5 Tools We Use While Working Remote
These are crazy times indeed and if your company has never had a full-time remote workforce, this can be a challenging transition. However, thanks to modern technology, it's very possible for many employees to be as productive at home as they would be in the office, if not more so.
Now I'm not recommending this as something we just came up with recently. These are tools my team and I have been using for years. We are a six person team that live across 15 time zones in Spain, the US, Philippines and Bangladesh. We've never met each other in person, but using these tools, we have been as producing as effectively as any team I've work on and that includes teams working next to each other.
The tool set is outlined in the Infographic below. They are the following:
1. Zoom - This pandemic has gotten this tool a lot of visibility and new clients. We've been meeting like this one-on-one and in groups for both internal team meetings and meetings with clients. We have also used tools like WebEx, Skype and Gotomeeting. We have found this one works best. The free version may be good enought. The lowest paid version is what I use at that's $14.95 a month.
2. Slack - This tool is great for quick, informal conversations between members. It's better than email in that it immediate just like it would be using a phone chat. The benefit is it gives you a good history that's easy to review and search. This tool is free.
3. Asana - Assigning tasks, tracking team member progress and project management is something a lot of teams do poorly when working in-person with others. Asana, and other tools like including Trello, Wrike and Basecamp, are great for tracking work being done by team members. We've successfully used it as a ticketing system. Once you establish the discipline as a team to keep status current using a tool like this, you are set. The version of the tool I use is free and has everthing I've needed in the years I've been using it.
4. Google Drive or Dropbox - The team and I use both of these. Both enable you to store content in folders you can then make available to others. We store client information, work files for internal work and a whole lot of other things there. It makes it really easy to share files used by multiple people.
5. Loom - This is THE tool for recording quick videos with screen shares explaining anything you like to someone else. Everyone should be using to describe things that are difficult or time consuming to describe in writing. Get yourself a free copy of this and start using this as soon as you can.
Please let me know what tools you use.
