Work from home type of jobs was reserved solely for employees who had to go on parental leave or couldn’t otherwise attend work in-person. These days, remote-friendly is one of the most commonly found terms when looking at new job listings in industries like tech, marketing, engineering, and more. Likewise, a lot of new companies coming up are built solely on the foundation of a remote-only type of job environment. And this is largely because of the available talent pool across the globe. It’s not as easy to sort out things like visas or work permits for people who you would really like to have on your team. So, working remotely is a sound compromise in situations where you’re looking for the top talent for your team. If we look at the statistics of remote work before and after COVID-19 hit the world, we can see that 44% of the people work remotely 5 days a week from 17% before COVID-19. If you frequently check for tech-related jobs on the ever-popular Hacker News “Who is Hiring?” monthly thread, more and more companies are listing their job opportunities as remote-friendly. From just a dozen listings a few years ago to more than 100 companies looking for talent that wishes to work from the comfort of their own home or office. So, to sum it up, it’s a great time to become a remote worker. Work on the beach on a tropical island (digital nomadism), work from home while watching over your kids, or work from your car while the sights of Grand Canyon linger in your foreground.
Communication and the role it plays in work
Although the perks of working remotely can be tremendous, let’s not look past the fact that you are still working as a part of a bigger team. This means that communication is still an essential part of your daily (or at least bi-daily) workflow. Graphics designers, freelance writers, or otherwise gig-based remote workers can often get away with Email/Slack communication alone. But this won’t be the case if you’re joining a company as an engineer, human relations representative, or any other job type where communication is an essential part of the job’s description. So, for that reason alone, companies and startups generally have to decide on a specific remote communications tool they’re going to use in the long term. Sometimes, choosing a specific tool backfires, and you need to transfer everything to an alternative. Likewise, you have to consider the learning curve and the usability of the specific remote communications tool for your type of company.
Tools for communicating with your remote team
A single Google search for “remote communication tools” will return a billion results. It’s a lucrative topic to focus on because remote work is growing (as we learned), and the fact that starting your own business of this type can be lucrative, as well.
Slack
Slack is probably the most popular tool of this type on the market. Not only did Slack go through several acquisitions, but it also attracted an enormous amount of investments from individual investors and angel companies. This then culminated in Slack going public (IPO) at a staggering price of $38.50 per share at a $23 billion valuation. Having used Slack as a remote worker/employee myself, I only have good things to say about it. It really does make it easy to communicate with your team members, and in multiple different ways, I might add. Although initially built as a tool for chat-based communication, Slack has evolved to include audio and video calls, too. This makes it easy to jump in on a conference call, mentor new employees, or host general meetings across the board. But that’s not all. Slack also specializes in helping solve individual problems for specific industries. And those industries are:
MarketingEngineeringITCustomer SupportHuman ResourcesProject ManagementMedia…and more!
Whichever industry you work in, Slack ensures that communication is as smooth as possible. As an example, if you run a marketing agency and would like to use Slack to communicate with your team and your clients, there are some significant advantages you can benefit from. First of which is the integration with your favorite marketing tools. Slack supports all your favorite marketing tools (more than 100 at the time of writing this) that you can integrate directly into your communications process. So, things like invoices, social media stuff, reviews, etc. can be managed directly from your Slack dashboard. And this goes out to all the other types of industries to which Slack caters. Is it the jack of all trades? To some extent, sure. But, I believe that specific situations require different tools and approaches to solving communication issues. So, let’s take a look at what other remote communication tools there are on the market. And, perhaps you find something more suitable for your business type or project you’re working on.
Connecteam
Communication tools are viral as it allows employees to connect and collaborate. Connecteam is an all-in-one company app that will enable teams to manage, communicate and train non-desk employees that are easy to scale, customize and use. It has several features such as employee scheduling, employee time clock, employee communication, employee ask management, checklists & forms, and employee training & knowledge center. Connecteam is fit for several things such as:
Simplified internal communication keeps everyone on the same page, gathers measurable feedback, boosts engagement, countless communication, and increases transparency.Managing tasks easily with fewer clicks, collaborating with the team quickly, creating tasks, and real-time automated notifications.It allows easier time tracking and managing employees with an accurate and straightforward time clock. It also employs labor laws, improves time management, eliminates buddy-punching, more straightforward payroll process, avoids time theft, etc.Automate work processes and go paperless, making businesses embrace digitalization.Saving time scheduling with customizable features ensures a great user experience and fewer errors for managers and employees.
The tool offers a better onboarding process and training to understand the tracking progress with visual insights, professional team, and measuring performance with quizzes. Connecteam offers full clarity as it allows creating content, modifying admin access, running tasks, supervising employees, and so on.
Workplace
Workplace from Meta allows is not only the chatting tool but also allows employees to video call. The business communication tool has made engaging, connecting, and informing employees irrespective of their location and time. If you are looking for a tool that level-up company communication, creates a great culture, and grow employee engagement, the Workplace can be a good fit. It is a secure tool based on a similar technology as Facebook with features like making groups, live videos, and chatting with the employees or team. It is easier to integrate the communication tool with any product, including Microsoft, Dropbox, and Google. Any successful remote team needs a tool to communicate effortlessly and track projects in real-time. It boasts a clean User Interface that takes less than a minute to adapt. These guys have invested a lot of their thinking into making the Workplace as simple and effective as humanly possible. It connects the frontline workers with WhatsApp integration, making it easier for employees to communicate and positively impact the company.
Monday.com
If you’re looking for a reliable way to manage projects at scale, look no further than Monday.com. Nobody likes missed deadlines or, worse, unresolved issues that directly affect customers (sales!). And Monday.com deals with this puzzle with its remote working tool. The remote working tool comes with cloud-based features making it easier for users to set goals, align tasks with the team, boost team collaboration, track progress, and communicate with the employees. Create a plan, write out the individual tasks, and assign the appropriate team members for each task. It’s that simple. And you can repeat this process, directly from Monday, as many times as you like. The tool makes it easier to reinforce company culture, communicate across platforms, manage their workflows, keep materials updated, and facilitate team-wide communication. The typically cloud-based solution can easily manage workflows for employees, track progress, and prioritize projects or tasks. It is a one-in-all remote working solution allowing users to share information and manage deadlines or workloads. The employers can also create a new hires board easily, including checklists, tasks, attach videos, automatic check-ins, etc. And so much more. It would be easy to dedicate an entire article to the exceptional features that Monday provides for remote teams.
ClickUp
Make the collaboration more accessible and manage the work from anywhere with ClickUp. The remote work OS tool can make it easier to plan the tasks and know the team’s work and status. The users can easily cut out emails regarding action-based communications, establish clear processes with the team, create reminders, review weekly goals, etc. ClickUp allows users to choose work views, filter workflow, and get the tasks on dashboards to make it easier to track employees. It helps visualize the project progress, adjust timelines, and see what the employees are doing. Employees can work in real-time and report the tasks for seamless virtual management. Since we are on development, it also monitors backlogs and sprints, making a step towards a solution for remote development teams. The idea with ClickUp is that you can assign an entire team from the project start to finish. As a result, everything from error fixing to ticket management can be accomplished and top the development game. The conversations regarding projects and tasks come with emojis, attachments, links, etc., to make it interactive and collaborative. Along with it, one can easily set priorities for groups and tasks. Users can integrate ClickUp with Zoom to schedule and start meetings instantly from within tasks, receive meeting details, get notified to join meetings, and even get the recording links. Along with Zoom, ClickUp is easily integrated with Calendar, Google Drive, Dropbox, Slack, and OneDrive Cloud Storage. There are several pre-built templates that users can customize, give transparency, and prioritize tasks. Team members can assign the tasks to ensure that everything is covered and collaborate.
Microsoft Teams
If you are looking for a collaboration and communication tool in one, then Microsoft Teams is a good pick. The all-in-one tool is easy for the users as it creates space for the members to communicate and assign tasks. This tool is a perfect fit for professional and personal communication that one can use for school. The tools come with several features, such as sharing your opinions, sending emojis, stickers, and GIFs in one-to-one messages and group chat. It is easy to connect with two to 10,000 users using Meet over one-on-one, video conference, and group chat. Receive and make calls directly like cloud voicemail, group calling, and call transfers with other advanced features. Users can also share, find, and edit files in real-time using Microsoft products such as PowerPoint, Word, and Excel.
Workvivo
When it comes to employee communication software, many companies prefer Workvivo as the top choice. It allows employees to connect to bring them together. The features introduce digital features enabling companies to connect, excite, and engage. The users can overcome any work-related challenges using Workvivo to connect people. It helps communicate with employees via news articles, videos, Livestream, and podcasts, allowing them to interact, like, post, and comment on the feeds. The users can measure morale and feedback through Pulse surveys and polls. Workvivo can achieve employee-organization alignment, give recognition through public shout-outs, nominate colleagues for awards or badges, tags goals, etc., to enhance employee experience. The tool works like a social intranet that engages with content on the team and reduces noise from email or chat.
Closing words
Evidently, there are countless amazing tools for managing a remote work environment. I think, overall, we have touched upon some of the best of the best on the market right now. In the end, you have to decide what is a good fit for your specific business, and the type of team you are managing. Getting set up with your project management environment is always messy at first. But once you get it going, it should be a breeze to steer through projects and individual tasks. The tools showcased here are just right for your specific needs.
