2020 is quickly becoming the year for staying ahead of the curve, building on your own assets and ensuring you are always pushing for bigger and better things. When it comes to the skills needed for office work, in order get started on your epic year of self-development and skill building, first you need to know what the top 10 office work skills are for 2020 and how to get them for free.
For office work it goes without saying that Microsoft’s 365 suite and Google’s G-suite of software are important things to know. Word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations will always be a part of your office role but the skills that will make an even greater difference to your abilities and your admin career extend far beyond the usual office skills out into the realms of personal development and software specific wider reading.
Top 10 skills for 2020
1. Focus Mastery
Productivity, task management time slots and scheduling your most productive workflow is the hottest topic of 2020. Using and mastering your focus is by far one of the top skills needed for office work in 2020. As free to use productivity software packages like Asana and Trello continue to grow, develop and clamber over each other to be the best in productivity.
2. Cultural Intelligence and Diversity
As far as office work skills go, cultural intelligence and diversity seems like an unusual one to specify, especially in the open, accepting and diverse workplaces of 2020, but the thing to remember is that we have got here through the cultural intelligence of those who came before us, striving for change, implementing new initiatives and opening the doors for all who come after us. Be a force for good and expand your horizons by making cultural intelligence and diversity one of your must have office work skills for 2020.
3. Judgement and Complex Decision Making
Trusting your own judgement, knowing when something is not quite right and having the complex decision making skills to work out the most effective strategy to move forwards is a sign of experience, maturity, self assurance and confidence. Developing these skills and putting it to use every day will ensure you are building a powerful office work skill set that will be drawn upon for years to come.
4. Growth Mindset
Seeing the potential for development and expansion in your basic abilities is what sets the most promising individuals apart from the rest of the workforce. It is this mindset that creates a love for learning and a determination to draw on the information that is all around you every day. While having a positive growth mindset may appear to be more of a personality type at first, when you start to see the possibilities you see the potential in developing this exceptional point of view.
5. Storytelling
Being able to get the message across whether it be via email, telephone, reporting or blogging. Storytelling and the art of the written word spans across everything you do within your office role. People buy from people and those with an emotional attachment engage more so persuasive, informative, strategic, inspirational or analytic writing is all more effective if you can do it with a bit of storytelling flair.
6. Programming (Python, Django, React)
Fast becoming part of the mainstream school curriculum, programming and coding is soon going to be one of the must have skills needed for office work as the next generation of workers will be entering the workplace with the skill from the get-go.
7. Machine Learning (Analytical and Statistical models)
Automation, engineering and innovation is the driving force behind everything no matter what your industry so if you want to ensure your career is future proof, spending some personal development time researching and becoming familiar with machine learning will stand you in good stead not only in 2020 but beyond.
8. Content Management Systems (WordPress)
Updating, uploading, tweaking and developing an online presence is essential for every business and being that person in the office who has the ability and the knowledge to get things done when you have to move quickly is a powerful position to be in. The WordPress blog platform is free to use so you can spend time learning the ropes without spending a penny of your hard earned paycheck.
9. Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier Pro)
In today’s visual, online sphere knowing your way around creative software packages ensures that you can take your project to a whole new level. Adding slick graphics, unique images and mind blowing visuals to your reports, social profiles or websites becomes a breeze when you know how.
10. Accounting & CRM Software (Quickbooks, Sage, Zoho, Wave)
Understanding and knowing the basics behind bookkeeping and CRM software is a valuable asset. When you understand that the better the quality of the information going in, the better it is coming back out, you start to approach each and every task with attention to detail, thoroughness and foresight.
Now you know what office work skills are going to be important during 2020 and in the years to come, all that is left to do is find out where you can learn these skills for free. In the first post of the year we covered topics that included some of the productivity tools mentioned above as well as some training platforms that you can access for free and in your own time. Here you can read about Trends affecting office work in 2020. Online training platforms are the way forward with short but detailed training modules, workbooks and supporting downloads you can access the very best in skill training on your phone, tablet or on your laptop wherever you are.
Learning tools
1. Skill Share
An online learning platform with free and paid access options. Leaning towards the creative space you can learn anything from photoshop to coding, and illustration to a new language in no time.
The Skillshare search function is very intuitive so discovering something new will be easy and courses for many of the skills mentioned above are already there:
2. Udemy
With a slight tilt towards the more professional skills such as IT, software, business and entrepreneurship, Udemy is a great place to be if you want to brush up on your office work skills. With free and paid subscriptions available you will be able to find the perfect course for you.
This site provides 100% off vouchers for Udemy courses so before you pay for one, see if you can get free access to your course of choice here.
A great course mentioned above that has an available free voucher is:
3. YouTube
With over 3 billion searches per month YouTube is now the world’s second largest search engine behind Google. Make the most of everything YouTube has to offer and make it one of your first ports of call when you want to learn something new for free.
4. Adult Learning Grants
- FutureLearn (owned by The Open University) and Coursera both offer access to 100’s of free online courses each taking anything from one week to 12 weeks or more to complete.
- Alison – Free online courses, Alison has over 750 free online courses in a huge variety of topics from financial literacy to fitness and nutrition.
- English, Maths and I.T. functional skills – Access free English and Maths courses.
Wanting to develop your skills doesn’t come without a little bit of apprehension of finding the time, we all lead busy lives and adding skill development to your day around your day job and home life can seem like an impossible feat.
