Remote working or home office has become more popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. The advancement in technology makes everyone do the same job wherever they are in the world.
Gradually the covid lockdowns and restrictions get lifted, and offices are allowed to open, even still many organizations continue to embrace remote work.
A lot of surveys say that remote working enables work-life balance and reduces stress rates. It has also revealed that people tend to be more engaged and work more hours than their in-office counterparts.
However, to keep the remote workers' productivity & satisfaction on par, you must choose the right tools to collaborate and work effectively over the internet. The products listed below were hand-picked to help you run your business successfully through your remote working team.
1) Trello (For team collaboration and managing projects)
Trello is one of the best Kanban-style tools for project management.
With Trello, you create task boards with different columns and let your remote team move cue cards between them based on their work progress. Team members can leave comments, assign start/due dates, add users, create checklists, and add attachments to every card. It doubles up as a teamwork & collaboration tool and helps you and your remote team stay organized & up to date with every single project.
It makes it easy to get a high-level overview of all the ongoing projects in a single dashboard and helps keep track of daily as well as long-term goals.
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2) Slack (For instant messaging and team communication)
Communication is key in managing a remote working team, and slack is one of the best instant messaging tools that help teams to communicate in a better and organized way.
You can do one-on-one chat or create multiple channels for different teams or topics. The built-in file-sharing capabilities enable easy file sharing and tagging the team members to view & work on the same document in real-time. It keeps the distractions to a minimum by letting you maintain all your team communication in one place.
Its integrations with other leading apps such as Trello, Salesforce, Google Drive, etc., and the fully functional mobile apps for iOS and Android help your team stay connected and productive.
3) Zoom (For video meetings)
Zoom is one of the highly-rated video conferencing tools for teams of any size. It offers a high-quality video conferencing experience on very low bandwidth. You can record all your meetings directly to the cloud for future access. It also lets you share your screen & provide screen controls with teams for combined discussions.
It also lets you host webinars by enabling multiple speakers to present their thoughts and ideas to over a thousand participants at a time. The built-in chat options make it easy to share links & messages to ensure that each session is interactive and engaging.
‘Zoom Rooms’ are virtual conference rooms built for team collaboration that sets Zoom ahead of its competitors. What’s more, it is easy to set up & use, most affordable, and has straightforward pricing.
4) Asana (For project and workflow management)
Asana is one of the well-designed project and workflow management tools. In layman's terms, it's a ticketing system that allows a remote working team to concentrate more on the project and its periodic goals.
You can create multiple projects with different sections and tickets for each project's tasks. These tickets will move around the various sections in the project, providing good visibility into the project's overall progress.
As a team manager, you can seamlessly monitor the project progress and guide your team members if they are stuck between tasks. It also lets you create visual project plans to identify risks, errors, and unstop setbacks so that no task gets lost in the shuffle.
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5) Harvest (For time tracking)
Harvest is one of the most popular time-tracking apps for remote teams. It keeps track of how much time you spend on each task in a project and allows you to reorder them according to priority. It also collects work data and generates a report to show the project's overall progress.
It also notifies you when someone on your team is working beyond their capacity, which is crucial. Even if you work from a different physical location, this critical information can help you prevent overwork and burnout in your team.
The built-in expense monitoring functionality automatically sends invoices to your clients via Stripe or PayPal once the task or project is completed. As a result, you will save a lot of money on additional invoicing and payment software. Harvest will also politely send you an automatic reminder if your client fails to pay on time.
6) Google Workspace (For business email and document collaboration)
Google Workspace is a suite of Google products that caters to simplify business collaborations. Using Google Workspace, you can create business emails for your remote users, so they use them for all business-related communication.
It makes communication easier through Groups email list for your team. Use the group's email address to send status updates and share resources instead of individually emailing everyone.
The main selling point of the Google Workspace is its real-time document editing capabilities. You can create and edit Docs, Sheets, and Slides in real-time, chat within files and get targeted feedback using comments. Changes save automatically, ensuring that team members always have access to the most recent versions.
7) DropBox (to manage all files in one place)
Dropbox is a cloud storage platform for storing, sharing, and collaborating on files. It assists your team in organizing and getting in sync with tools that bring everyone's work into one focused location. You can access and share files, collaborate on projects with coworkers, and communicate all while working on your own.
Dropbox's desktop app has auto-sync features, which means that any files you upload through the desktop app are automatically updated when you make changes to them. You can also access those files across all of your devices, thanks to the synchronization features.
It also serves as a backup for important files in the event that your computer experiences technical difficulties. If you sync your photos and other important documents in dropbox, they won't be lost forever even if your hard drive fails or gets stolen.
8) Evernote (For taking note)
Evernote makes it much easier for remote working teams to communicate their notes and ideas. It began as a simple note-taking app and has steadily added features to become a contender in the content collaboration category.
Without all the emails and messages, collaborative spaces ensure that everyone is up to date on current ideas and notes. It provides a visual means for teams to communicate with one another, reducing the need for unnecessary clarifications or misunderstandings.
Evernote also comes to a lot of other utilities such as Web Clipper that copies web content directly to your Notebooks, Tasks to manage all your To-Do's, and a scanner to keep your important documents at your fingertips.
9) Keka (For HR & attendance management)
Keka is of the most employee-centric HR and payroll software for managing employee experiences. They are a modern new generation platform that is focused on user experience and simplifying complex workflows, as opposed to traditional HR systems.
One of the best features of this software solution is its ability to manage and nurture talent. Keka enables you to collaboratively automate all core HR operations, allowing you to focus on higher-level HR activities.
Keka assists you in reducing time spent on mundane tasks and focusing more on strategic planning, from hiring and attendance management to performance and data analytics. It enables you to turn data into smarter decisions and create an awesome employee experience.
10) Github (For Source code versioning)
Github is a version control and collaboration platform for code. It allows members of a distributed team to collaborate and communicate on projects. You can make the entire software development process easier with Github.
Github is built for coding, so you'll have all the tools you need to share your code rather than trying to share it on a platform designed for general communication.
Your entire team can see what's going on, and project managers can manage multiple projects directly from this system, sharing information with other team members simply by mentioning them anywhere in the system.
Conclusion
For teams and individuals, transitioning to remote working or working from home can be difficult. The most difficult challenge you may face as a new remote worker is locating tools that will make your remote work life simple and productive. The WFH tools mentioned in this article will help your remote working team to deliver their best.
Share this article with your remote teams and colleagues to inform them of the best work from home tools that can benefit them as well.
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