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In the post-pandemic times, almost everything is returning to normal conditions except companies’ working and operating patterns. Numerous businesses have shifted their tasks to remote or hybrid setups. According to a prediction by UpWork, 73% of departments will have remote workers by the end of 2028.
As the trend of remote and hybrid work continues, its challenges remain the same and difficult to face. Various distractions, difficulties with time management, and shattered team communication are the most common obstacles, though there are more also.
Fortunately, with the help of widespread technology trends, many organizations have discovered digital tools to make operational business functions streamlined. Therefore, we have mentioned a list of tools you can consider for managing your routine operations while working remotely.
GoTo Meeting – Communication
GoTo Meeting is an efficient tool that helps remote teams communicate better with each other. It eliminates the distance boundaries with calls, video conferences, messages, and virtual meetings. In addition, it enhances presentations with screen sharing capabilities and eases learning management with recording features.
Highlighted features
- Audio calls to connect remote workers and HD video conferencing are available for better conversations. Bandwidth is automatically adjusted with the resources and hardware of the user.
- Brainstorming ideas deserve more and more appreciation and should be presented uniquely for better understanding; that’s why screen sharing makes it possible. Moreover, it presents the screen in real time so the attendees can have a seamless experience.
- Multiple presenters and participants and a long meeting session can be difficult to note every piece of information. Therefore, recording features streamline it for future reference.
ClickUp – Project Management
ClickUp manages crucial projects and tasks and tracks progress in real-time. It keeps the workflow organized and productivity at its peak. Task management, documents, scheduler, inbox, and many more functionalities – it offers every single feature that a project manager will need in the WFH setting. Project deadlines can be set and shared with employees.
Highlighted features
- Multitask toolbar enables a systematic view of all the projects, whether they are finished, ongoing, or upcoming. Managers can take a quick overview of ongoing activities and change their statuses in bulk.
- With calendar integration, managers and team members can track project deadlines easily. Managers can even view the workload of each member and track if someone is overscheduled.
- Daily task lists are produced automatically on the platform so every team member knows what they have to do next.
- Drag-and-drop functionalities let managers easily create tasks, assign them, and set priorities; the details get updated in the calendar when it’s done.
factoTime – Attendance Tracking
factoTime captures attendance data of remote employees and helps in their salary generation process. Clock-in and out features, shift creation, and salary calculation are the major offerings of the tool. In addition, it includes some advanced features to eliminate buddy punching and time threats by employees.
Highlighted features
- With the tool, employees can easily mark their punch from registered devices, and it starts calculating work hours. Managers can access these attendance records anytime.
- To ensure reliable attendance data, managers can get selfies and the locations of employees. Or they can scan unique employee QR codes to mark attendance as it prevents time theft. They can also restrict the staff from marking the punch from unregistered devices.
- Based on the pay rates and attendance data, the tool allows HR to calculate daily, weekly, or monthly salaries based on the pay rates and attendance data.
- Admins can create and assign flexible and fixed schedules for employees.
- To help businesses make smarter decisions, detailed, ready-to-generate reports are available at their fingertips.
Dropbox – Document Collaboration And Cloud Storage
Dropbox stores critical data in the cloud and enables document collaboration for remote teams. The tool makes the teams work together on documents and solutionizes the collaboration concerns. In addition, it syncs all your data so that you can access it anytime from an internet-connected device.
Highlighted features
- Every document and file brought to or created on the platform is stored in the cloud database. And SSL/TLS protocol ensures that the managers do not have to worry about data security.
- New documents can be created, and information can be stored in multiple formats, such as images, videos, and text. In addition, users can collaborate on documents in real-time and make edits to the data.
- As some documents might be used for government and compliance-related work, managers may face difficulties in getting employees’ signs on particular documents. So, the tool makes it easy to get the documents signed.
TINYpulse – Employee Engagement Surveys
TINYpulse is an employee engagement and feedback tool best for managers to build a culture where employees stay engaged and productive. Anonymous feedback for managers from subordinates, pulse surveys, and ML-based sentiment analysis are what make the tool creative and efficient in establishing a great work culture.
Highlighted features
- Managers can easily create surveys and add multiple yes/no or scale questions to ask. The tool recognizes all the responses and shows all of them as anonymous to the manager.
- Employees can encourage peers by sending them “cheers” so their work can be recognized and appreciated.
- They can also suggest changes in the company policies to draw management’s attention to particular areas.
- Analytics helps in getting the most out of data and making the employees more productive.
Evernote – Note Taking
Evernote manages multiple types of data and makes the workflow organized. In addition, it streamlines document management tasks with robust offerings such as multiple file support, search filters, image optimization, and readymade templates.
Highlighted features
- The tool offers various templates for note-taking, and templates are divided into three major categories: school, office, and life.
- Personal planners, calendars, worksheets, habit trackers, and many other notes can be easily created and classified.
- Web clipper of the tool lets you save web pages, articles, images, PDFs, and screen captures. All resources can be easily organized under notebooks, and comments can be added with screenshots.
- The optical character recognition capabilities help users to find essential data on time. It can even identify images and PDFs, so users do not have to search for data manually.
Appointy – Appointment Scheduling
Appointy makes meetings and appointment scheduling easy and organizes managers’ schedules, so their time doesn’t go wasted. Self-booking, work hours calculation, integrated calendar, prepayment, and client verification are the major attractions of the tool.
Highlighted features
- The best offering of the tool is its appointment scheduling capabilities. You can easily share your calendar with others, and they can book available time slots. Once the particular slot is booked, the details get synced in the central calendar, and both persons get notified,
- Employers can add their employees’ work hours and schedules. The system ensures that the business doesn’t get short-staffed.
- Resources are also managed easily with Appointy; it allows users to book facilities or equipment.
Ending Notes
As previously said, remote work is the future of business operations as it boosts business productivity. Therefore, using digital tools is a must as they are the backbone of virtual offices. If implemented correctly, tech tools can solve numerous issues remote workers face in the new work settings. They can even help the company to improve team productivity and achieve goals. Hope the list of tools helps you manage essential business operations in a remote work setup.
