The Pandemic has forever altered the future of employment, especially in terms of working from home. Remote working was thought of as a low-wage customer support role before, however as the pandemic hit the world it has drastically shifted demographics as a result of which remote working is now considered to be a new normal, full-time job. We can now complete the same task from anywhere in the world thanks to technological advancements.
With the increase in the number of remote employees and virtual teams, the number of tools and applications designed for them is increasing day by day so that the quality of work doesn’t get compromised.
In this article, we have compiled some of the tools which work best for remote working, categorised according to their specifications to make it easier for you to grasp. The remote worker’s toolkit should include the following tools:
1. Trello and Asana
Project management would have been questioned when working remotely because it’s a big deal to manage projects that need a large number of tasks to be completed in a particular sequence or workflows that require more sophisticated time control. But thanks to the new technology, it has paved the way.
Project management, organisation, and productivity are no more a hassle and can easily be managed sitting at home. From managing big projects to small tasks, everything is at your fingertips. Trello and Asana are the two best tools when it comes to project management. They both can be used as an internal tracker to keep track of the duties individually, or used by your whole team to delegate various roles to different team members. Making it convenient with a visual to-do list, letting team members know when it’s their turn to revisit a job, or keeping staff on schedule for assignments due that day.
They both may be sufficient enough to overcome the management issues but they do differ in some cause. Trello, despite having the best Kanban-style option and being budget-friendly, is not the best one as compared to Asana. As it offers more options and is responsible for the creation and integration of its tasks which is not the case with Trello, as a result, it doesn’t work as smoothly as Asana does.
2. Google Slides, Sheets, Docs
Jobs are changing in unimaginable ways right now. Jobs are no longer a physical location for all of us, instead of having impromptu conversations at the coffee machine or while commuting to meetings, office staff has converted their homes into workstations. This has brought quite challenges in the workfield, especially if you’re a manager, Maintaining team morale and getting tasks on track has become much more difficult. This is where Google workspace comes to the rescue, which includes all the productivity apps, Google Sheets, Google Docs and Google Slides, and much more.
The tools of Google Sheets along with Google Docs and Slides are particularly useful for remote teams. Multiple users can easily open and update the same spreadsheet at the same time using Google Sheets without any hassle. Along with maintaining your privacy, only those people can get access to the sheet to which you have selected or given a link.
Moreover, you can preview a related file in Docs, Sheets, and Slides without having to open a new tab, allowing you to spend less time switching between applications, which means you’ll get more time for work. Content creation is made much easier with these tools, which is the core source of the business.
3. SlideModel and Canva
Since the home has turned into a workspace, business presentations have been a big question. Now is the time for the digital world to take over the conventional one. Seminars are now replaced by webinars, and to present your thoughts in such gatherings whether it’s virtual or in person you need to create persuasive presentations.
Creating presentations can be frustrating and time consuming. But thanks to SlideModel as it has made creating presentations much easier and convenient. It provides a wide range of PowerPoint templates for presentations to communicate your ideas clearly and engagingly to the audience. These highly customizable templates save much of your time, remaining can be spared on your verbal speech because that too is essential when it comes to presenting your stance.
Although, Canva has been much popular lately as a graphic design tool for people who don’t have the skills to use advanced graphic design software, or even in the field of presentations. But the difference that makes SlideModel more efficient is that you can use the templates directly in Google or Microsoft PowerPoint to edit the templates, these tools that you are already familiar with. Thus, this makes it easy to access and edit according to your requirements, while on the other hand, the process of editing in Canva is a little different.
4. Zoom and Microsoft Teams
You want to make sure you’re interacting with your colleagues correctly, because if the conferences and meetings are not conducted with sufficient means then the business is likely to save problems in its functioning. And with the new normal, many workforces faced a lot of trouble connecting with their workforce as they all are confined to their homes. Thus, apps such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams have served as a bridge to eliminate the communication gap between the employees.
You may hold video conferences with one other user or big numbers of people using Zoom and Microsoft teams. It’s not about a regular video call, though you can easily host the whole team conferences or workshops, you can utilize it according to your work base, even webinars can be conducted efficiently through these platforms. You can coauthor files with your employees in real time by sharing screens, making remote communication a lot simpler. With a few taps, you can also exchange files and go from a chat conversation to a meeting in no time.
5. Miro and Stormboard
Online work necessitates remote brainstorming. One way to achieve this is to use an online whiteboard to simulate the feel of whiteboarding in the workplace. And for that Miro and Stormboard work the best.
They will assist in immersive collaborative brainstorming and project planning in a more visual way. it’s a breeze to share all of your data and collaborate while you go. Setting a workflow framework makes the team aware of what’s going on while you put forward the details which will help them work more effectively. Thus, remote worker’s tool kits should include such resources as well.
Conclusion
Today’s workers must be able to do their work well at home, to do so they must have access to the tools they need to be as efficient as they are in the workplace. There’s no mystery that everybody works in their way and faces different obstacles. However, if our issues are related to organization and competitiveness, consider implementing one of the tools mentioned above and you’ll work that thing out for sure.
Remote employees are more likely to be healthy and happy if they have all of these remote job resources in their pockets. Because being adaptive to new tools and digital ways will only help us survive through these hard times, as the new normal is likely to last a little longer.