Useful Tools For A Remote Workplace
A lot of jobs have switched to being done remotely in the past year while some companies (like us!) have been remote for much longer. Regardless of why your company is working remotely, there are some digital tools out there that are useful for every remote company. Here are some of the best!
Slack
This business communication platform is designed to make it easy to interact with your team online in an organized and efficient way. Slack is essentially a chatroom (or multiple) for your entire team. It allows you to create multiple chats, that way you can organize your conversations.
If you’re discussing a certain area such as training or accounting or non-work related conversations, you can make separate chats for all of them. That way nothing important is getting mixed up or lost in the hundreds of messages that get sent back and forth every day. You can also have private chats or choose which of your team members are in each chat. That way, people aren’t getting notifications for jobs that they are not a part of.
“Slack is also built to sync with the apps that your company uses every day, like Google Calendar and Google Drive. / Your administrator can install apps in Slack, which let you use them without ever leaving the chat you’re in.” — Business Insider
HeyTaco
Slack also allows for really cool add-on features such as HeyTaco. It’s a rewarding system that allows for the team members to give each other virtual “tacos” when they’ve done something great and want to give each other a shoutout for their hard work. It keeps track of how many tacos each team member has and your administrator can assign a redeeming system that allows you to trade-in your tacos for a prize.
Maybe, in your workplace, you’ve decided that when someone reaches 50 tacos you’ll give them a gift card, or maybe whoever has the most at the end of the month gets one. Decide what rewards system works for you!
Clockify
Clockify is a free time-tracking program that’s super easy to use. Your team can use it to easily and conveniently track the hours they’ve worked and organize all of them by different categories so that you know what they’re working on.
“Clockify is the most popular free time tracker and timesheet app for teams of all sizes. Unlike all the other time trackers, Clockify is available for an unlimited number of users for free. Clockify is an online app that works in a browser, but you can also install it on your computer or phone for convenience.” — Clockify
Clockify allows you to give each timer a title and categorize it into a certain project by the click of a button and it easily integrates with other project management apps. It’s free and simple. What more could you want?
Asana
Asana is a project management application designed to make it easy for your remote team to keep track of their work. It allows you to assign tasks for yourself or other people on your team. You can add due dates to those tasks, categorize them by project, program them to automatically repeat every day, week, month, or customize it to your needs! It also allows you to see what other people are working on in each project as well as set goals for yourself. With all the features it has, it’s definitely worth it for any remote workplace.
“The main features of Asana is the ability to create a comprehensive list of tasks, share details on actions that are required and set deadlines for the whole project. This allows everybody to have goals assigned to them and allows the team to work in one common direction. Planning out a project in this manner allows potential risks and bottlenecks to be spotted early on and ensure the project flows as effectively as possible — even if the project was to change halfway through.” — Medium
Working remotely can be difficult, but tools like these can help! What are your favourite tools for remote workplaces? Do you use any of these? Let us know in the comments!
