I started working virtually providing part time admin support at Vitis Public Relations nearly three months ago and it has opened up a whole new world to me! Before that, I worked in an office for twelve years and thought, naively, that working from home meant taking home a couple of files and a pen and doing a bit of work sitting in front of the TV at night. That couldn’t have been further from the truth!
I am amazed at all the applications out there that makes working remotely completely viable and aside from the lack of colleagues around, it’s the same as working in the office.
I have learnt to use systems such as Dropbox - which enables me to access the same files as my colleagues without the need for emailing large files; Yuuguu – which enables me to share screens (so colleagues can show me how to do things!); Hootsuite – which allows me to schedule tweets on Twitter a few weeks in advance. I hadn’t even tweeted before I came across this product and now I can schedule tweets in advance and shorten the URL as well. I also use ‘freckle’ which is a timesheet system – it’s really easy to log time. We use skype to chat too which again was all new to me.
I am learning new things every week and it’s great. It has been a quite a steep learning curve but well worth it as I now know so much more and it’s valuable knowledge to have in today’s tech driven age. My working days are varied and interesting and of course the main benefit is being able to fit work around my current lifestyle requirements and restrictions i.e. two toddlers!
