What are the Key Strengths a Lone Worker Needs to be Successful?
Since March, masses of workers and employees found themselves in unique employment circumstances. Because of a virus you may have heard about, many offices and workspaces are no longer safe with a significant number of you finding yourselves working alone to satisfy the now-normal social distancing and quarantine guidelines. Even before the quarantine, the International Data Corporation estimated that by 2015 there would be more than 1 billion remote and lone workers across the globe. And more recently, analyst firm Berg Insight predicted that in the UK, the number of lone workers will grow from 645,000 users in 2019 to 1.1 million users at the end of 2023. In North America, the number of such users is predicted to grow from 205,000 in 2019, to 380,000 at the end of 2023.
Yes, many lone worker plans and policies were developed to make the major transition as efficient and safe as possible, but it was never really considered that certain lone worker strengths and personalities are need for the new norm of lone and remote working. While most of us can adapt to working by themselves and/or remotely, it takes a particular kind of person with special expertise to thrive in these new conditions. For example, an anxious person could find lone work difficult as there is less structure and more responsibility and unpredictability. If some of your team members are struggling with this new professional world, hopefully this article will provide you with some insight to help them out, increasing productivity and well-being as a result.
Self—discipline
You wouldn’t hope this wasn’t the case, but not having a manager or supervisor monitoring your work day could decrease productivity for some workers. This doesn’t make them lazy or undisciplined, but some of us need structure and discipline to complete tasks and projects. Without someone to keep you on track, self-discipline is an important quality for those working alone. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but some of us actually enjoy creating endless to-do lists or planning their work in calendars or online tools like Trello. While some of us are naturally this weird, others may have to learn and adapt to a self-disciplined work style. The key is to find that motivation that will help you achieve fundamentals like meeting your deadlines, keeping your workspace organized or juggling a number of tasks and projects at one time.
Focus
With increased self-discipline, working alone requires a higher level of focus as well. With so many distractions working alone, staying focused to complete quality work on time is a major issue for remote workers and people working alone. A focused routine is almost essential for a productive and happy lone worker. The great thing is that the flexibility of lone and remote working also allows for a different, personal routine for each worker, whatever suits them best – but in order to be successful, they must stay focused, loyally following that routine and adapting whenever necessary.
Safety hazard Assessment
Because you’re working alone, it is your responsibility to identify and report any potential hazard assessment and risks that are a threat to your safety and well-being. With the wide range of lone worker environments, the number of safety hazards can vary from site to site, so it is paramount that the lone worker documents the risks and works with their manager or boss to mitigate them. The first important step to protecting lone workers is safety hazard identification. SafetyLine has published a number of workplace hazard articles:
Independence
Collaboration within the team and working well with others always results in great work. But did you know that independent personality types can also perform well, wielding that focus we mentioned, and getting the job done without that workplace buzz in the background. These types of personalities make the best lone workers as they thrive in isolation but will reach out to their friends, coworkers and family through the various communication channels like Zoom or Gmail Chat. A common misconception of independence is that the person may also be anti-social or reclusive, unable to collaborate and work well with others. That is an extreme case and most of us can adapt to an independent work style and schedule for at least short periods and then collaborating or connecting with their co-workers as needed – you just need to find that balance.
Communication
With more and more teams working away from each other and usually in different locations, strong communication is needed these days more than ever. A big component of that is providing and empowering your lone workers with technology so they can easily communicate with co-workers, customers and/or clients when working remotely. This will not only continue operations but it will also increase the safety of your lone workers, growing the very important safety culture within your organization. But despite these high-tech options, the written word is still king with emailing, instant messaging and texting increasing to fill the communications gaps. So, to save time – and sometimes drama – solid writing skills are needed to communicate in a clear and concise manner, leaving little room for misinterpretation which can cause all sort of problems.
Time management
To complement the planning, self-discipline, and focus needed for productive and happy lone working, you also need good time management skills – especially because your workday has more flexibility and probably more distractions. As a lone worker, it is up to you to stay focused on your work and make sure it is done by the agreed-upon deadline. There are a number of great apps available, but you can also simply schedule alerts in your calendar to help manage your work time and keep you on track. If you find this difficult and are unable to focus for long periods of time, try to concentrate for 20 or 30-minute periods and then taking a small break or grabbing a snack. Everyone is different so you may need to try different routines to find the one that works best for you.
Resourcefulness
Working alone means that you don’t have access to the resources, people and tools that you would in a central workplace or office. The lone worker no longer has the IT person a few desks away when a technical problem comes up. They no longer have their colleagues around them should they pass out or fall, needing urgent medical help. It is the company’s responsibility to equip, prepare and protect their workers to best of their ability with tools like fall detection, but as many of us know too well, surprises happen which can both impact the operations as well as the safety of the lone team members. But only so much proactive preparation can be done and sometimes lone workers need to be resourceful to do their work and stay safe. Maybe it’s their computer crashing and they need to google possible solutions to get it back up and running. Or maybe the lone worker’s cell phone dies and they need to find a landline to contact their manager, confirming they are ok. In many cases, it is the lone workers’ responsibility to deal with issues on their own.
Adapt and expand your lone worker strengths
Overall, the skills needed in a lone worker may vary from job to job. But the expertise outline above is applicable to the success of almost any position and can be learned over time. If you’re not good with something like time management, that can be learned. If you have a hard time focusing, there are ways around that as well as people and technology that can help you. One of the best qualities of human beings is that they’re incredibly adaptive so never underestimate that.