Tools for Working from Home as a Team
Last Updated Apr 2022
The future of remote work will only go as far as technology will take it. Setting up the right technological ecosystem to ensure seamless workflow is key to staying connected and getting things done efficiently. The right tools are ones that take away the friction of remote work and allow you to focus on what matters. With the sudden increase in WFH teams, there has been a huge increase in the number of remote working tools available, so much so that selecting the right ones has become its own challenge.
Limiting yourself to a few, efficient and easy-to-use tools ensures better clarity amongst teams and sets up a system of better work dynamics. Here are some of the categories for which you need remote working tools and the best options available under each.
Tip: Choose a limited set of tools to work with. Having too many tools at first may confuse your team rather than help. Having 1 per category is essential, but no more at the start.
Chat/ Presence Platform
Being immediately reachable, like you’d be able to go to someone’s desk is crucial. We recommend adopting a chat platform for it.
Sometimes teams use Whatsapp (or similar) groups, but that’s not really the best choice here as the platforms above have multiple features to make collaboration better and act as a hub for integrating other multiple tools
Document/ File Collaboration
Most work is done on documents, and it’s essential that you are using real-time collaborative documents to work with each other. These save time!
- GoogleDrive, Google Docs/ Sheets
- OneDrive/ Dropbox, Microsoft 365
Work Management/ Visual Collaboration
Planning, brainstorming ideas and concepts, designing solutions, and managing projects should be done visually for more effective results. Use a real-time collaboration and work management tool like Creately to simplify workflows throughout the organization and improve cross-functional team collaboration.
It is essential that it also supports good async, collaboration via comments and discussion threads.
- Creately - Smart Visual Canvas to ideate, manage work & run projects
Video Conferencing
Video conferencing is an essential part of working together.
Task & Project Management Software
To keep everyone in-sync and working towards common goals, use an online task and a project management tool.
There are many more tools, but above are the essentials for your team to stay productive when working from home.