No matter whether you work from home or a coffee shop, the expectations remain the same.
Managers expect you to give your best despite workplace location. Thanks to the Internet, most employees can get their job done on time meeting those expectations successfully. However, when you work from home, stable and fast Internet is simply not enough. At some point, you will face some of the challenges remote work brings. Collaboration, efficiency, and communication are bound to become messy. Yet, since most companies experience the same problems, they have found an effective solution. They resort to different tools that allow employees to work as efficiently as they did in the traditional office. Here is the ultimate guide to some of the best tools for remote work.
Collaboration on All Levels
Just because you work from home, it doesn’t mean you should do all the work by yourself. You still have to work together with your coworkers no matter where you work from. What can help you connect, collaborate, and produce the best work results are collaborative tools. They allow you and your colleagues to collaborate on all organizational levels. Among the most common collaborative tools are Microsoft Office Teams and Google Suite although there are many more to choose from. Depending on what features your team needs, you can find the one tool that is the right fit. Whether you want a tool that only features collaboration or additional features such as work emails, email to fax solutions, and business communication.
Virtual Meetings
To make up for the lack of direct and face-to-face communication as well as non-verbal cues, you should resort to virtual meetings. They can help you and your team members stay connected although they don’t share an office anymore. Managers usually organize daily check-ins, but apart from them, you can jump on a video call whenever you feel the need to discuss some matters with your coworkers. In a traditional office, you would leave your desk, walk over to their office and ask directly. Video calls more or less make up for the lack of direct communication which is necessary for remote work more than anything else. That is why you shouldn’t skip installing Skype, Zoom, or Google Hangouts across your devices and using them regularly.
Internal Communication
The growing problem with remote teams is a lack of communication. Namely, remote employees often feel alienated. You know what they say, out of sight, out of mind. However, internal communication is the building block of every organization. For this reason, you and your team can’t afford to not interact daily and regularly. What could make a difference regarding this aspect are specially designed tools for this purpose? In particular, an intranet could be the glue that holds all your team together throughout remote work. If you are looking for a multifunctional tool, this one will do because it has many different features designed to make your business communication effective.
Project Management
What do tools such as Trello, Asana, and Basecamp have in common? All of them are project management tools. When you work in a home office, your managers can no longer walk over to your desk and check your progress on various projects or assign you new ones. We all know how much project management matters when it comes to reaching business goals. For this reason, you and your team should make use of project management tools. They are mostly used by managers, but employees can use them to keep them posted on different assignments. Moreover, managers can access that data at any given moment and help you out if you happen to need any assistance whatsoever. This way, you can be sure they have got your back always.
Asset Management
How much technology has advanced over the years can be seen from all the companies deciding to go paperless and upload all their data on the cloud. This is particularly convenient for remote teams. You no longer have to send a draft of the same document back and forth or print it out every time you or your coworkers make a change. Instead, you can upload it on the cloud, or Google Drive, and work together, make changes, and keep the file in its digital form. However, if you decide to use such tools, you have to be aware of the fact they have limited free storage space. In case you need more, you will have to buy it.
To conclude, today, employees can be more efficient than ever before despite all the challenges they face while working from home. With the right resources and tools, only the sky is the limit when it comes to their productivity, engagement, and communication throughout remote work.
© 2021 – 2022, Taylor Parker. All rights reserved.
