Tools for remote-work
In our #MotivationMonday post last week, we outlined how the coronavirus has had a dramatic affect on business in a variety of ways. Some companies (like hand sanitizer, disinfectant companies, toilet paper companies and canned goods) are selling out and out of stock around the nation whereas other industries (travel and tourism, cruise ships, etc.) are taking a massive hit.
As the coronavirus continues to spread globally and with limited testing supplies to understand the full extent of the virus, companies who have not previously explored the concept are now implementing remote-work precautions. Many of our clients and Peer Advisory Group members are all very familiar to working remotely and might have a slight advantage to those who are just starting out.
Today, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite tools that help to facilitate remote work.
To facilitate collaboration, ensure productivity and overall keep our business operating, D&Co recommends G Suite. We use this every day. Specifically, we use: Gmail for our company email system, Google Drive for file storage and Hangouts Meet for video conferencing - one on one or with our Peer Advisory Group. The ‘Business’ plan is the best value at $12 per user per month and includes unlimited cloud storage.
Slack is an integral part of the D&Co Peer Advisory Group and we have seen other companies utilize it in different ways. They can assign teams and/or accounts to specific channels to keep documents, conversations, etc. organized there. There are a ton of integrations that you can include too. It has already helped our very international Peer Advisory Group stay in touch in an ongoing basis.
For other calls that D&Co wishes to record for later playback, we utilize Zoom. It’s pretty easy to use and the free service is excellent. You can run recorded meetings with over 3 participants for up to 40 minutes for free. Given the increasing demand in remote work as a result of coronavirus, the company has issued a statement to encourage use of audio capabilities on the computer opposed to the dial-in service for free account holders.
There are a few other tools that help to facilitate collaboration and accountability with remote-work employees. These are great tools, but we don’t actually use these on a day-to-day basis at D&Co:
Microsoft Teams, described as the ‘hub for team collaboration in Office365’. This integrates with your Microsoft Outlook calendar, allows for video or voice conference calling and integrates an excellent chat feature. This is an excellent enterprise-level tool.
Skype/ Skype for Business, we used to used Skype and/or Skype for Business for our 1:1 video conferencing with our clients. The tool works great and was a good back-up if we had any issues with Google Hangouts Meet. However, in an effort to consolidate, we did decide to proceed with utilizing Google Hangouts Meet instead.
Trello, this is described as a ‘web-based Kanban-style list making application and is a subsidiary of Atlassian’. In short, it’s an awesome visual ‘to-do’ list that you can also collaborate with teams on to ensure everything is getting done. We have used this for a few clients and also helped them set up their own boards.
What tools do you and/or your team utilize for remote-work? Comment below.
Image original from Forbes
Update on August 5, 2020:
Is your organization still struggling to adapt to this new remote-world? I recently came across this tool called “Remote Readiness Assessment” by Toptal that helps organizations measure their readiness for remote work. The assessment only takes about 3-5 minutes and helps to evaluate six key areas that are essential to run a successful organization. Get your organization back on track now.
