A few years ago, working remotely was mostly seen as a low-paying customer service job. But now, with changing trends, it has become a full-time career option. Technology has made it possible to do the same job from anywhere in the world. People all over the world are trying to adapt to this technology. Businesses are trying to get into this to keep up with the changing needs of their employees and to adapt to talent from different parts of the world.
How To Manage Remote Teams
The key to managing remote teams successfully is to set up a system that allows everyone to communicate and work together effectively. This includes setting up regular communication channels, such as weekly video conferences, and having a central place where everyone can access project documents and resources. Additionally, it’s important to give team members clear instructions and deadlines, and to provide feedback regularly.
The growing trend in remote working
There are several reasons for the growth of remote working. One reason is that there is a trend for companies to want to save on office space and associated costs. Additionally, remote working can offer employees a better work/life balance as they don’t have to commute to an office every day. Finally, with advances in technology, it is now easier than ever to stay connected and productive when working remotely.
The benefits include:
- Setting your working schedule
- The comfort of being at home
- Chance to travel more
- Less stress
- Better time management for personal life
- More satisfying
There are many benefits of remote work but you have to find the best practices for managing remote teams. Here are some tools that will make it easier to manage remote workers and keep them productive.
Remote Work Tools for Remote Teams
Best Project management Tool
Some teams might try to handle everything by sending particularly dangerous emails. Project management systems can help virtual teams to organize documents and tasks, and make it easier for the teams to communicate.
ProofHub
ProofHub is an online project management software that is used by hundreds of remote teams. It allows team members to interact with each other and with clients smoothly and comes with many features, such as online proofing and discussions, chat for feedback, and remote project management. Having all of these features in one place is essential for teams that need a high level of management proficiency.
Nuclino
Nuclino was inspired by the idea of a collective brain. It’s a unified workspace where remote teams can bring all their knowledge, docs, and projects together in one place, replacing multiple other remote work tools. You can use Nuclino to build your company wiki, manage projects and tasks, share and work on documents in real-time, onboard new remote employees, and more – all without the chaos of files and folders, context switching, or silos. The List, Board, and Graph views help you organize your docs and projects in a way that best fits your workflow.
Nuclino is a great choice for people who want a simple, easy to use interface that is quick. It has all the features you need to get things done, without any extras that might get in the way.
Nuclino is very easy to use and does not require any prior knowledge.
Basecamp
Basecamp is popular among managers, teams, freelancers, and agencies for its functionality, design, and usability. It helps you manage projects and communicate with clients effectively.
This project management software provides various features and tools to help with collaboration, including sharing ideas and conversations, as well as staying on the same page throughout the project.
While you get to experience some advantages with Basecamp, there are also some serious limitations, like the lack of time tracking, archiving topics, and subtasks, as well as a professional team hierarchy. These limitations are why many organizations and teams are looking for alternatives to Basecamp.
No tool is perfect, so Basecamp might be a good choice for you depending on your specific needs.
Instagantt
You can use Instagantt to create a detailed visual representation of your project, including all of its tasks and deadlines. This can help you better understand the project as a whole, and make sure that all of its parts are properly coordinated. Additionally, Instagantt can be used to track your project’s progress and ensure that it is on track.
Instagantt is designed to streamline communication and collaboration between team members. It comes with plenty of features that make it perfect for remote work, such as the ability to create tasks and subtasks, templates for different types of projects, guidelines, milestones, notifications, baselines, critical paths, and automatic project scheduling. These features help team members stay up-to-date on all aspects of the project at all times.
Instagantt is great for managing projects because it allows you to track important details like deadlines, risks, priorities, and estimated hours and costs. It’s perfect for managing different types of projects, clients, and teams, or even for keeping track of how each person is managing their workload.
Email Marketing Tools with Analytics
EmailAnalytics
EmailAnalytics helps you see how productive your team is with email. You can see each member’s average response time, as well as how many emails each member sends and receives every day. Sales and customer service teams use it to monitor and improve email productivity, and EmailAnalytics users see an average of a 42.5% improvement in email response time. That increased speed leads to a 16% increase in sales, on average.
To make things more convenient for team managers, you can receive email reports with data to compare your team against other teams daily, weekly, or monthly, and see your team’s improvement over time.
If you and your remote team rely on email to communicate then you need to start using EmailAnalytics. With just a few clicks you can set up the software and start tracking your team’s email activity. It’s a valuable tool for any remote team that wants to improve their productivity.
Communication Remote Work Tools
The biggest hurdle that team members need to overcome when they first go remote is how to communicate with each other if they can’t meet in person.
Visme’s remote team uses various communication tools, from chat platforms to online meeting rooms.
Slack
Slack is a communication platform that is perfect for remote teams. It can be accessed from the desktop app, a web browser, or the mobile app.
It’s easy to communicate on Slack. You can set up channels for specific teams, departments, or projects, where a group of members can have virtual meetings.
Private or group chats can be used to discuss work tasks or have a conversation.
Slack has a lot of apps that work together to make communication easier with your team. For example, you can add Google Drive to preview docs in messages, Zoom for the conference call, and Google Calendar to keep tabs on schedules.
If you want to add a bit of fun to your messages, you can use emojis or add GIFs through Slack’s Giphy app integration.
Slack has a plan that is free for life but has limited storage for messages. If you want more message storage and other features, you can upgrade to a paid plan.
Timezone.io
Some companies have employees who work remotely from all over the world. This means that people are working at different times, depending on their location. They might have employees in the United States, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Ecuador, and more.
A tool like Timezone.io can help everyone on the team know what timezone co-workers are in, and when they are available or not.
Timezone.io is a great tool for scheduling meetings, collaborating on projects, and getting feedback. It’s especially useful when your team members are spread out.
You can set up a profile on Timezone.io for free and add your team members by asking them where they are and putting in their name and email.
Creating a team profile on Timezone.io will eliminate the need to constantly google what time it is in various locations.
Whereby
Conducting online meetings is an important part of working remotely. Whereby is great because users don’t need to log in and can join a meeting with one click.
Meetings can be conducted right on the browser inside meeting rooms. These meeting rooms can be shared with a single URL, and they can be color customized to fit a brand or personalize your meeting space.
Whereby is free for one user and one meeting room. Medium to large teams can easily upgrade to paid plans for more users and more meeting rooms.
Kipwise
Kipwise is a tool that helps manage knowledge and communications within a team, by making sure that everyone has access to the information they need, no matter where they are in the world.
Using Kipwise, you can create structured and visually appealing internal documentation easily. Some key features that help teams enable a better internal knowledge flow:
- Powerful Slack integration – Handy slash command and Slack actions to create and search for team knowledge. You simply don’t have to leave Slack to build up your knowledge base.
- Real-time collaborative editor – With rich embedding options, your team can edit the same doc at the same time and create visually appealing documentation easily.
- Content review process – Set designated reviewers for your collections to ensure content is always up-to-date and accurate.
- Analytics – Get insights on how your team interacts with your knowledge base content to identify areas that they need more training on.
Brosix
Brosix is an instant messenger that is secure and has a lot of features that make it good for teamwork. Some of these features include being able to chat with text, audio, and video, as well as being able to send out broadcast messages and chat in chat rooms.
Productivity is guaranteed with the following features: secure file transfer, screen-sharing and device access, screenshots, whiteboards for brainstorming sessions, offline text messages, live chat for businesses, and a welcome module to ease usage.
This app enables administrators to have complete control over their team’s access and usage using a web control panel, user activity log, and chat app control. They can also view user activity history.
Brosix’s security features include the ability to control how long user activity history is stored, integrated antivirus protection, the ability to set different security levels for different users, and the ability to have multiple administrators.
Brosix regularly backs up data and stores them in at least two different locations. If a server fails, users are automatically redirected to another location.
Brosix is a cross-platform app that is only $4 per user, making it a great choice for startups who want to save money without sacrificing quality. The app also has a free tier for up to three users. Brosix offers responsive customer service to help you get started, guide you through the app, and provide technical support.
Chanty
Chanty is a team communication tool that allows you to manage tasks and collaborate with others.
Chanty offers an easily searchable message history, as well as audio and video calling capabilities and the ability to exchange voice messages with your team. Chanty also allows you to turn messages into tasks, which can be assigning using the Kanban view within the Chanty task manager.
Useful features on Chanty include the ability to pin messages, use mentions, create discussion threads, and use dark themes.
You can increase your productivity by connecting Chanty with a variety of different applications, including G Suite, Dropbox, Asana, Trello, Github, Zapier, and many others.
ProProfs Help Desk
If your remote support team is having trouble keeping up with customer requests and complaints, ProProfs Help Desk can help by consolidating all your customer-facing emails into one shared inbox.
The system will help you keep track of which agent is working on which ticket, and will allow you to maintain a database of all incidents in an interface that is similar to Gmail.
Your customer communication will be saved in one place for your agents to reference. They can also leave notes or create a child ticket for internal collaboration before responding. This will help them learn how close their team is to resolving the issue.
ProProfs Help Desk has a free trial for one user and one department but you can look into the essentials and premium plans to get access to unlimited inboxes and features.