With the global spread of COVID-19 cases affecting everyone worldwide, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has suggested ‘social distancing’ to curb the pandemic as a measure for public safety. Public places have been ordered to shut down to prohibit mass gatherings. Even schools, colleges, public institutions, offices, and all other sites where more than four people can gather are ceased.
To combat this phase, organizations are taking up some rigorous procedures for the well being and good health of their employees, such as allowing and encouraging employees to work-from-home while leveraging the countless digital tools available for collaboration.
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There’s a good chance that you must be in the phase of adjusting to work-from-home (WFH) yourself right now. Thus, you must know how essential it is to have the right tools that can help you focus on what matters: keeping your productivity high and maintaining the workflow as similar to the office environment.
Here are some of the great tools that can help you master working remotely.
Important Tools while Working from Home
For Collaboration
Most essential part while working from home is to have team synchronization and to maintain the efficiency of internal communication. Hence, you need the right collaboration and texting tools for seamless workflows. Here are our top picks:
1. Slack
Slack is the most popular collaboration tool in the remote work community. It helps teams to collaborate across different locations effectively. You can stay online and connect through chats with teammates, even while staying away from the office. It also allows you to create groups team-wise/ function-wise/ topic-wise, thus, helping you in segregating the conversations.
2. Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts is a free instant messaging tool that now allows video conferencing between employees and even groups. You can switch between audio and video calling as per your preference for the ease of communication. It can be integrated with Google Meet, which syncs your work calendar to show your scheduled meetings. It also provides remote access of your screen to your colleague, which is a plus while collaborating.
For Virtual Communication
At times, communicating visually becomes necessary, especially when you have to delegate tasks in-person. Here are our top picks for virtual communication,
3. CallHippo
CallHippo is used for virtual telephony and workflow automation to increase the efficiency of the teams. It provides a smart interface to all the business requirements as it allows for all the local numbers from anywhere and everywhere to join in one place along with monitoring of the calls made. You can record the calls for analysis to improve customer support with CallHippo. Apart from that, you can also keep a check on different metrics such as cost of acquisition per customer.
4. RingCentral
RingCentral is active in over 190 countries as it provides international virtual numbers and local dialing plans. It empowers the remote workforce to communicate and connect. Famous for call management features from anywhere and on any device – it integrates video conferencing, team communication, collaboration, and online fax, etc. It works seamlessly well with more than 100 apps to easily customize the workflows of different businesses.
For Virtual Meetings
You can make up to all your meetings, either face-to-face or via voice call through these tools,
5. Zoom
Zoom is known for its powerful HD video conferencing. If you have bigger remote teams, Zoom is the tool for your organization. It combines screen sharing, file sharing, and local recording to provide end-to-end conferencing solutions. The best feature is that the meetings are more accessible; only one individual from the team needs to download it, and others can join in by just clicking the meeting link shared to their devices.
6. Skype for business
Skype is the ideal tool for remote business. It has advanced features such as conducting meetings on-the-go, instant messaging showcasing chat history, enterprise-grade security, polling, easy broadcasting and meeting retention, etc. It allows you to integrate all office applications as well.
For Planning: To-Do List Planner
While working from home, it is essential to keep track of different tasks allocated to you to meet the deadlines. Hence, To-do list planners come in handy to keep track of your records. Our personal favorites are,
7. TickTick
TickTick helps you organize everything in one place. It sets a reminder of any time and anywhere, along with flexible calendar views to avoid collision with other tasks and scheduling tasks in an efficient manner. With TickTick, you can share these lists and schedules with other teammates, thus, increasing collaboration, and thereby productivity. It blends seamlessly with other platforms as well.
8. Google Keep
Google Keep allows you to type, talk, draw, or even capture any notes taken. You can always opt between a bullet list or standard format while jotting down your priority tasks. It is free and super easy to use. Moreover, the notes are automatically synchronized between the app and web client. With Google Keep, you can set time, location-based alerts, and reminders to keep track of your progress. You can even slip your notes on Google docs in a blink of eyes.
For Project Management: Tasks & Projects Planner
Manage your remote teams just like your traditional in-office team with these project management tools,
9. Asana
Asana is the most popular project management software. It helps remotes teams to stay focused on projects and their daily tasks to meet deadlines. It allows for setting priorities and deadlines. Project managers can assign and follow up on chores at every stage. It helps you to determine pitfalls and eliminate risks. Asana provides a great feature of creating virtual project plans to map every step against time.
10. FreedCamp
FreedCamp is a free project management tool for businesses. It provides a collaborative platform for teams to collaborate. It helps in managing tasks, plans, milestones, and schedules along time spent on each task and sub-tasks. Its main features include the Collaboration wall, File management, time tracking, calendar views, discussions, and password management, etc.
Time & Productivity Monitoring
How would you know which employee is putting enough hours in work remotely? Here’s how,
11. Toggl
Time tracking is essential to progress as planned and to remove deviations while working from home. Toogl is a time tracking tool that determines where you have spent every minute every day. It helps in enhancing productivity. It enables you to plan and decide how much time should be allocated to a task.
12. Tsheet
Tsheet helps track times of every employee as employee timesheets help saving money and increase productivity. Tsheet is a blessing for all employers as it can track, submit, and approve time directly from the app. It enhances reporting as you can attach photos of timelines. It allows managing multiple timesheets simultaneously. With Who’s Working window feature, you can even view your employee’s location.
Password Manager
Using so many tools with different passwords can jumble up things when in a hurry. Keep a list of passwords through these tools,
13. 1PASSWORD
With 24×7 support, 1Password provides effortless and secure password management for teams. It is a scalable and straightforward password manager which makes it easy for employees to stay online by sharing files in a secured manner and store unlimited items as well. You can instantly grant and revoker access to shared resources.
14. LastPass
If all your passwords aren’t in one place, then there are higher chances of security failure. LastPass provides a password vault that is secured by a master password, which means you’ll need to remember only one password for all the passwords.
Advanced features of LastPass include Two-factor authentication, mobile app pin unlocks, fingerprint login, auto-form Filler, secure digital wallet app, random password generator, and user vault, etc.
Other Popular Tools You should Check out to Incorporate while Working from Home
Google Docs, Google Drive, EverNote, Trello, Zapier, etc. Google has a tool for every need. Google suite lets you work on anything like presentations, documents, and spreadsheets. In case of any failure, your work remains safe on the cloud, which can be shared with sharable links easily. You can grant access to others you collaborate with to ease communication and workload.
Alternative
Microsoft also has its Office Online suite, which is quite similar to Google Suite. It has desktop applications similar to Word, Powerpoint, and Excel.
Though WFH comes with its difficulties in areas of routine conversations amongst teams, collaborations, etc., the tools listed above are a great way to make the most of your work from home and stay productive.
Utilize these tools to move forward through seamless collaboration and communication to keep everyone on the same page. Instill the team culture in remote employees so that work progress isn’t affected by work from home transition. Maintain a work schedule as they used to do while coming to the office and dedicate a workspace where they can work without distractions. Preach your employees to resist distractions from social media, procrastination, etc. to avoid lower productivity.
In the end, take care of yourself and your loved ones in these times of Coronavirus Crisis, hold on to the beacon of hope that this too shall pass.
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