In what was widely regarded as a temporary move just months ago, businesses worldwide rapidly shifted to remote work. As COVID-19’s timeline continues to expand with no clear end in sight, it’s evident that remote work will be the norm through the rest of the year, with some health experts predicting its extension into much of 2021 as well. As such, maintaining a productive remote workforce for the long haul is critical to business continuity and success. While remote work touts many benefits, it also requires creative solutions and digital tools to bridge inevitable gaps in communication and overall team cohesiveness. Remove the duct tape and check out our top picks for remote management tools that help workforces thrive long-term in the areas of communication & collaboration, project management, operational efficiency, team culture & morale, and productivity.
Communication & Collaboration
Hallway conversations have become a thing of the past and the need for workforce communication solutions has drastically increased with the global adoption of remote work. Workforce communication tools most often support conference calls, document collaboration, and media sharing. Here are our top picks:
A staple of not only remote work, but remote learning as well, Zoom gives individuals the ability to meet virtually including hosting video calls, sharing screens, and even sharing resources. Its security features and integrations with scheduling tools such as Google Calendar make it stand above the rest.
Ok, so you have Zoom or another conferencing tool. But are your scheduling habits considerate of meeting attendees in different time zones? Don’t be that person who schedules a work meeting during someone’s dinner hour. Every Time Zone is a simple but helpful way to visualize meeting times across different time zones, allowing you to schedule meetings that work for team members located in different geographies.
Maybe you don’t need a scheduled call, but rather a quick and easy way to communicate with coworkers. MS Teams and Slack enable remote team members to communicate with each other in real-time. Whether it be company-wide announcements, a quick discussion between two colleagues or sharing weekend plans, these messaging tools are essential for long-term remote work.
Now that you’ve got meetings covered with Zoom, quick conversations with MS Teams, or Slack, what are you doing about file sharing? If you want to save your organization from attachment overload and email avalanches, Box is a great tool. Offering document sharing and content collaboration with multiple accessibility options across platforms and devices, Box makes sharing and organizing files faster and simpler.
Attaching a file to an email, explaining what you need with the file in the email, waiting for someone to open the email, open the file, edit the file, and then send a reply email to you with commentary and a new version of the document attached is so fun – said no one, ever. Even before social distancing became the norm in 2020, Google Drive’s cloud-based office applications such as Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and more had become essential for collaborating with colleagues. With remote work, these tools are even more critical to have at your disposal. Where do you think this blog post was first developed?
One thing I really miss about being in an office is working through complex problems and processes on a whiteboard with my teammates. The good news is, there’s a way to do this digitally. With Miro, you can bring visualization tools such as whiteboards, mind maps, and more back into the meeting mix. Plus, you can create an account for free.
Project Management
While almost all teams can benefit from a digital project management tool, it’s important to ensure a tool’s capabilities align with your company’s unique needs. Selecting the right tool can improve organization, alignment, and the ability to successfully complete tasks and meet deadlines.
Monday is one of the more versatile project management tools available, allowing its users to focus on both the process and the larger task goals. Its easy-to-use interface enables a quick deployment and frustration-free onboarding process. For non-technical teams such as marketing and sales that don’t need all the bells and whistles of a traditional project management tool, but still desire some advanced features, this is a great choice. What really sets Monday apart is its automation capabilities via integrations. Especially for remote work, the tool saves teams valuable time switching between multiple apps to communicate, complete, and report on project tasks.