This article will examine 8 types of workforce platforms and recommend specific tools that are essential to get the most out of your remote team.
Remote work is becoming the new normal for many businesses all over the world. Many managers are now faced with the struggle to manage remote teams for the first time. Managing remote teams is not the same as managing teams in a traditional office setting. The lack of face-to-face interaction may cause communication issues. The need to facilitate collaboration with team members across multiple time zones can get messy. Fortunately, there are tools and resources that help managers stay on top of their telecommuting employees and maximize their production.
To help determine the best tools for your business, we have categorized them by 8 functions.
- Video Conferencing
Video conferencing allows remote employees to visually interact with each other. Face to face interaction is important to build a stronger connection between coworkers and allows attendees to communicate via visual cues. When communication is restricted to only verbal or written, a portion of the message could be lost because people communicate with visual cues. Managers have the opportunity to see discomfort or hesitation in their team and can address the issue immediately.
Google Meet is a solution that allows employees to communicate visually with coworkers all around the globe. The application integrates other Google applications such as Calendar and Gmail to enable users to present and collaborate with viewers across all devices.
Zoom has become the go to solution for video conferencing. The program is user friendly and allows attendees to join with video or dial in with a phone connection, share their screen and record the meeting to be reviewed at a later time.
- Instant Messaging
Instant messaging allows team members to quickly and instantly chat with each other. There are status settings that allow coworkers to know when other coworkers are available, away, in a meeting or any other status. This is ideal for teammates to communicate and find answers from each other quickly without drafting a formal email.
Skype is one of the oldest instant messaging systems around. With Skype, users can host virtual meetings and create group chats. VOIP options are also available to quickly call and verbally chat with a teammate or make voice calls.
Slack has become popular for instant messaging. Users can create group chats called “channels” and when there is too much traffic within a channel, it can be sectioned off into smaller channels. Slack also integrates with Google Docs and DropBox and the API allows developers to tailor apps for specific needs within the team.
- Project Management
Project management software is now more important than ever because it allows managers to setup projects, assign tasks to team members and monitor the progress of a project. Managers can setup a task within a project and assign it to their employee and ensure the task is completed within the schedule assigned to the employee.
Asana is a powerful project management tool that goes beyond task management and collaboration. It features workflow management which allows managers to take point and draw a project map. This allows managers to fix plans, spot errors and ensure no tasks are lost. The timeline feature also allows managers to ensure tasks are completed within their scheduled time frame.
Basecamp is very popular because it features a highly intuitive interface. It provides the basics of project management such as task management, messaging, filesharing, arrange meetings and search. The dashboard provides managers a bird’s eye view of all ongoing projects.
- Employee Monitoring
Managers have the ongoing responsibility to ensure their team is constantly improving its performance. This is especially important to businesses with sales or customer service call centers because sales training and coaching to improve performance is key to the company’s success. To properly coach a sales or customer service call center, employee monitoring is necessary and this includes both a call recording solution and screen capture software.
VSLogger is a powerful call recording software program by Versadial Solutions. VSLogger goes beyond a basic call recording system and features in-depth call reports to determine when call volume is highest for businesses to properly staff their call centers, a book-marking system to silence or extract a portion of a call for further review, the ability to monitor, download, search and playback both live and recorded calls.
Screen Capture is a computer screen recorder program to capture the activity on an employee’s computer. The program may run in the background of an employee’s computer and take snapshots of the screen. The manager can also setup the program to record the computer screen activity like a video and setup triggers to begin recording such as microphone or speaker activity.
Businesses can setup both VSLogger and Screen Capture to work in tandem and save the activity into a single audio / video file.
- File Collaboration
File collaboration on the cloud is the perfect tool for businesses to share files with remote teams. Collaboration of files can be stored in a centralized location that can be easily accessed over the internet.
Google Suite (G Suite) offers a platform to allow teams to collaborate using their Google Docs platform. Tools such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentation slides and more are included in the platform. Managers can create folders, store files and provide read or edit access to these folders or files for any team member.
Microsoft Office 365 offers the same cloud storage, file sharing and collaboration features as G Suite. Microsoft takes it to another level by allowing team members to download software apps such as Word, Excel and Power Point to their local computer. This frees the employee from requiring an internet connection to work on a file. Microsoft also has a type of version control to allow users to checkout a file, make changes and check the file back into the system. Managers can view the changes and restore an earlier version of a document.
- Cloud Storage and File Management
Cloud storage is also a great tool for businesses to transfer files to remote teams. Access to multimedia files and documents that are too large to be sent by email can be stored in a centralized location.
Google Drive is a cloud storage platform to store all of your business’ files. Google drive syncs with each team member’s local drive to ensure the entire team has access to the most recent files. When managers pair the file collaboration feature in G Suite, they can control and provide different levels of access to folders to each employee.
Drop Box offers cloud storage and file sharing. The program is highly intuitive, can be downloaded easily onto the employee’s desktop and provides a drag and drop feature for file sharing. Managers may also setup auto-sync to ensure every team member is working on the latest files.
- Time Zone Monitoring
One of the greatest benefits for businesses with telecommuting employees is hiring talent all around the globe. This does create an issue for managers because they will need to facilitate collaboration between team members in different time zones.
World Time Buddy allows managers to add multiple time zones in a single view. The program integrates with Google Calendar to help managers find an open time slot to schedule a meeting. World Time Buddy also features tabbing to group different teams together.
Every Time Zone offers a user friendly and intuitive interface. The work schedules of the team can be entered into the system. Managers can then choose a date and the system will provide recommended times when each team member may be able attend a meeting. The manager can then setup the meeting, download a file and email it out to each meeting member. The file can integrate into each attendee’s respective calendar.
- Password Vaults
Security is essential for all businesses and when employees are spread all around the globe, managers need to ensure shared systems have secured passwords. Password Vaults allow managers to generate strong passwords and store them into a central location. Users can log into the system and retrieve the passwords from a single location.
1Password features the ability to secure workstations both in the office and remote locations. It also allows managers to choose which team member gets access with multi-authentication. 1Password provides a watchtower that alerts users of security breaches.
Lastpass features a Sharing Center to share notes and passwords to an unlimited number of users and provides a security level check to let users know the level of safety in the passwords they choose.
Conclusion
This article has listed many tools and it may be difficult to decide which tool is the right fit. Every business is unique and a solution that works best for one company may not work well for another. It is up to the business to furnish their employees with the right resources to help them be as productive when they are working remotely as they are working in a traditional office.
About the Author
Jim Shay is the Senior Copywriter at Versadial Solutions, a software company that provides powerful call recording solutions to government, manufacturing, telecommunications, call centers, public safety, financial services and many other industries.