Stay Safe! Stay Productive!
The last few months have seen remote work ramping up as businesses are more open to transform their work culture into a remote environment with respect to the social distancing norm during the pandemic. Remote work is certainly more popular now than ever before, but there are still some hurdles in achieving the best results from the same. Countless challenges, time management issues and poor team collaboration are not the only barriers you may face while working from home.
Arming yourself and your team with the right tech toolbox will allow you to stay competitive and keep the employee morale up. Here’s the list of 11 software that we think are essential for building a great remote work culture. We have segmented them into various categories based on the type of service they offer. Let’s quickly dive into it:
Project Management
Project management systems help plan every stakeholder’s contribution and time effectively. This ensures your projects are better organized and timely delivery is more likely.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a team collaboration and project management software solution that eases the way you manage your projects and enable you to communicate with your clients efficiently. It comes with a unique set of features and tools that allow you to share ideas and organize conversations on a centralized platform throughout the tenure of the project.
It has proved to be a popular choice among freelancers and enterprises because of its easy-to-use and elegant interface. If your business is looking for something that has simple functionality and offers your remote employees to work together efficiently, then Basecamp is a popular choice.
Instagantt
Instagantt is one of the simpler software that helps you create appropriate illustrations of your project. It is basically a beautiful software designed to guide you in visually planning, managing and scheduling your projects. And it definitely is much more than a Gantt chart creator.
The list doesn’t end here! In fact, it allows you to develop an end-to-end project management process, starting right from creating tasks and setting up notifications to scheduling deadlines and providing guidelines, you can track and streamline each level of your project.
Team Collaboration
When your employees are not together at the workplace and have to suddenly work in a remote environment, communication issues are expected to happen. Below are the tools that will help you in addressing this concern:
Slack
Slack is one of the most popular communication channel used by a large number of organizations across the globe. It allows your team to collaborate and share ideas virtually through a common platform. You can create different channels or threads to keep your chats organized. It also supports file sharing and flawlessly integrates with various software, one of which is Google Drive.
Troop Messenger
Another alternative of Slack is Troop Messenger, designed to serve various domain specificities with its high functionality features. This software allows you to add your clients and freelancers limiting the access based on their role. Similar to Slack, Troop messenger also allows you to share your files, documents and have conversations with your colleagues.
You can also make audio or video calls to your team and have a discussion whenever required. Also, you can create unlimited groups on the go and connect with your team smoothly.
Recommended Read: – Current and Future Trends in Remote Work for 2022-2025
HRMS
During this critical time, HR management software come to the rescue of organizations to ensure that the HR personnel can continue working swiftly in a remote environment.
Workday
Workday is a cloud-based human resource management system that supports large companies with workforce planning, analysis, and implementation across various range of industry verticals. Workday offers customer and management solutions through a centralized framework across finance, HR, payroll, analytics and much more. Whether you are at your workplace or at a remote location, Workday time tracking system ensures that your employees can easily update the status of projects and enhance productivity and quick accessibility to the tools.
Keka HR
Keka HR is a fast growing software serving a wide range of SMEs offering fully integrated workflows to seamlessly handle HR, Payroll and Talent Management functions. It acts as a unified platform for your HR personnel to record attendance, process payroll, set up goals, schedule reviews and resolve queries through Helpdesk, helping them streamline all HR operations. This software also offers Remote Employee Productivity Tracking to make it easy for your managers as well as employees to keep track of their productivity in this new remote environment and ensure that they attain the desired goals.
In addition to this, it can be seamlessly integrated with Slack so that your managers or employees do not miss out on any leave or attendance related notification while they are busy discussing a strategy for their next project.
Task Management
Scheduling and organizing the functions is very critical in a remote work environment.
Todoist
Todoist is as simple as creating your to-do list for the day so that you do not miss any of the tasks. It enables you to create multiple levels in a single task, thereby developing steps to attain the ultimate goal.
If something pops up while you are in the middle of a task, you can quickly add a note or set a reminder for it and get back to what you have been working on initially. This will ensure that you do not spend time wandering about what to do next.
Microsoft To-Do
Microsoft To-Do is another innovative to-do list software that integrates perfectly with Office 365, allowing you to directly import the tasks from Outlook. It is extremely helpful when you need to continue working on unfinished projects or tasks as you need not rewrite the whole list again. You can design patterns and colors for the task list displays, arrange and assign tasks, add notes and set reminders to keep the tasks in check.
You have quick access to the activities due for the day using the My Day folder. This removes all ambiguity and streamlines the activities.
Web Conferencing Tools
These are primarily developed to host remote meetings and provide enhanced video conferencing experience, such as screen sharing and scheduling options. This can also be utilized as a remote employee training platform.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is an integrated platform that facilitates video conferencing and team collaboration tools. This communication platform ensures that you can effortlessly conduct your remote meetings through video conferencing and exchange files on SharePoint, which makes it easier for teams to stay constantly in touch a work collaboratively.
Appear.in – now Whereby
With simple video sharing, Whereby lets remote teams remain successful. Teams only need to build a room connection, exchange the link via email or chat, and that’s it. You are on the go for a video call with your manager.
It is considered to be ideal for linking practitioners and clients on an integrated business network, such as tutors, advisors and other specialized practitioners.
Notes
Note-taking makes it a wonderful pleasure to take inspiration and ensure you get better work done.
Evernote
Evernote is a perfect note-taking tool for your team in a remote work environment. All your notes will be kept structured, coordinated seamlessly through all your devices. It has a wide range of features such as record audio notes, set reminders, upload attachments and also add handwritten notes to it.
Bottom Line
There is a lot more remote work management software to keep your workforce happy and productive. However, we have listed the key solution providers for each respective segment. This sudden transition is new to most of the organizations, and as each of them, we are sure that even your company is keen on setting the future path for success while adapting the new normal. But with the right tools in hand, you can build a strong remote work culture for your organization.