More and more employers are acknowledging the advantages of telecommuting. Remote work makes for flexible hours and schedules and opens new work opportunities.
According to Forbes, the number of remote workers in the US has risen by 159% since 2007. And during this time, developments in video conferencing and remote work tools revolutionized the workforce by facilitating virtual offices.
This blog will discuss selected tools to help tackle your work from home. Because, as you’ll come to learn, having the right tools at your disposal increases your chance of success. They will keep you connected with your team and foster productivity while working comfortably from home.
Let’s dive right in.
I | Essential Tools for Working from Home
Whether you’re a small start-up, a freelancer, or a full-time office worker assigned to working remotely, for the time being, setting up your home office is crucial.
All teams are indeed different, and each industry has its own needs, but there are four essential elements all have in common:
- Communication
- Planning
- Project Management
- Tracking
1. Communication Tools
Communication is vital, no matter where you work. And working remotely calls for innovative ways of keeping the lines of communication open. You can’t simply walk into your boss’s office or ask your teammate to take a quick peek at your computer screen.
So how can you keep the lines of communication open?
Recommendation: Slack
Removes tedious email chains
Emails are great, but for discussions between multiple team members or lengthy conversations, it becomes a problem. Email threads are clunky and annoying to navigate.
For extended conversations, you need an app designed for ongoing communications. One that offers chat threads and even separate windows for one-on-one discussions.
Team meetings and collaboration
Slack is a tried and proven hub for team collaborations. And it also works for freelancers looking for a reliable means of holding consultation calls with clients. If you are an Infopreneur who sells courses, you can start a group for your students to interact with you and each other.
Slack offers secured channels for group and individual chats, voice calls, video chats, and file and screen sharing. Mark channels as private, so only those you invite directly will gain access to the thread.
Flexible remote working software
Slack offers various integration options, from Google Calendar to Trello, Zoom, Dropbox, Jira, and many others. Its integration flexibility makes it a convenient remote working tool.
The free plan has some limitations, but Slack’s free plan is sufficient for small teams, freelancers, and startups.
Additional Tools:
- Wireless headphones with a microphone: You’ll need these for voice and video calls. They provide a hands-free medium while you type or take handwritten notes during the conversation. Laptops have built-in speakers and microphones, but the quality is often poor. And if others are in the house, they’ll pick up all the background noises.
- Video cam: For video calls, seminars, workshops, etc.
- Ergonomic keyboards: For comfort during the long hours of typing.
2. Project Management
Tackling your to-do list while coordinating team assignments and deadlines is tricky. If you’re switching to working from home while maintaining your full-time job, the difficulty level goes up as it’s a new frontier.
Freelancers who’ve been in the game for a while are familiar with the temptations of working from home. Self-motivation is more challenging than you think when you have more “free time.” You’ll need all the help you can get.
Recommendation: Teamwork
Flexible for all industries
Project management tools eliminate the hassle of staying on top of to-do lists and coordinating team assignments. There are many options on the market covering various industry needs, working styles, and team sizes. Investing in the most comprehensive option will save you money and the hassle of remembering multiple logins.
Simplified tracking software
Over the years, I’ve gone through a few team collaboration apps. Some weren’t user-friendly, while others had minimal features.
Teamwork scored high in ease of use and came with more features than I honestly use. But I am not the only one on my team, and though I don’t use some features, they do. It allows for setting up individual projects and task lists and assigning recipients from drop-down menus.
Set deadlines and track the progress via the overview menu in each project. It includes a calendar where everyone can see daily schedules, deadlines, and assigned tasks. Calendars offer an at-a-glance audit of the time slots allocated for work.
Tracking employees’ time on a task is as easy as starting a timer provided in the app. Logged times automatically show up on a timesheet. From there, employees can add their hours to an invoice generated in the program and export it to pdf, excel, word, and other formats.
Additional integrations
Although Teamwork provides an area for file uploads, it’s barebones. It makes up for this by offering integrations with popular storage apps like Dropbox and Google Drive. Check out their website for the full list of integrations.
3. Tools for File Sharing
You’ll need space to store and share the files you set up for your projects. Emailing documents, images, and other collaterals back and forth is no longer necessary. Cloud-based storage apps offer (almost) real-time syncing capabilities.
Recommendation: Google Drive
It’s a household name
Google Drive is one of the most popular options. While working with your team, having access to essential business documents and sharing files with your teammates is vital.
Not to mention having everything in one easy-to-access place keeps things organized. It’s a great complement to Teamwork as a project management tool.
Backups made easy
If you work alone, it’s still a good idea to back up your documents on a cloud server. You’ll be able to access your files from multiple devices. And if your computer or laptop gives out, you have additional copies of your records.
Free plans for storage all come with limitations. The 15G space Google offers all Gmail users for simple file storing is adequate. If you’re saving a lot of images and videos, you may need more space.
Downloading Drive onto your computer and laptop makes backing up your files a breeze. Once you install the Drive and it’s synced, you can copy and paste documents or work directly from the folder.
Offline capabilities
You can also access files offline and on your mobile devices and set sharing permissions for different files and folders. If you’re using Doc, the suggestion and commenting features simplify giving and getting feedback.
4. Time Management Tools
Meeting deadlines in a more flexible environment requires discipline. The more time you have, the more crucial it is to manage it.
Recommendation: Google Calendar
Time blocking and management
All longstanding members of the WFH Club know the trap that is ‘free time.’
Working outside strict work guidelines and having a manager looking over your shoulder requires considerable discipline. Worse if you are in the comfort of your own home.
Managing time for tasks is an individual mission. Team leaders and managers can send a message here and there to check on your progress, but constant messages asking, “are you done yet?” isn’t a productive use of anyone’s time.
If your team uses Teamwork, you can integrate it with their Google Calendar. All Android phones come with it, and it works on iPhones too. Create shared calendars for client and team meetings, deadlines, and whatever else needs scheduling.
If you work alone, the same principles apply. Time block your day in color-coded slots for ease of reference.
5. Presentation Tools
What happens when you have a video conference or presentation for work or a client?
Recommendation: Zoom
Virtual meeting in a pinch
Zoom focuses on video communications. Because of this and the live streaming features for split/multi-screen and multi-streaming, most people, including businesses, use Zoom for video conference calls, online presentations, and workshops.
A valuable benefit of the platform is the ability to record your streams. This feature is excellent for keeping meeting records and videos of seminars and workshops for replay viewing.
Zoom also comes with the option of creating virtual backgrounds, which allows you to change the backdrop in your Zoom meetings.
Say, for instance, you’re presenting for a client pitch. You can swap out your neutral background with a branded backdrop.
Self-conscious about your appearance on camera? You can tweak your video with Zoom’s touch-up feature.
Conclusion
And there you have it, the bare essential tools you need to conquer working at home. These recommendations are not your only options. Google workspace has various features like Google Meet and Google Hangouts for video and voice calls.
There are other apps and platforms out there, and with the increased demand for remote work tools, companies are upping their features and security.
The best way to determine what works for you is to test them out and make changes as you go along.
