The global outsourcing market has been on the rise for the last decade. The market has had a sharp growth in the past few years owing to the boom of work-from-home culture induced by the pandemic. The online marketplaces are highly dynamic. There are thousands of niches that hire millions of offshore workers. However, as many people are looking for jobs in the online outsourcing platforms, many beginners are struggling to get hired. Here’s a list of 5 soft and hard skills that can help freelancers to earn money online.  5 Essential Skills to Find Jobs on Outsourcing Platforms Digital Marketing Skills  Digital marketing is essentially a sales job on an online platform. Skills like SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and paid advertising are in high demand on different gig platforms.  SEO and advertising require a good knowledge of content management and promotion strategies which are in high demand in today’s competitive market.  Read more: Top 10 Free Online Digital Marketing Courses Content Creation Skills  Another highly demanded skill for making money online is content creation skills. Content creation can range from writing to video production, graphics design, and photography. Among these, graphics design and video production are in high demand. Content creation requires high level of technical skills regardless of the niche. As a result, it generally pays a lot more than low-skilled high-volume gigs like web research and data entry online jobs.  Read more: YouTube Affiliate Marketing: Tips to build a successful channel E-Commerce Skills  E-commerce is the future of shopping. Globally e-commerce has paved the way for many businesses to tap into target audiences beyond geographical boundaries.  E-commerce skills like online store setup, inventory management, payment processing, and customer service skills are in high demand on online marketplaces. Besides these affiliate marketing and drop-shipping are promising niches to make stable online earnings. Nowadays, diverse local and international brands are offering commisons for selling products through affiliate links.  These specialized skills will not only help find jobs in the relevant niche but will also help if you plan to start your own e-commerce or drop shipping businesses.  Read more: Online Business: How to Get Started from Home? Analytics and Data Science  Data Science jobs are in high demand globally because of the offshore nature and high pay structure of the industry. Technical skills like data science certification, Google Analytics certification, A/B Testing, etc are in high demand for business and platform growth.  Many organizations employ data scientists on an offshore or contractual basis making it a lucrative skill to earn money from the comfort of your home.  Read more: How to Be a Data Analyst from CSE or Non-CSE Backgrounds?

The internet has transformed the ways of sharing information and knowledge in the digital age. Among the many platforms to share ideas and expertise, YouTube stands out as a platform with vast potential for creators and viewers. YouTube offers content creators the opportunity to make money through its Partner Program, where they can earn revenue from their videos based on views and engagement. One popular format for content creation on YouTube is the explainer video, which allows creators to share knowledge and monetize their content. In this article, we will delve into the world of YouTube explainer videos, the skills necessary to create them, and the earning potential for content creators. What is an Explainer Video?  An explainer video is a short, engaging, and informative piece of content that aims to explain a specific topic or concept to the audience in a clear and concise manner. These videos can cover a wide range of subjects, from educational tutorials and product demonstrations to explanations of complex ideas and processes. The primary goal of an explainer video is to simplify complicated information and present it in a way that is easy for viewers to comprehend and retain. Explainer videos often utilize a combination of visuals, animations, voiceover narration, and sometimes background music to convey the message effectively. The visuals help to reinforce the content, making it visually appealing and engaging. By breaking down complex ideas into bite-sized pieces, explainer videos have become a popular tool for teaching, marketing, and communication across various industries. Read more: How to Protect Your YouTube Channel from Getting Hacked What Skills are Necessary to Make an Explainer Video? Creating an effective explainer video requires a combination of technical expertise, creativity, and communication skills. Let's take a closer look at the essential skills necessary to produce compelling explainer videos: Scriptwriting A well-crafted script forms the foundation of any explainer video. The script should be concise, engaging, and tailored to the target audience. It should communicate the key points clearly and effectively while maintaining a consistent tone throughout the video. Storyboarding Before jumping into animation or recording, it's crucial to create a storyboard that outlines the visual elements of the video. A storyboard serves as a roadmap, guiding the creator through each scene and ensuring a smooth flow of information. Video Editing Proficiency in video editing software is essential for assembling the visual and audio components of the explainer video. Editors can enhance the video's quality, add animations, incorporate graphics, and synchronize the narration to create a polished final product. Readmore: Top 10 Free Video Editing Apps for iOS, Android Animation and Design Depending on the style of the explainer video, animation skills might be necessary. Animators can bring static elements to life, making the content more engaging and captivating. Design skills also come into play when creating visually appealing graphics and illustrations. Voiceover Narration A clear and pleasant voiceover is essential to convey the message effectively. Content creators can either narrate the video themselves or hire a professional voice actor with suitable vocal qualities for the target audience. Knowledge of Target Audience Understanding the target audience is crucial for tailoring the content to their needs and preferences. A successful explainer video must resonate with the intended viewers, addressing their pain points and providing valuable insights. SEO and YouTube Algorithm To maximize reach and potential earnings, creators should be familiar with search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Optimizing video titles, descriptions, tags, and thumbnails can significantly impact discoverability on YouTube's platform. Read more: Why is Local SEO Important for Small Businesses in Bangladesh? Engagement and Call-to-Action  Encouraging audience engagement through likes, comments, and shares is vital for YouTube's algorithm. Additionally, including a compelling call-to-action (CTA) can prompt viewers to subscribe, follow, or visit external websites.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a drastic shift in the way we work, with remote work becoming the new normal. As we transitioned into the post-COVID era, the home-office concept has emerged as an essential aspect of modern living. A home-office provides one a great opportunity to create a productive and inspiring workspace right within the comfort of one’s home. In this article, we will explore creative ways to design, decorate, and organize home offices to boost productivity. Creative Ways to Design, Decorate and Organize Your Home-Office Choosing the Right Location  The first step in setting up an effective home office is selecting the right location. One should opt for a well-lit area with minimal distractions. Considering natural light and ventilation is important to create a refreshing atmosphere that promotes focus. A quiet and dedicated space away from high-traffic areas in the home will help remain productive and undisturbed during work hours. Ergonomic Furniture and Setup  Investing in ergonomic furniture is advisable to ensure comfort and prevent strain during long hours of work. An adjustable chair and a desk at the right height will promote good posture and reduce discomfort.  Read more: How to Choose Paint Colors for Your Entire House Try to arrange your computer, keyboard, and mouse in a way that supports your wrists and neck. Prioritizing ergonomics in your home-office design will enhance your productivity and overall well-being. Personalize Your Space  You can make your home office truly yours by adding personal touches. You may display motivational quotes, artwork, or photographs that inspire you and reflect your personality. You can also opt for nature-inspired wallpaper with serene landscapes or botanical prints to create a calming and visually appealing backdrop.

What's cool about working from home? The home office helps you to designate a workspace and pick a schedule that suits you! However, being productive is always challenging, and the common culprit of demotivation is clutter. So it is essential to organise your home office. An organised home office helps reduce stress, increase productivity, leave you with more spare time, and frees your mind. Here are some effective tips and tricks to organise your home office.  12 ways to organise your home office If you're working from home and are struggling to get your work done, we've provided ten home office organising suggestions you should test: Designate work zone It is easy to get distracted while working from your home. Therefore, you should create a specific work zone to improve your efficiency. Choose a quiet area in your home where you can work for long hours. Making sure that you can close the door in that space. It will allow you to avoid the distractions that can significantly impact your focus and productivity. Read Top 10 Bathroom Plants to grow in humid environment of shower Let the natural light in Create your workspace in a location where enough natural light can enter. Light can increase your productivity and motivation. If you spend most of the day in the dark, it can make you bored and sick. According to research conducted by Harward, sunlight can reduce headaches and drowsiness to 63 percent and 56 percent. If you're energised and do not have headaches to contend with, you'll be more productive.  Keep a shelf and other organising tools Organise everything in your office. It is a waste of time, if you need to search your desk, or get up to reach your filing cabinet to find the supplies you frequently use. Although your workspace appears quite tidy initially, it will not remain the same for long. Each time you take out the item you require and put it back on the desk, you'll add more clutter.  Always keep your most valuable tools nearby. You can use a variety of tools for organising your office, such as: - A shelf or bookcase can be a great way to organise the space of your home-office. Install an item on a shelf in front of or next to your desk to keep your calendar, dictionary and other books that you regularly use.  - Set up a file holder on your desk to keep the files you need for ongoing tasks. - A mailbox is a place to organise your bills, assignments, letters, and other tasks on your list of things to do. - A rack to store files for the current projects. - A trash can, recycling container, and shredder. Read How to Live Minimalist Life: Benefits, Drawbacks of Minimalism Sweep your desk clean As you'll spend the most time at your desk, you need to get your desk organised! Begin with a clean blank slate. Remove everything from your desk except your printer, computer and phone.  If the desk you are looking at has accumulated a few years of dust, it's a good occasion to tidy your desk and sweep under it. Get a locked cabinet Purchasing a filing cabinet is a fantastic method to create space in your home-office. Purchasing a fireproof storage unit with a lock system ensures that your documents will not be stolen or damaged. A fireproof, locked container is vital for crucial documents such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, passports, and car titles. They can also be kept in the safe deposit box. To make the most of the storage space, you can get an office cabinet with four drawers.  Read Stretching Small Space: Tips to create more room within a small apartment Declutter and relocate items  The home offices often become messy because the owners aren't willing or make an effort to throw items away or relocate personal things. For instance, your baby’s photo may keep you happy, but it takes up valuable desk space. Remove everything not directly connected to the work you do from your desk.  Spend a few minutes to declutter the things you don't use. Here are some items you should throw away: -Pens that are no longer working -Broken or unused office equipment such as old computers, phones and scanners and printers (you can reuse many of these items) -Documents that are out of date and no longer required -Old magazines, newspapers, Internet print-outs: when you've finished reading them or have done with them, you should stop using them - Photos, greeting cards, awards, plants, coffee mugs, and souvenirs. However, you may still have some of these in your office but in a less remote location. Read Home Shifting Checklist: Important things to do while moving to new house Cable Clutter Do you stumble across the tangled mess of cables and wires whenever you walk into your home-office? The presence of too many cables beneath your feet can make you stumble. It can also pose a fire risk and create a workplace that is much more cluttered than it is. Here are some tips to minimise the number of cables in your home-office zone,  - Remove electronic devices that you do not use anymore or occasionally use.  - Utilise the most wireless devices possible -- such as your keyboard, mouse and printer.  - Get a USB hub that can connect multiple devices to your computer with only one USB cable. Move office equipment off your desk If your desk is covered with monitors, printers and computers, phones, modems, phones and computer storage, where will you work? It's not necessary to have these gadgets over your desk. They are taking up valuable space. Read Tips to Keep Home Cool in Summer Without AC Here are some suggestions to get rid of some technology from your workspace: -Place your desktop computer's CPU beneath the desk or on the floor.  -Huge monitor can take nearly half the size of your desk. You can replace it with a slick monitor. -Back up everything online. This online backup can save you if your hard drive fails or your laptop computer is stolen or damaged. However, it will allow you to remove the extra storage device off your desk. Digital calendar and to-do lists How do you track your appointments, meetings or other commitments? Do you use a notepad Day Timer that's brimming with notes? Have you migrated your calendar to digital, but you still use notepads to keep track of deadlines and important dates? Choose a system you're sure to keep. You can eliminate paper and save all your important reminders onto the back of your iPhone or other personal devices. The documents include deadlines, meetings, appointments, to-do lists and appointments. Connect your calendar on your device to your computer so that you're always aware of where you're supposed to be. Read Bug-free Home: How to get rid of insects indoors Organise Your PC The filing cabinets and desk aren't the only things in your office that require clearing. Computers can also benefit from a thorough cleaning. If you continue to load documents and programs on your hard drive, eventually, it'll become too cluttered that it's impossible to locate what you require or find yourself running out of space. Here are a few suggestions to organise your computer: -Set up your filing system. Make the folders in a manner that is logical to you.  -Throw away old documents.  -Back up your files to ensure you don't lose any needed data, and back up all of your important data via an external drive or internet storage services. -Sort your email. Your inbox for email can be similar to your desk when you don't have an organised plan. Create folders to organise your messages according to subject, sender, or dates.  Read How to manage wardrobes, closets to wear fresh smelling clothes everyday? Utilise vertical space Utilising vertical space gives you additional space to keep your home-office zone especially desk area tidy and organised. This system is particularly true when you have smaller desk space or no drawers at the desk. The space over your desk could be the ideal spot to put your essential things. The vertical or floating shelves can also give the space an impression of art. Invest in the comfort  Few people consider comfort when selecting tables, chairs, and work desks to use in their office at home. You can’t stay productive when you're suffering from neck or eye strain while working. A poor ergonomics system can affect your productivity over the long term. As you will spend most of your time working from your home office, be cautious about comfort. While organising your home-office, purchase comfortable furniture.  Bottom Line The pandemic has taught the whole world about the efficiency of the work-from-home trend. However, not all people can enjoy the facility of a remote office as their workspaces may not be very inspiring. A well-organised home office can make you more creative and productive. So far, we have discussed useful methods to organise your home office. Hope it helps! Read Choose the Right Curtains for Your Home: The Ultimate Guide

Telecom operator Grameenphone has joined the government's austerity moves to curb its energy consumption and carbon footprint. The Grameenphone headquarters will be non-operational every Thursday, and employees will work from home. Syed Tanvir Husain, chief human resources officer of Grameenphone, said: "The world is going through one of the grave energy crises in recent times. This unprecedented long period of high energy prices and the supply shortage is exerting tremendous pressure on all economies, resulting in consequences in our lives." Read: Grameenphone reports 5.2% revenue growth in 1st half "During these trying times, we have proactively adopted contingency ways of work to curb electricity consumption in solidarity with the government's prudent efforts to navigate the challenges." "Our latest operating model, integration of AI and RPA through modernisation, has enabled our employees to work from home, ensuring smooth operations for our customers," Tanvir added. The government has been taking several energy-conservation measures to mitigate the power crunch and urged people to cooperate and be economical in energy consumption as it is forced to carry out load shedding and limit electricity generation with fuel prices continuously increasing globally. 

Office timing may be rescheduled with the introduction of a provision to work from home for certain days in order to save electricity. Prime Minister’s Energy Advisor Dr Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury hinted this while briefing the media on outcomes of a high level meeting of the top officials of the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources and its subordinate bodies at the Prime Minister’s Office on Thursday.    “We’ll recommend to the government to reschedule the office timing from 9 am to 3 pm and also allow officials to work from home for two or three days a week”, he told reporters. Read: PM seeks people’s support to cut power subsidy amid hard times The Cabinet Division will take the final decision, he added, saying that the Education Ministry will take decisions about educational institutions. He also announced a series of austerity measures that the meeting would recommend to implement like limited use of air conditions in offices, markets and mosques and keep the level of coolness at 25 degree celsius and strictly follow the market closing time at 8 pm after the Eid as part of the demand management in electricity consumption. The wedding ceremony has to be completed within an hour from 7 to 8 pm as part of the management.

The pandemic has brought a paradigm shift in the existing day-to-day life. For many people, going to the office is a regular daily task. However, the lockdown and social distancing across the globe have forced many companies to shift their work hours to online. And with that, remote working became the new normal. So, what is remote working? What are the advantages and disadvantages of remote working? Let's find out. What is remote working? Remote working is a working process outside of the traditional office space under a fixed time regulation. It doesn’t have to follow a traditional 9 to 5 routine. The concept came as part of the idea that work doesn’t have to be bound to the traditional workspace. Rather, with proper delegation, it can be done from anywhere. Even from the comfort of one’s own home. Read Best Job Searching Websites in Bangladesh The concept of remote working is not new. The idea got developed through freelancing. Now on a global scale, some freelancers are offering their service remotely in different sectors from the comfort of their homes. You don’t have to be in the same city or country even, the total process gets delegated online. This not only saves the extra hassle of work commute but also ensures ease of task completion. However, working remotely is gaining more popularity as the world has been forced to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic situations. Read: Making a Perfect Video Resume: Tips and Tricks Pros of remote working Better productivity A number of studies found that people working from home tend to have better productivity. There are several reasons behind it. Working from home liberates a person from the traditional work hour regime. One of the key advantages of remote working are the lack of office distractions. You can set up your own workstation in your home and work without any unnecessary interference. This helps to boost productivity as well as work concentration. Since there are no fixed office hours, you can work as per your wish, at the time of your choice. As long as you are finishing tasks and meeting deadlines, there shouldn’t be any problem. Read: Writing a Perfect Cover Letter: Important Factors to Consider Work-Life balance Many people working 9 to 5 complain that they don’t have any work-life balance. Whether it's missing out on important events in their child’s life to being distant from family. The usual work routine makes it difficult to maintain a healthy social life. But if you are working remotely, you get to spend more time with your family compared to the regular office schedule. You can start by saving time on the commute alone. On top of that, the flexibility of choosing work hours makes it easy to prioritize family and maintain a better work-life balance. Read How to ace a Job Interview? Employee experience Many businesses fail to understand that the employees are the main asset, not the product itself. If a company takes good care of its employees, the employees will take better care of the company or business. Remote working helps to boost the employee experience. We have already mentioned how working from home helps to boost employee morale. Ensuring optimum employee satisfaction will help to further drive employee performance. Employee appraisal gets determined by performance. And if working from home helps to boost performance, it’s definitely preferable compared to a normal in-person office routine. Read: How to find your passion for a more fulfilling career? Employee retention In this day and age, employee retention is becoming increasingly tough for businesses. Study shows of over 84% of prospective employees will choose a workplace that provides some form of work from home opportunities compared to full-time office opportunities. Some 74% of the employees are ready to leave their current job for a work-from-home opportunity given the same salary structure. As more and more companies get adjusted to the new normal, it’s easy to see that employee retention becomes much easier with work-from-home opportunities. Read Considering a Career Change? 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Decreased business and infrastructural cost There's obviously associated cost with running an office. From rent to bills to hiring office assistants, an organization has to spend a considerable sum to keep an office running. But if the majority of the employees undertakes work from home opportunities, the associated cost can be minimized greatly. In fact, an organization can save a good amount of money per employee just by shifting them to a remote work scenario. Read: Things to Consider When Choosing an Internship Cons of remote working Hands-on experience Most of the offices use hands-on training opportunities to familiarize the recruits with the office process. However, with remote work, this opportunity becomes increasingly difficult to undertake. The lack of face-to-face meetings makes managers skeptical about the work performance of the employees. The lack of training also has a negative impact on the performance of the recruits. Read Traits of the Smartest and Most Efficient Employees Access to information In addition to hands-on training, every office has a proper onboarding process. It basically entails how the office structure is, how information can be accessed, and the overall process and procedures. With remote working, the onboarding process gets handicapped. An average employee spends more than 30% of their work hour searching for information. Needless to say, the number is much higher in the case of remote workers. Read: Pandemic, Remote Working & Procrastination: How to avoid procrastination when working from home? Collaboration Office works are mostly a team effort. Even though you are individually responsible for your performance, the coherence and interdependence make office environments vibrant and motivated towards a collective organizational goal. With remote work, this collaborative behavior is hampered. The online meetings are limited to work-related matters only with a limited scope of informal interaction. As a result, the organizational coherence might be lost and it might cause disjointed behavior among the employees. Read Perfect Resume: 12 Effective Tips for writing a professional CV Bottom Line Whether by choice or by force, most offices got forced to rework their office works during the pandemic. It's safe to say that the pros of remote working outweigh the cons greatly. But as the world battles out the Covid-19, many offices are returning to their usual physical office structures. While in most cases, it’s looked up as a positive aspect for the offices. What's left to see is whether there is actually an improvement from what’s achieved through remote work? Read: Best Ways to Lead Effective Team Meetings