Updating your digital toolkit for your return to work

Are you worried that your digital skills may be out of date? Our guest blogger, Nikki Cochrane of Digital Mums, gives advice on updating your digital toolkit if you've had an extended career break.

Returning to work - whatever your situation - is a daunting process. Couple that with the dreaded imposter syndrome us women seem to feel more than our male counterparts and it’s a surprise any of us pluck up the courage to dust off our LinkedIn profile and put ourselves out there.

But as the well-used saying goes, knowledge is power, and in today’s ever-advancing world of digital, it’s confidence-building too. With government predictions showing that 90% of jobs will require some digital proficiency within 20 years but a quarter (23%) of adults still lacking basic digital skills, it’s time to take control of your career and bring your digital toolkit right up-to-date so you can dazzle prospective employers with your digital know-how and feel empowered in the 21st century workplace.

Here are Digital Mums' top 5 digital tools for surviving in today’s Brave New World: 

Slack 
"Do you remember when we used to send emails?"  Those are the words you’ll most likely be hearing in a few years' time. Email is dying in many workplaces and in its place are new communication tools like Slack, which operate like WhatsApp on steroids with the ability to set up public and private chat groups all under the same roof, share documents and link to your Trello board...
  
Trello

Post-its meets wallchart meets calendar. Finally there’s a collaborative tool that allows you to organise your weekly and daily tasks, tag in work colleagues, link to documents, colour code by priority (goodbye, highlighter pens), add notes and checklists to yours and other people’s boards and change priorities with a quick click and a swipe. It’s so effective at getting even the most disorganised organised that you’ll be using it to sort out your life admin in no time. 

TouchCast 

Forget standard video updates and past-it PowerPoints, TouchCast puts the fun into presenting. Best described in their own words: "TouchCast looks like TV and feels like the web". There’s a newsroom style backdrop for company updates or you can turn instant pro by using a green screen to transport you to any backdrop in the world. To aid engagement and bring to life presentations, you can share documents, web pages, and other media from within the video to get people interacting - the best way to learn. 

LinkedIn 

OK, so it’s not the newest of digital tools, but used correctly and it is your key to finding the job of your dreams. As well as making sure you’re picture perfect (your profile is 14x more likely to get views with a photo than without one), LinkedIn is all about attracting the right people and growing your network to achieve your career goals. As well as following companies you’d like to work for and engaging with people who can help you get there, share articles on your chosen subjects and spark conversations by adding your own spin on what you’re sharing to attract like-minded people. 

Google Suite 

Head in the cloud? That’s exactly where it should be in today’s working environment. Google’s free suite of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook equivalents are saved in the ‘cloud’ meaning you never need to worry about forgetting to press ‘save’ again.  It automatically saves as you go and let’s you share documents with other people to work on at the same time. You can even chat in the document while you’re working. Google Meet meanwhile, makes remote working less remote through group video calling where you can share screens to get as close as possible to an ‘IRL’ meet-up. 


Nikki Cochrane is co-founder of digital training academy, Digital Mums.

If you want to learn more about these tools and more, Digital Mums has launched a new 12 week course, the Digital Retox, which aims to empower women with digital confidence in the workplace. As well as updating your digital toolkit, you’ll learn how to develop your own personal online brand so you feel current, relevant and empowered to return to work. For more information and an Early Bird discount, click here.

Sharpening your Tech Skills

Sylvie Garvey, Founder of Computer Fitness and our Women Returners go-to tech expert, suggests a variety of ways to update your IT skills for your return to work. 

Making the decision to go back to work is a tough one. Deciding what role might suit you best, incorporating the logistics of family commitments, facing interviews and getting back into the mind-set of committing your time to something new can be very daunting.

Most of us have enough to think about without the worry of the whole IT side of things. The feeling that your technological skills might have become obsolete over your career break does not help with building your confidence. IT seems to change so frequently these days, as we see from constant updates to computers and smartphones, and the worry can be that it might be the same in the workplace.

Show up with the knowledge

Employers do expect you to get up to speed yourself with basic office management software before you start back to work. You should be able to demonstrate this during your interview if the topic comes up. If you are able to say that you have been on a refresher course for MS Office or the Apple Suite of products, both you and the potential employer will feel more confident about your return to work.

You can do this in many ways depending on how big you think the gap in your knowledge is and the skills you need to feel confident. You could attend a course at a local training centre which would cover broad aspects of office management software. If you're a self-directed learner, there are many online courses available (some free) which will guide you through software packages, for example Microsoft online training, alison.com  and Lynda.com. YouTube can be an excellent source of knowledge for brushing up on how do to specific tasks like consolidating Excel spreadsheets using pivot tables or inserting links into PowerPoint.  

If you prefer more personal, tailored training you can get a trainer to guide you to areas that are specific to the role that you hope to be going back to. You could also ask a student or friend to spend a few hours getting you up to speed on the changes. 

Get your home IT fit for purpose

Another aspect of IT and your return to work to consider is whether your job will allow you to work from home and if your home IT capabilities are up to scratch. You might be provided with a work laptop eventually but be prepared to access work remotely initially, especially if trying to put those extra hours in at the beginning. Trying to participate in video conference calls or working on documents from home maybe part of what is expected of you so make sure that your computer has a robust anti-virus, fast broadband, the capacity to access shared work folders and emails and the software to review and edit documents.

For technically specific jobs, find out if the employer can get you up to speed themselves and if they will provide a technical updating piece to your training.

New software and applications and tools emerge every month so don’t expect to know what each one does or how it works. Many are custom-built tools used only within the company. It would be impossible to keep up with all emerging products and as with all aspects of returning to work, be patient with yourself and be open to trying new tools and accept all training offered.

Sylvie Garvey is the Founder of Computer Fitness, an IT troubleshooting and training company specialising in small business and home office environments. She worked in Management Consultancy for 15 years before starting Computer Fitness. She can arrange group or one-to-one training on most office software and can advise on future-proofing your IT [sylvie@computerfitness.net]. 

Posted by Donna