Many US employees continue to shun their cubicles in favor of their home offices. A Pew Research Center survey found that 35% of workers who can do their jobs remotely do so all the time. Meanwhile, 34% of hybrid workers would prefer to go fully remote.
Ultimately, it’s clear that remote work is here to stay. However, industry expectations are changing as quickly as modern work environments. Remote workers still need to upskill to stay competitive, and audiobooks are a resource that can help.
Upskilling as a Remote Worker the Best Audiobooks for the Job
Benefits of audiobooks
Remote workers don’t always have access to the training and development opportunities traditional office employees do. Audiobooks address this by delivering detailed, expert-written information in a more engaging manner that mimics listening to an in-person upskilling session. You can also listen to them while multitasking in your off-time, such as when doing chores around the house, so you can keep learning despite busy work schedules.
Today’s audiobooks have even become more affordable via subscription. Take the digital library on Everand, where new titles are added regularly to ensure continuous learning. For a monthly fee roughly equivalent to the price of one book, you can access thousands of audiobooks and download them for offline listening. That means you can listen to titles like The Upskilling Imperative and Training & Development for Dummies with ease.
Finally, audiobooks offer the opportunity to exchange upskilling insights with fellow remote readers, similar to what one would do with colleagues in the physical workplace. Amazon’s book discovery service, Your Books, is connected to the Amazon Book Club, where you can interact with a global community of users with similar interests. Here, you can bounce ideas off others and find ways to apply the lessons you get from audiobooks to your arsenal as a remote worker.
Ultimately, audiobooks are perfect for remote workers who want to upskill. If you’re looking to get started, here are a few titles to add to your list:
The Upskilling Imperative: 5 Ways to Make Learning Core to the Way We Work
This title can help managers working from home build a team that fosters and sustains a culture of learning. Written by Shelley Osborne, Udemy’s vice president of learning, this audiobook contains useful tips that will help streamline feedback and build learning into daily workflows. By making learning an everyday practice, you and your team can stay resilient during times of great change.
12 Months of Work in 12 Weeks: How to Work Smarter and Explosively Grow Your Productivity
Coach Mark Dhamma shares his system for improved productivity in this audio course, focusing on refining your game plan rather than your execution. It features seven productivity hacks that can help trim the fat out of a workday, especially at home where distractions abound. Worklife reports that on average, employees only achieve four hours of productive work out of an eight-hour workday. The tips in this audiobook can help you overcome distractions to maximize skill improvement.
Teams That Work: The Seven Drivers of Team Effectiveness
It’s challenging to coordinate with a team you don’t see in person, and this audiobook details seven ways to improve collaboration. Featuring lessons gleaned from real-life experiences, Scott Tannenbaum and Eduardo Salas discuss evidence-based tips grounded in psychology research to help leaders, consultants, and team members alike sharpen skills together.
Your Goal Guide: A Roadmap for Setting, Planning and Achieving Your Goals
In our post “Essential Tips to Help You Navigate the New World of Remote Working,” we talked about the importance of setting goals so that you can stay on top of your tasks. To upskill efficiently, one needs to have an end goal in mind. By listening to this book, you can do so by trying the DEB Method crafted by comms specialist and project catalyst Debra Eckerling. This task-based system helps you ascertain your mission and figure out your next steps. Being guided by an objective is what helps both individuals and teams succeed.
Audiobooks are a great tool for upskilling remotely. Maintain your reading, or rather, your listening habit, and you can lay the foundation for skills-building that will take you far in your career, wherever you’re working.
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