Sitting on your patio in a comfy chair with an embarrassingly large cup of coffee wearing your favorite sweatpants and working from home. That’s the dream. Or more accurately, it was.
For many, it has now become a reality.
We are living in the age of the remote working revolution. Since the pandemic forced a good number of companies into working from home, many employers are now realizing that the home office can actually help productivity. With advancements in technology, it has never been this simple to set up a professional working environment at home that allows for better efficiency, connectivity, safety, and organization.
Here are some of the best tech tools employees can use to nail the remote work life.
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
No matter where you work, communication is key. Since remote work means you won’t be able to pass your coworkers in the hallway or drop by someone’s desk for a quick chat, you need to find another way to stay in touch day-to-day. Using virtual communication tools comes with many benefits including:
- Ability to enhance collaboration.
- Capacity to improve communication options.
- Significantly increase productivity.
- Maintains that sense of work culture and community.
Some of our favorite digital communication tools include things like Google Suite, Slack, and Zoom for live idea sharing and collaboration.
HUMAN RESOURCES (HR) AND PAYROLL
With a wide range of benefits and advantages for employers and employees, remote work is here to stay. But managing remote teams comes with its own set of unique challenges. After all, everything from hiring and training to benefits and talent management requires some forethought when applicants and team members are located across the country (or the world!) instead of down the hall.
Fortunately, your company can utilize a variety of HR and payroll tools to help you provide an efficient and productive workspace for your virtual team. Some great HR and payroll tools we suggest checking out for your remote team include Gusto, Zenefits, Quickbooks, and Rippling.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Project management tools help to maintain a strong level of communication, collaboration, and accountability, especially when your remote team members are located in various locations. These tools can also help you manage deadlines, resources, and deliverables.
To keep your team on track, look for project management software that offers three main functions:
- Communication features: allowing your team to collaborate, provide feedback, and ultimately execute tasks and projects more efficiently
- Time-tracking tools: offering key insights in order to understand how long projects take, how profitable they are, and how to reach project milestones faster in the future
- Visual collaboration tools: encouraging team members to brainstorm and visualize ideas.
A few project management tools we suggest include Monday.com, Jira, and Asana. No matter the type of remote team that you're working on, or your specific needs, there's a project management software for you.
VIDEO CONFERENCING
Remote teams don’t only struggle with productivity, but also with the lack of face-to-face communication. Not only is it nice to physically see your coworkers and maintain a sense of work culture and community, but video conferencing allows for a more streamlined way to foster ideas, collaborate and stay on task.
GoToMeeting, Google Hangouts, and BlueJeans are the go-to tools for most virtual teams. While their primary purpose is video conferencing, some can also be used for file sharing, audio calls, and texting. Whatever video conferencing tool managers choose, they will surely bring their staff members closer and make their communication more efficient.
FILE STORAGE AND SHARING TOOLS
You may not have the advantage of being able to walk down the hall and deliver a document to your teammate, but working remotely doesn’t automatically mean you’re wasting time when collaborating with others on specific files.
In fact, there are many file-sharing tools designed to meet the needs of today’s remote workers and help them become more productive than before. Some of our favorite file storage and sharing tools include Google Drive, WeTransfer, DropBox, and Flock. All of these tools help facilitate collaboration, accountability and make sharing large files that are too big for email as simple as clicking a button.
Today's remote employees need the right tools to help them be more productive, collaborative, organized, and safe. By integrating modern technologies like the ones we’ve shared above, you can achieve all of these objectives while simultaneously positioning yourself as an innovative place to work.
