In today’s fast-paced world, you and your team are expected to produce top-notch results regardless of where you are located. Luckily, with the help of an internet connection, it is not that difficult to get most of the daily work done, be it related to sending emails, publishing blog posts, attending meetings, or generating leads.
However, when it comes to remote work, having an internet connection is not enough. In order to be able to manage complex tasks and maintain good cross-team communication, many businesses have started implementing tools that enable their staff members to be as productive as possible while working from home.
With this in mind, having the right technology in the first place can make a huge difference. Here is a list of the 5 most essential tools and tips to help you get started.
1. Project Management
Since the onset of the Covid pandemic, many companies have decided to make working from home the new normal, while others are transitioning to hybrid remote work, i.e. combining remote with office work.
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to remote work is making sure that your remote staff is actually working. Stayhome.ai is a project management solution specially designed to help set up and manage hybrid teams. It allows managers to distribute tasks, assign responsible persons, set deadlines, and track the implementation of all processes. By optimizing office space and providing access from anywhere in the world, this project management tool reduces operational costs, boosts productivity, and increases the company’s bottom-line-revenues.
2. Team Communication
There are many challenges when it comes to communicating remotely. You have to take into consideration factors like different time zones, unreliable internet connections, etc. The most important difference between the way we communicate in a regular office setting and remotely is that for the latter to be successful, it has to be done intentionally.
Here are several of the most popular communication tools that remote content teams use on a daily basis:
- Online chat tools like Slack help remote teams communicate and stay connected asynchronously or in real-time.
- Trello, Google Calendar, and CoSchedule are great for creating editorial calendars for managing the publication of content.
- Confluence is an excellent tool for creating interlinked documents, documenting processes, and creating style guides.
- Video conference platforms like Zoom and Google Hangouts work for everything from one-on-one meetings to larger team meetings, allowing you to build stronger connections between your team members.
- Digital workspaces like Confluence serve as a virtual knowledge base for your staff members, where they can browse team-specific or company-wide information, including policies, guidelines, and procedures.
- File sharing and storage solutions like G Suite and Google Drive will save your employees tons of time. The file-sharing features are also handy if you collaborate with external companies and clients.
3. Lead Generation
With companies everywhere working from home, lead generation teams are presented with more challenges than usual. In uncertain times like these, consumers are less likely than usual to make quick decisions. In addition, aligning the sales and marketing teams to work as one is much harder.
Using a lead generation tool like Zoominfo or another Zoominfo alternative can be of great help. These tools are used by marketers and salespeople to optimize their lead generation efforts by reducing the time-intensive efforts of manually collecting data in order to generate leads. Most of these tools work by utilizing intelligent tracking software and a database of business IP addresses to track your site visitors and provide you with contact details and detailed visitor journeys. This way, sales reps and marketers have everything they need to reach out to the right person, with the right info, and at the right time.
4. Security
Information security is one of the potential risks when managing a remote marketing team. Information security is as important as internet connectivity for remote employees, especially because they often store business information on their smartphones and laptops. Here are the essential security tools you should have in place.
- VPN. Having your remote staff members use a remote-access VPN is a great way to create a secure connection wherever and whenever they use the internet.
- Encryption software scrambles data so that even if it gets stolen, thieves won’t be able to read your disks or files without the encryption password or key.
- Password managers reduce one of the biggest security risks—using the same password on multiple websites—by storing all your passwords in an encrypted database secured by the only password you need to remember.
5. Remote Employee Training Programs
Just because your staff works remotely doesn’t mean you should stop investing in them. Show your team members that you appreciate them and that it is in your best interest to see them continuously grow and improve within their roles.
Digital conferences, webinars, events, and virtual sessions can all be used to engage remote staff members and motivate them to be their best. Some organizations have found that gamification can be an exciting and fun way to help team members communicate, engage, learn, and work together.
Final Thoughts
Nowadays, your team members need to be able to effectively do their jobs no matter where they are located in the world. For that reason, they must have access to the right tools and resources that will help them be as productive as they would be in an office space.
The tools listed here will help overcome the unique challenges that come with remote working, improve organization, and boost your team’s productivity.
