New to Remote Work? 10 Tips and Some Tools to Fast-Track Your Company to the New Normal
It’s a crazy time to be alive!
Nations are getting hit badly economically and major industrial cities are under total lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. Data even shows a universal decline in responses to sales teams outreach due to the pandemic.
But it isn’t all gloom and doom as most businesses have tried to keep their brand afloat by embracing remote work.
While it’s great to see remote work as a privilege during the pandemic and post-COVID, transitioning can be challenging. And if you’re new to remote work, the process can drive you nuts.
There’s also no doubt that post-COVID, working from home will be a lot more common. A G2 study for instance revealed a massive growth surge in their video and audio conferencing categories in this period, as working from home becomes a necessity.
So this means you need to fast track your company to the new normal.
Achieving a smooth transition is all about finding the best tools to stay connected and productive. In this guide, we will help with that and give you tips and tools to aid the synchronization and harmony of your brand’s workflows.
The Tips You Can’t Do Without
Outline Remote Work Guidelines
Upwork research revealed that most hiring managers have the resources to hire remote staff but don’t have the required policies in place.
While transitioning your team to remote work, it’s crucial to make clear your expectations. Reveal these expectations to everyone in your workforce and update your staff on changes quickly.
“People who are new to working from home often are biased and need some guidance. Avoid leaving them alone with their problems. On top of clarifying your expectations, you should also proactively help them with any questions or issues that come up.” Max Benz, Founder at RemoteCanteen
The guidelines depend on your team’s needs and size, but a remote work guideline should cover:
- Tools — Which tools will your staff use to collaborate and communicate effectively?
- Productivity — How will your workforce track project progress and measure results?
- Availability — Will your team have to be online at certain hours or do they get to set individual schedules?
- Data Management — Which tools will your team use to share and organize documents and data securely?
If you aren’t certain on how to pass your new guidelines across, Venngage offers some effective crisis communication tips.
Revise Hiring Strategies
The remote work route introduces a new set of challenges to your hiring process as the work expectations differ. So managers will have to update hiring policies to reflect the responsibilities and expectations of remote work.
Focus on soft skills like communication and self-motivation, for example, to certify that they’re the perfect addition to your team.
Pick Your Tools Quickly
Remote communication and collaboration can get messy and disjointed if you don’t have the right tools in place early enough. So while transitioning to the new normal, ensure you have the most effective tools set to go.
Let’s have a look at these tools.
Tools You Need
1. Video Conferencing Tool — Zoom
With the social distance order in place, video calls are the next best thing to reduce the feeling of isolation. Especially for employees who are used to face-to-face interactions.
Zoom offers a powerful solution with its video conferencing and messaging app for mobile and desktop devices. This solution is easy and effortless to set up and has a lot of scalable features.
Besides offering HD audio and video, Zoom can support 1000 participants at a go and up to 49 videos on one screen. However, such large gatherings are a better fit for big screens.
You can also save your meetings to the cloud or locally, alongside transcripts with a text search option. Zoom features built-in collaboration as well that offers participants the ability to share their screens and collaborate.
The app also includes a team chat feature that enables file sharing, a 10-year archive, and a searchable history. Plus, Zoom uses a built-in 256-bit TLS encryption security system for shared files and meetings.
However, the free version can only support 100 people for 40 minutes, but you can also upgrade to their paid plans for more features.
2. Project Management & Collaboration Tool — ProofHub
Remote work done right means that you have you involve a lot of tools. But it doesn’t have to be so. Using a versatile project management tool like ProofHub you can eliminate the need for requiring many tools to run your company remotely.
ProofHub is packed with amazing features that simplify the project management process. For example, the app includes visual imagery of ongoing projects with the aid for Gantt charts.
ProofHub software reduces the time needed for the feedback — sharing processes and decreases task management stress for teams.
3. Real-Time Communication — Slack
From the team that gave us Flickr, Slack is the chat app you’ve probably heard about. And that’s for a reason. Launched in 2013, it quickly became the leading choice for group chats because its features are much more than just chat.
Slack’s inbuilt Slackbot tool, for example, can set reminders for anything you have to remember.
For example:
Slack also offers the ability to build custom Slack Bots that can approve invoices from your team chat, start projects, and crunch numbers, etc,
Beyond bots, you can customize your theme and fuse different teams of your company for joint meetings.
This app goes beyond traditional chat functions and includes features that make for an interactive meeting.
4. Time Tracking — ClickTime
In their 20 years of industry experience, ClickTime has been tracking over 1 billion hours of time and saving our users over $150 million. ClickTime offers unique, customizable time tracking and budgeting solutions for organizations of all industries and sizes.
ClickTime is trusted by users and reviewers alike. The software holds a 4.6/5 rating on both GetApp and Capterra, and 97% of reviewers reported that they are likely to recommend ClickTime.
Some of ClickTime’s many features include flexible time entry, 1-click utilization reports for high-level and deeper project insights, and business software integrations set for 100+ platforms, such as Salesforce, Trello, Slack, and more.
5. Documents Collaboration Tool — Google Docs
Using Google Docs, your team can share spreadsheets, presentations, and documents. Asides just sharing, Google docs, enables your staff to collaboratively edit those documents in real-time irrespective of their physical location.
Collaborators on company documents can comment, view and even make adjustments to documents, depending on the permissions given to them by the originator of the document.
With Google docs, you won’t have to email countless document attachments, merge the edits of multiple document copies or wait for a team member to finish implementing changes before commenting. You can work with your staff in real-time just like you would at a physical location.
6. Loyalty Program Tool — CandyBar
There’s no business without happy clients; remote or physical. And if you love to reward loyal customers and are wondering how to keep that going with the current situation CandyBar can help.
The CandyBar tool helps you automate your loyalty programs. So you can focus on other vital aspects of the business while your customers get rewards for their loyalty to your brand.
7. Tool for Keeping Your Buzz Alive — ReferralCandy
If your brand didn’t invest much for a strong online presence before the COVID-19 pandemic one of your major worries would probably be how to keep customers interested in your offers. Fortunately there are tools to help you cover lost ground.
ReferralCandy is one. With this referral marketing app you can automate word of mouth recommendations and have your clients pull in customers for goodies. You just need to set it up once and watch the power of word of mouth marketing at work.
If you’re not certain of how to transition your brick and mortar store online here’s an excellent guide.
8. Workflow Management Tool — Unito
Unito is a workflow management tool, meaning it allows you to build, optimize, and track workflows across projects, tools, and teams.
One of the biggest challenges teams face with remote work is maintaining alignment, transparency, and collaboration when everyone is working in their own tools at home. The tools that are meant to make you more productive can quickly become silos, impeding communication and leading to wasted time and effort.
With Unito, you can build two-way connections between all of your work tools, allowing information to flow back and forth as needed. Use it to break down remote silos while allowing everyone to work and collaborate from their favorite tools.
Other Cool Tools You Probably Haven’t Heard Of
9. Organizing and Collaboration Tool — Infinity
Infinity is a great tool for organizing and collaboration. You can create workspaces that contain all your projects and then organize them into boards that contain specific clients or projects. You can also organize the boards into folders for a more accurate breakdown.
The tool aims to aid a company’s workflow organization among multiple employees. So everyone can access all project data regardless of who is working on them.
10. Stand Up Meeting Tool — Range
Stand up meetings are almost necessary for most brands today and if you’re new on the remote work path, it’s hard to figure out how to carry out one effectively.
With the Range tool, however, you can run stand up meetings with live video conferencing and collect plus share work from your other tools. The Range app also allows you to raise flags (blockers) within the application, which turns the attention of team members to tasks that need attention.
11. Whiteboard Collaboration Tool — Miro
Miro is a collaborative virtual whiteboard that you can use for different purposes, from brainstorming ideas, organizing workflows and managing basic tasks visually.
Users can draw and write on their boards, create sticky notes and add links. Your team can also upload videos, PDFs, pictures, office files, and Google Drive documents. They can place these files directly on their boards for everyone to see when they share it. All of this can occur in real-time.
12. Video Collaboration and Tutorials Tool — Fleeq
Fleeq is a quick way to create and share tutorial videos for either your audience or team members. If you need to explain a task to a staff, Fleeq is an excellent tool to use. You can make a video in minutes and show what you need to be done.
Conclusion
Remote work is here to stay and the sooner we all get adjusted to ensuring a seamless flow of operational and workflow processes remotely the better. The tools in this piece will help you cover crucial aspects of any organization that needs to keep going for the brand to survive.
Author Bio- Emmanuel Egeonu is a writer for ReferralCandy and CandyBar, two SaaS products helping physical and online businesses improve their customer loyalty.
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