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Working from home is slowly becoming the new normal. While many people are already returning to the office after the coronavirus lockdown, many businesses still rely on remote work.
Of course, some employers have health concerns about bringing people back to the office just yet. However, others have realized that working from home comes with lots of cost savings.
According to a Global Workplace Analytics survey, employers can save approximately $11,000 a year for every employee who works remotely only half of the time.
You should definitely consider that if it’s feasible for your business. If yes, you’ll need some reliable tools for remote teams. Here are some of the best tools you can utilize right now.
1. ProProfs LMS
ProProfs LMS is a cloud-based LMS that you can use as distance or remote training software. It’s a great tool if you’re not very tech-savvy because it’s comparatively easy to use and comes with 100+ pre-built courses.
Customizing the templates to fit your business needs is also simple. You can experiment with 100+ settings, which include deep personalization. Everyone learns differently, so setting personalized learning paths will bring you better results.
Of course, if you want to build your online courses from scratch, you can. You can add as many pages and chapters as you want, and enrich them with visuals for better engagement. You can also integrate surveys and quizzes for knowledge assessment.
This remote training software also comes with online classrooms, where your teammates can seamlessly communicate and collaborate.
Tracking their training progress is a breeze. You have robust analytics and real-time reports, which give you a clear insight into everyone’s strengths and weaknesses.
You can also automate grading and provide instant feedback, thus accelerating learning and development.
Are you looking to monetize your training courses? You can sell them directly from the platform.
2. Mailbird
Do you have multiple email accounts, and all the notifications keep distracting you? Are you tired of switching between apps to manage your emails during remote working? Mailbird might be the solution you need.
It’s one of the simplest email clients you can use. You don’t have to create a new account to use it, because its purpose is to unify all your accounts into one centralized inbox. It might just be the one email client to rule them all.
It’s a desktop app that’s available only for Windows computers. It lets you manage all your accounts and contacts from one place by simply switching between inboxes. It’s kind of like a Gmail app, except it’s for desktop.
Mailbird has an integrated speed reader and lets you snooze emails to avoid any distractions. You can preview attachments and search through your old ones, as well as fully customize the layout.
It also integrates with project management tools, file sharing apps, social media apps, and more.
3. ClickUp
As they say on the website, ClickUp is the “one app to replace them all.” It certainly looks like it.
It has 100+ proprietary features that make remote work a piece of cake and actually boost productivity. It brings everything you’ll ever need into one place, literally replacing an abundance of apps.
It lets you build projects, create to-do lists for tasks, and schedule them with timelines and Gantt charts. You can create documents, notes, and spreadsheets, record your desktop, track time and goals, and manage email and real-time chat conversations.
There are even ready-made templates for remote work, so you can instantly use one for marketing, sales, development, and much more.
You’d think that all these features make it challenging to find your way through, but you can customize the tool in many ways. For instance, you can change the workflow view – list, board (like Trello), box, calendar, activity view, and more.
ClickUp replaces lots of apps, but it also supports 1,000+ third-party integrations, so you don’t need to say goodbye to your favorite apps.
4. Zoho ShowTime
Zoho offers lots of great apps, and Zoho ShowTime is no different. It’s an online training platform for businesses. If you’re a training agency or simply want to train your company’s trainers, you’ll certainly find it quite handy.
It’s all about providing learner-centric training. You can upload any training content, including recordings, to provide on-demand training, but you can also hold virtual sessions. You can add co-trainers, create a content library, and assess trainees through polls, Q&A, and chat.
You can integrate the tool with Zoho CRM for seamless payments, as well as for qualifying leads.
There are also intuitive graphs and reports for tracking performance and engagement, as well as the quality of your sessions. It gives you actionable insights that you can use to improve your future training programs.
All in all, it’s a very user-friendly tool for developing successful trainers.
5. AnyViewer
AnyViewer is a secure and reliable remote desktop software that supports remote access, remote control, remote support and more.
You can do PC to PC, iOS to PC, Android to PC remote control with AnyViewer. It supports unattended access, file transfer, online chat, and many other features to help users achieve better remote control.
AnyViewer is secured by Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) encryption, protecting your data from leakage.
6. Dameware Remote Everywhere
Since your teammates are working from home, you need to find a way to provide them with technical support whenever they need it. Dameware Remote Everywhere can make it happen.
It’s a great solution for providing remote support to your employees. It comes especially handy when you have employees on the other side of the planet who can’t attend the office.
It’s a secure, cloud-based solution that helps you resolve issues remotely by accessing an end user’s computer, which doesn’t even have to be turned on. You can also provide support for mobile devices.
DRE supports live chat, VoIP and video-conference calls, so you can seamlessly communicate with your remote workers to quickly resolve any technical problem they may have.
7. TeamViewer
TeamViewer is a remote desktop app that lets you access devices remotely to share files, as well as to provide technical support securely.
If a remote employee has a system crash, for instance, you can access it to resolve the problem. If they need to patch a piece of software, you can assist them with that as well. The app will even notify you in advance so that you can stay ahead of any potential problems.
TeamViewer proves particularly useful if you have unattended devices or servers at your workplace. You can set up permanent remote access to manage servers, computers and mobile devices, IoT devices, and even POS terminals.
You don’t have to lose sleep over security concerns, because the app has advanced end-to-end encryption.
8. DeskTime
If you want to keep track of what your remote teammates are doing when they should be working, DeskTime can help you.
It’s a time-tracking app that lets you monitor your employees’ activity during business hours in real-time. It takes automatic screenshots to help you see which apps and websites they’re assessing, and when they are taking breaks and for how long. Basically, you can see whether they’re really working or not.
This isn’t for you to be the “bad guy” who doesn’t let employees take a breather, but rather to help them be more productive. At least, that’s how you should use the app.
By detecting inefficiencies, you can help team members who may be having a tough time working from home.
They can turn on the Private Time feature whenever they need to do something unrelated to work, in which case the app won’t track their online activity.
With DeskTime, you can also track projects in real-time, track overtime, sick leave and vacations, schedule shifts, and calculate project costs. You can also remind your teammates to take breaks by activating the integrated Pomodoro timer.
9. Google Drive
Google Drive probably doesn’t need any introduction, as its reputation undoubtedly precedes it. But have you used it yet? You may know that it’s a cloud storage solution, but are you familiar with its features?
You can upload any file to its cloud storage – documents in any format, images, videos, graphs, and pretty much anything else. That’s quite useful even while working in the office, let alone when working from home.
You can also create documents directly on the platform. You can share them with your remote team with just a few clicks, and set access permissions for each document and file. Anyone with permissions can edit them in real-time, which is very time-efficient.
If two or more users open a particular file simultaneously, a live chat option appears for seamless communication. You can also make notes and set tasks to keep track of the most important things.
As you may know, Google Drive is free, but you can upgrade your default free storage of 15 GB anytime.
Over to You
Many of these tools actually come with free versions, but they have limited features. Be sure to give their full-featured free trials a try to explore every nook and cranny before making any commitments.
All of these remote tools for working from home are different, but they do have a few things in common. They are very reliable and help remote teams become more productive.
Have you ever used any of them? Were you satisfied with their performance? Feel free to share your experience!
