Tools and Tips for Working Remotely

Tools and Tips for Working Remotely

A lot of companies have recently been faced with the need to work from home instead of the daily routine of going to the office. Thankfully there are some really great tools out there which can help with this and make working and collaborating with your team (or clients) a lot easier to manage. Below are some recommendations to help communicate, collaborate and keep things organised in the current climate.

Communication

Being able to communicate with your team or clients when working remotely is something that is vital to keeping your projects managed. There are two really good options available in Zoom and Skype which can help with this. My preference is Zoom as its really easy to use and doesn't require as much setup.

Zoom allows you to easily schedule a meeting and send an invite by email to a team member or client which they can then just click to join the call. You can use just audio or it also gives the option for video chat (just remember not to be in your PJs!) and you can also screen share which is really handy for reviewing content.

Zoom offers both free and paid options, but with the free version you can have up to 100 people on a call or meeting for up to 40-minutes at a time. Another great feature is these calls can be recorded which means you can review any screen shares or create minutes of the meeting or any additional notes to then be added to your project management.

Project Management

While most tech companies already probably have their own project management tools they use, those of you who are used to just discussing progress in team meetings are now possibly looking for options to track who is working on what.

There are some really great tools out there each with different features and complexity depending on your needs. My recommendations would be Teamwork, Asana and Trello.

Teamwork - great for working on larger projects and assigning task lists, managing time spent on projects and keeping track of progress. Also great for larger teams where members might be working across multiple projects.

Asana - great for smaller teams, managing task lists and time tracking

Trello - think digital post-it notes, great for people who are visual and usually stick post-it notes all over the office whiteboard.

All of the above options come with different features, price plans and integrations so see which one suits your business best.

Team Chat

Outside of meetings you will have the need for shorter forms of chat where you need to ask a team member a question or maybe consult with a client. For this the go-to tool to use is Slack - for connecting with clients you could consider using WhatsApp.

Slack allows text-based chat back and forth between you and the members of your team. You can also include images, documents and files in your messages. It will even integrate with some of the project management tools above to notify your team as new tasks are assigned or completed.

 

Hopefully the above tools and tips are useful and will help in managing your business when forced to work remotely.