Remote work is on the rise, and for good reason.
When you think about it, companies save a ton of money when they don’t have to pay for office space in every city.
But there are some challenges that come with remote work—notably team management becomes more difficult.
The best way to overcome this challenge? Shifting those resources you used to spend on office leases and allocating them to technology to help your team stay connected.
In this post, we will discuss how technology can help make your remote team more productive with messaging apps, project management software, and time tracking solutions.
Communication (2.0)
Many companies don’t think twice about their teams using Slack for messaging, but as your team grows it can be difficult to manage the constant activity and separate important messages from the chatter.
The benefit of Slack is that a thread is a very simple way to notify multiple people across all their devices. However, at times, this can be unnecessary and annoying, especially when one team member’s prime work hours is another’s dinner time.
There are a number of tools that have grown over the last few years that focus on more effective, asynchronous communication and are especially useful for dispersed teams:
Loom
They often say that a picture is worth 1000 words. With Loom you can use video to get your message across. We’ve seen teams use Loom successfully for internal as well as external communications.
Loom offers simplified video messaging and allows you to record a message – up to 15 minutes long. With the combination of video and a screen share, teams can get their messages across succinctly and clearly.
The person receiving the video can replay it as many times as they need, making Loom a helpful tool to reduce meetings as well.
Loom pricing is fairly straightforward with a starter package that allows up to 50 individuals to create 25 videos each for Free. For businesses prices start at $8/person on a monthly basis.
Yac
Similar to Loom, Yac also focuses on asynchronous communication, finding an opportunity to reduce the number of Zoom meetings and the abundance of Slack messages.
Yac’s interface looks more similar to Slack with communications separated into DMs and Channels and is more focused on internal communication than Loom.
Yac includes video messaging functionality, many use cases involve simple voice messages the transcription functionality allows for powerful transcriptions and search.
Yac’s pricing model includes a free plan with limited features. The paid plan starts at $3/month per user and includes advanced features such as integrations, transcription, and more.
Krisp
Krisp is a communication service powered by AI that focuses on increased productivity and efficiency. It is available as an app that integrates with hundreds of communication apps to remove extraneous noises from calls.
Krisp lets teams communicate more effectively with each other. In today’s world, having the ability to hide some of the “normal” noises that come from family life can be a lifesaver in corporate communication.
Krisp has several different plans available starting with a Free plan for the person that only works remotely on occasion. Team plans start at $5/user per month and provide unlimited noise removal in comparison to the 240 min/week available on the Free plan.
People and Operations
Having a way to find, hire and onboard people in multiple countries is challenging, but it’s increasingly necessary to stay competitive.
Remote employees can function anywhere in the world with access to high-speed internet, and there are plenty of services that make this process easier—if not for you directly then at least your remote team members.
Deel
Deel is built around simplifying the way in which businesses source and hire international talent. It’s a platform for finding, vetting, and managing remote workers you work with through an online workspace.
Deel not only improves the way you find employees and contractors, but it also helps with the whole payroll and compliance process too.
With Deel, you can hire both contractors and full-time employees. Prices start at $49 per month, however, there are significant discounts available.
Virtual Office
Virtual office software can help your teams feel more comfortable with their work environment. We covered Virtual office tools more extensively in our previous post, but you can find an additional option below:
Pukkateam
PukkaTeam is a virtual office platform that’s designed to boost staff collaboration. It integrates with Slack and allows for voice, video, screen sharing as well as chat capabilities all within the same interface so you can join meetings easily without having to jump around different platforms.
Pukka Team has lots of different pricing plans based on the size of the organization as well as the features you’re looking for. Pukka Team packages start at $7/user per month and go up to $12/user month.
Conclusion
Having the right tools in place for your remote team can make or break a business, so it’s important to choose those that best fit the needs of your organization.
To do this, you’ll need to consider what type of work is being done on a regular basis and which tools will help improve communication between employees in order for them to succeed.
While there are many great options out there, the list above will provide you with some of the top picks for your organization to test and explore.
Let us know what you think!