It’s more common today than ever before for businesses to have at least some employees that work remotely. If your business outsources any of its work to offshore teams, your need to be able to communicate and coordinate with remote workers is even more pressing. Fortunately, there are a large number of technical tools that can help. Here are a few that our teams really like.
- Google Drive
There’s nothing fancy about Google drive. There are no flashy features or advanced functions. For our money, it is simply one of the best tools for document sharing and collaboration. It’s stable, easy to use, and backed by a company that has more than proven its staying power. For any documents that are to be shared among team members, Google Drive is the tool of choice for most of our teams.
- Trello
This tool is a favorite among our designers and other creative types. It must be the board based interface that is so appealing. Trello provides at a glance information on the status of any project. We use it to quickly clarify which team members are assigned to each task, and when action items are coming due.
- Groove
Groove, the sales automation tool, not the music app, was created for sales teams. Our sales folks do use it, but so do our tech teams. They get a lot of mileage out of the email tracking and calendar features. It’s so easy to use, and we’ve been able to get even the newest team members on board quickly.
- Onehub
There are times when our teams share particularly sensitive information with one another, and our clients as well. Onehub provides us with a secure platform for doing just that. Even better, there are built-in features that ensure we are doing our due diligence when it comes to keeping information safe.
- Slack
Slack is a popular, online, collaboration platform for teams. Using it is a bit like having a social media platform just for your business. Important conversations can be held by creating channels, and the relevant team members can enter and exit channels as they need to. When the conversations end, they remain searchable thanks to Slack’s search tool. There’s also a drag an drop feature for sharing documents of all sorts.
- TeamWeek
While everyone here has their own list of favorites, every member of our c-suite team has TeamWeek installed. With multiple teams to oversee and projects all over the world, this high-level tool provides great, ‘at a glance’ insights into what people are working on at any given time. Thanks to this tool, nobody is taken by surprise by anything coming down the pipeline.
- Zoom
Zoom is a great tool for video conferencing, webinars, and remote meetings. It can also be used for file sharing and instant messaging. This feature works well across multiple platforms. Now more than ever, we’ve been exploring the usefulness of zoom rooms. These are online conference rooms that are always available for our remote teams to use.
- Dashlane
After realizing how much time they spend on password resets and other similar tasks, our internal IT department decided that everyone was going to adopt Dashlane. This is a password management app that allows our team members to manage all of their passwords in one place.
- WhenIwork
WhenIWork is a work scheduling and tracking tool that has been a Godsend to our managers and team members. Everyone can quickly tell when they are on call or on the clock. Managers can easily double check schedules, and make changes on the fly. Thanks to the mobile app, nobody needs to double check when they are expected to work. In an industry where people work across multiple time zones and are often expected to do their time providing overnight support, this tool keeps everyone on the same page.
- AwesomeBoss
One of the challenges of working with remote staff is that people can feel disconnected from other team members. In the office, we have impromptu celebrations, a great work environment, and a casual and comfortable workspace. It’s important to us to find ways to create these connections with the team members who work so hard for us, but may never step foot into our home offices.
AwesomeBoss (Awesome Boss, Awesome Sauce - Get it?) is a cool little tool that helps with this. This app helps managers remember important anniversaries, details about team member’s hobbies and interests, and more. There’s even a feature that directs us to great gift ideas.
Yes, a few of the features, like the coaching tips, are a bit ‘cheesy’, but overall we like it. It lets us reach out to remote workers, and let them know they are an important part of our team.
What Are Your Favorite Tools? Do you have telecommuters or other remote staff? We’d love to know what tools are working best for your team!