30-Second summary
- Remote work has become increasingly common in recent years.
- To maximize performance in this new way of work, it’s important to find methods to stay productive, help you keep your work organized, and to stoke your motivation.
- With the right tools, remote employees can be productive and successful when working from home.
Remote work has become increasingly common in recent years. In 2021, nearly half of U.S employees were working from home to some capacity and that trend doesn’t seem to change anytime soon. Working remotely can be a big change for those who aren’t familiar with the work from home environment. To maximize performance in this new way of work, it’s important to find methods to stay productive, help you keep your work organized, and to stoke your motivation. If you are one of the employees that have started working remotely, below are 10 tools that can improve productivity.
Communication tools
To maximize productivity, whether you’re on a team at work or working with a client, communication software is essential to sharing important messages to your colleagues and clients. Instant messaging tools like Slack, and email tools like Microsoft Outlook are all effective communication tools you should have set up. Being able to provide multiple channels of communication to conduct business will make you more reachable and empowers you to communicate more effectively and productively.
Video Conferencing tools
Since you are working remotely, you can no longer walk over to your colleague or manager’s desk for input on an assignment or project. To stay productive when working from home, being able to make a video call with your co-workers is essential to moving a project forward. Video conferencing tools like Zoom or Microsoft Teams are a great substitute for those in-person meetings.
Project Management tools
When working remotely, you likely have a number of tasks and assignments to get done. What’s the best way for you to manage these tasks remotely? The answer is with project management tools. Project management tools are used for multiple reasons, such as project planning, resource allocation, time management, and performance monitoring. Project management tools provide insight into the progress of each assignment and project, will keep you up to date with where your team is each step of the way and will keep you productive throughout the day.
Cloud Storage and File Sharing tools
When working with a team of multiple people, you’ll need to have a method to share files and documents quickly and easily. Cloud storage and file sharing tools allow you to do just that. Tools like Dropbox and OneDrive are great tools to store all your documents and keep you organized on everything you’re working on remotely. Additionally, some of these file sharing tools integrate with file collaboration tools allowing for a seamless way for a team to work on documents all from their remote locations.
File collaboration tools
Similar to file sharing tools, you’ll need a way to collaborate with your team on a single version of a document, as opposed to sending multiple versions of the same document and being at risk of having version-control issues. To ensure this doesn’t happen, file collaboration tools are helpful in these situations. Tools like Google Drive and Microsoft Office offer online collaboration capabilities to ensure your team is working on the same version of a document at all times to keep you and your team organized and productive.
Web development tools
If you’re working remotely, chances are you or your company will need a website to put up. If this is the case, web development tools are essential to managing your website with little hassle and to maximize productivity. These tools require little to no code skills and will make creating a website much easier than in the early years of the internet. They will also provide key analytics to monitor traffic to your website.
Design tools
In today’s world, branding has become increasingly important. Effective branding requires stellar design. Designing content can be time consuming and can easily hinder productivity. However, with the right design tools you can streamline tedious tasks and maximize the productivity of your design process. Whether you’re designing content for your website, for an advertisement, or for sharing on social media, having effective design tools equipped will allow for an easy design process.
Research tools
When making propositions to your manager or any chief officers, you need a well-researched business case. You can easily go the traditional in-person route of conducting research on your own through focus groups, interviews, and conducting surveys, however these processes can be time-consuming and could hinder your productivity levels. Having access to researching tools will make this process easier. For example, if you’re conducting market research for a new product, tools like SurveyMonkey and Google Survey will streamline this process and keep you staying productive.
Time tracking tools
Since you’re not in the office, it can be difficult to manage and track your time at home. Having time tracking tools to track the amount of time you spend on certain assignments are helpful and will allow you to focus less time on tracking, and more time on doing. Popular time tracking tools include Clockify and Toggl. Additionally, these tools allow you to organize your time by project and makes is easier for billing when working with clients.
Note Taking Tools
When working in remote meetings, it’s important to take notes and keep track of key action items. Whether you have a dedicated note taker or if you’re taking the notes yourself, having a good note taking application will help keep everything in order from your meeting. Not only will this tool help you take notes, it will help you prioritize tasks and organize brainstorming sessions with your team. Great note taking tools include Microsoft OneNote and Evernote.
Working remotely can be a big change for those who aren’t familiar with the work from home environment. In order to maximize performance in this new way of work, it’s important to find methods to keep you productive, help you stay organized, and to spark your motivation. Using any of the above tools can help you do just that.
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