Over the past 18 or so months I have tried to be very intentional about having more conversations with people who are either working or aspiring to work remotely. The reason behind this is that when I started this blog back in March 2024, one of the areas I was so passionate about shedding light on and providing value in is remote work.
Something I have noticed in many of these conversations is that a number of aspiring remote workers assume the transition from in-person to remote work is plug and play. The telling result of this is how they enter the remote opportunities space with the very same skillset (and probably mindset) that worked for them when they were looking for an in-person job.
Unfortunately, they quickly get frustrated because they realise something: They are invisible. Nobody is responding to their applications or their efforts to promote their services. In the end, they start to wonder whether remote work isn’t just a myth.
But unlike in-person roles, remote work demands a different set of skills in addition to what we have always known. The space is competitive for a start, so if you are going to get noticed, you are going to have to be creative in how you show up. And I’m not just talking about any skills in general today. I’m talking about digital skills.
Before we go further, let me be clear about what I actually mean by “digital skills,” because the phrase gets thrown around a lot and people imagine something far more intimidating than the reality. I’m not talking about coding, or design, or anything that needs extensive training and a certificate.
So what ARE these digital skills?
In the context of remote work, digital skills simply means your ability to use everyday digital tools to do your work, share it, and communicate with people you may never meet in person. That’s it. It’s knowing how to collaborate on a document, organise files so others can find them, show up properly on a video call, and keep communication flowing when you can’t just turn to the person next to you. Because these are the ordinary, practical things that hold a remote team together and the good news is they’re completely learnable.
You, like a lot of other people I have come across will probably be shocked by this: the most important ones aren’t complicated. They’re not expensive to acquire. And you almost certainly already have the door key in your pocket.
Your Google Account.
Yes! That account you use for Gmail, YouTube, the one tied to your smartphone (especially if you use an Android). Almost everyone with a phone or WhatsApp has one. What most people don’t realise is that single Google account gives you free access to an entire workspace that remote teams around the world use every single day.
Google Docs. Google Sheets. Google Drive. Google Meet. Calendar. And this is to name just a few.
Tools you ALREADY own and most likely aren’t using to even a fraction of their potential.
I want you to realise the digital skills that are tied to tools inside your Google account that can support your remote work journey starting today.
1. Working in the cloud, where your team can actually reach you
In an office, your work has a physical home. The file is on the central server or shared cabinet down the hall, or worse, it’s on your desktop and someone leans over to grab it. If you’re stuck, you turn your screen around. Proximity covers a lot of gaps.
Remote work strips all of that away. Nobody is walking over to your desk, because there is no desk. If your work lives on your laptop’s hard drive, as far as your team is concerned, it doesn’t exist. This is the shift most people miss: your value isn’t just the work you produce, it’s whether your work is findable and shareable the moment someone needs it.
That’s what a cloud document like Google Docs actually solves. Collaboration. Two or more people in different global locations editing the same paragraph on a document. Comments left overnight that you wake up to. A “suggesting” mode that lets your manager guide your work without rewriting it. In an office these things happen in conversation. Remotely, they tend to happen in the document. So the document is where you have to be fluent.
2. Organising shared space, so people aren’t waiting on you to find things
In a physical office, disorganisation is forgivable because it’s recoverable. Someone can shout across the room, “where’s the March report?” and you’ll dig it out of a drawer.
Remotely, that same question becomes a message that sits unanswered for three hours because of a time zone difference, and now an entire piece of work is stalled in Australia waiting on you to wake up in Zimbabwe. Multiply that across a week and you become the bottleneck everyone quietly feels.
This is why knowing your way around Google Drive is not admin busywork. Can you share a folder instead of attaching fifteen documents? Can you set permissions so the right people have access and the wrong ones don’t? Can you build a folder structure someone else can navigate without you in the room? The person who does this well becomes quietly indispensable and “indispensable” is exactly what you want to be when teams are deciding who to keep.
3. Basic spreadsheets, because data is how remote teams stay on the same page
Let me take the fear out of this one first: you do not need to be an analyst. You don’t need complicated formulas.
In an office, a lot of tracking happens out loud. Who’s doing what, where things stand, what’s left and it gets sorted in a quick stand-up or a hallway catch-up. Remote teams can’t rely on that. The shared sheet becomes the conversation. It’s the live, single source of truth that everyone checks instead of asking.
So the skill is simpler than people think: can you enter information cleanly in Google Sheets, use a basic formula or two, and, most importantly, share a sheet that updates in real time for everyone looking at it? When you can do that, you’re not just “good with spreadsheets.” You’re someone who can be trusted to hold information the whole team depends on.
4. Showing up well on video, because this is your handshake now
In person, you have a hundred small ways to make an impression. A firm handshake, your energy walking into a room, the side conversation before things start. You’ve spent your whole working life building those instincts.
Remote work deletes nearly all of them and replaces them with one rectangle on a screen. That’s it. That’s your presence now.
And it’s not just “being on camera.” Can you join a Google Meet on time, without the five-minute “can you hear me?” scramble? Can you share your screen smoothly? Can you mute when you’re not speaking so you’re not the person with the barking dog? Can you come across as present and engaged through a lens, which is genuinely harder than it sounds? These feel like small things. They are not. On a remote team, the video call IS the first impression, the meeting, and the relationship all at once. People decide whether you seem capable based on how you show up in that little box.
5. Managing time and communicating in writing, the skill that quietly separates everyone
This is the one almost nobody names, and it’s the one that matters most.
In an office, communication is constant and accidental. You overhear things. You ask a quick question in passing. Someone notices you look stuck and steps in. The building and the people in it tend to do a lot of the communicating for you.
Remotely, none of that happens by accident. If you don’t say it, then it wasn’t said. So you have to learn to manage your own calendar, especially across time zones, where “first thing tomorrow” and “by end of day” mean different things to different people. You have to learn to write clearly enough that someone can act on your message without needing a follow-up call to decode it.
This is the difference between the person who thrives remotely and the person who frustrates everyone around them. The ability to communicate so that people are never left waiting, guessing, or chasing, can trump talent and effort. It’s invisible when it’s done well, and painfully obvious when it isn’t.
Do you notice something about this list?
None of it requires money or permission or for you to wait. If you have a Gmail address, it means you have a Google account, and it means you have all of this.
You could open a blank Google Doc TODAY and start practising. You could organise some of your personal files in a Drive folder this afternoon. You see, the barrier was never access. The barrier was that nobody told you these were the skills that actually matter. They are actually considered bare minimum.
So I’m telling you now.
And, to be honest, this is the whole reason I decided to also start delivering digital skills training.
Because I realised that as a remote work coach I could help people figure out positioning, pitching, applying, mindset, and all the works, but at the end of the day, I kept running into the same thing where the person in front of me was capable. They were willing. They wanted it BADLY. And then we’d get to the actual doing of the work and… they didn’t know how to share a document. Or they’d never set up a folder. Or setting up a Calendar appointment was Greek. Or a live call on Google Meet or Zoom made them freeze.
And it hit me that I was sending people through a door without showing them how anything on the other side actually worked. So I started teaching the skills too.
So here’s my challenge to you, today, not someday:
Open one of these tools. Just one. Create a document, build a simple sheet, share a folder with someone. Set up a meeting with them in Calendar. Get familiar. Get curious.
Because the remote job market isn’t waiting. And the good news is that the very thing standing between you and being noticed is something you can start closing TODAY. For free. Right now.
What’s one digital tool you’ve been meaning to get comfortable with? Tell me in the comments.
P.S. If reading this stirred something in you or if you recognised yourself in the person who is capable and willing but just hasn’t been shown how the other side of the door works, well that’s exactly who I am building Ready2Remote for.
In the one-on-one coaching programme for aspiring remote professionals, we work through the mindset shift, audit the skills you already have, figure out how to position you so clients can actually see your value, and get practical about finding and securing that first remote role. And yes, the systems and tools side of things is part of it too, because by now you know I wasn’t going to leave that out.
If you’re ready to stop wanting remote work and start qualifying for it, click the button below and let’s get you started.