintaining career momentum when you do not work in the office. Introvert or extrovert, you still need to know people and learn from others in your industry. I have formed some lifelong professional connections and friendships from attending otherwise dry professional conferences. You should go.?

Gaining Traction in Opportunities for Advancement

You may feel ready to move up into management. If you are thinking of applying for a managerial role in the next 6 to 12 months but you don’t have much people leadership experience on your resume, it may become difficult to compete for those opportunities

Explanation: Individual contributors are often amazing at their job, but not considered for management because they don’t have a reviewable track record of managing people. The old path to making this first career jump was forging informal relationships through lunches, stopping by offices for chats, displaying managerial acumen in meetings, and other non-verbal cues that imply emotional intelligence and readiness. The new work-from-home models don’t allow individual contributors nearly as much of these traditional chances to get in front of key stakeholders that are not on your immediate team. If being an individual contributor is your ultimate happy place, then this new way of working is a blissful reality. But if you want to leap into management, whether you consider yourself an introvert or extrovert, you will need to create opportunities to showcase the interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence that make you particularly suitable for management.

Overcoming this hurdle: The most direct route to addressing this hurdle is to step into volunteer leadership roles that put you in front of your desired audience. This can and should be done in a 100% authentic way to avoid burnout and regret. Do you have a cause or passion that you’d like to see your organization embrace? Apply for leadership in the Employee Resource Group that aligns with those desires. This will provide an opportunity for you to work cross-organizationally with various lines of business and leaders. ERGs are not the only way to showcase your ability to design and deliver initiatives and collaborative outcomes. Consider taking on stretch assignments that may be beyond your job duties, but will have an organizational impact. These assignments can be as micro as helping a single department rethink an inefficient process, or as macro as serving on a feedback/focus group committee to test a new product or software the organization is considering rolling out.

What's the point? These volunteer roles are typically unpaid and beyond the four corners of your job description. But, they allow you to flex your communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills in a way that you may not otherwise have the opportunity to do. Describing these volunteer efforts and their outcomes in your application or interview for management opportunities is the type of experience hiring panels are looking for.

Jai Collier, JD, SPHR is an executive DEI strategist committed to providing inclusive solutions to people operation challenges.?