Overcoming the Challenges of Life as a Remote Statistical Programmer

Maximize Your Work/Life Balance Potential When Working from Home

Working remotely as a statistical programmer offers some fantastic benefits. You can take advantage of greater freedom and flexibility. You don’t have a long commute to work. You can work anywhere, and improve your work/life balance.

However, working remotely also has its challenges. For example, you may feel apart from your team, find it difficult to conduct research, or be anxious about your technology and equipment. Reducing and eliminating these challenges will help you to benefit from the many advantages or working from home.

Here is what members of our network told us about their daily challenges and the tactics they use to overcome them.

Eliminate Anxiety with Technology

When you awake in the morning and know that your work relies on your technology connecting and staying connected, it can cause you to be anxious.

The best way to overcome this is to be prepared for technology issues. The two most common malfunctions are disconnection from the internet and stability of AWS. You may also find that response times to pagination, app initiation and pointer are slow or delayed.

These tech issues are often caused by unstable connections or slow internet speed. In fact, according to the IDC Enterprise Networking Survey ‘Emergence of the New Normal’ December 2020, 37% of enterprises say unreliable Wi-Fi is one of the remote worker’s top three challenges.

Put your ISP’s customer service desk on speed dial, and build a relationship with a support contact who works for SimulStat. This will help to resolve most issues faster and more effectively.

Reach Out for Research and Reference Articles

One of the difficulties associated with your type of work is the volume and accuracy of research and reference articles that you must source. The time it takes to do so can severely damage your productivity.

This is where a more collaborative approach pays huge dividends. It’s always possible to reach out and get a helping hand with data and research sources. Another strategy is to ensure that you maintain a reference article resource, detailing all the reference articles you have used and their validity. Keeping these in a datafile helps you to retrieve them more easily when needed.

Finally, improve your knowledge of and expertise with PC SAS. It’s an incredible resource to mine, alter, manage, and retrieve data from a variety of sources and then perform statistical analysis on it.

Focus on Staying Focused

For many statistical programmers who work remotely, remaining focused is their biggest challenge. It’s not surprising. There are many distractions at home to manage. These include friends, family, children, chores, and ‘tech distractions’ such as TV and phones.

The best tactics to manage these distractions and stay focused include:

  • Working in a dedicated space or home office
  • Making sure that others in the house know that you are working and not to be disturbed
  • Turning of all unnecessary tech
  • Working to a set schedule and making time for chores outside of this schedule
  • Taking breaks and playing background music

Communicate Effectively

Another challenge for remote and dispersed workers is fast and effective communication. Information you need is not always available immediately, and this can slow you down.

It can feel that you are left out of the loop – there are no ‘water cooler’ conversations with your colleagues, and your boss is no longer only a few steps away from your desk.

Here are a few tips to overcome this challenge:

  • Arrange a ‘social’ meeting with a colleague each day. 15 minutes to enjoy a virtual coffee together and update each other on what is happening.
  • Arrange a one-to-one with your boss at least weekly, with topics to include latest developments, progress of work, and your individual work.
  • Make sure you tap into the team communication channel regularly throughout the day.
  • Share your emergency contact number with your team.
  • Plan your work ahead of time, including the resources you will need to complete each diarized task.

Are You Ready to Reap the Benefits of Remote Work?

We are continuously searching for talented statistical programmers for remote work roles. If you are:

  • quality-focused;
  • responsive and efficient;
  • dedicated to customer service;
  • detail-oriented, with a curious approach to work; and
  • dedicated to efficiency and providing exceptional services,

we will do all in our power to help you benefit from the maximum work/life balance possible when working from home.

To discuss how you fit into the SimulStat team, and to learn more about our services, clients, rates of pay, and benefits that we offer to our people, contact SimulStat today. We’re here to help you find the perfect career solution that matches your passion, skills, and qualifications.