Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work was quickly becoming the standard in the future of work. Remote work provides businesses and employees flexibility and benefits that in-office work doesn’t offer.
Statistics show that in the United States alone, the number of employees working remotely increased by an enormous 159% between 2005 and 2017.
According to one recent study, companies that allow remote work have an employee turnover rate of about 25% lower than those who don’t. Conversely, employees who can work remotely at least once per month report are an average of 24% more happy and productive in their daily work.
However, simply allowing your employees to work remotely isn’t enough to boost happiness and productivity. The most flexible policy in the world ultimately won’t help if your employees lack the tools necessary to do their jobs. Luckily, if you’re concerned about boosting productivity, empowering communication, staying organized, or doing all of these things simultaneously, technology has you covered.
Tech Tools to Boost Communication
Microsoft’s Office 365 is one of the most powerful communication tools available on the market. It brings together the best functionality of Word, Excel, Outlook, and other tools in the famous productivity suite, but it also stores all data in the cloud so that everyone can have access to it. Teams can collaborate on documents with version control, and you can always see who is making which changes.
One of the things that employees miss most from the pre-COVID world is the ability to instantly check in with others on projects and initiatives. While nothing can truly replicate that in-person connection, Discord is an instant messaging app that may be the next best thing. It allows you to instantly connect with co-workers and employees via video or text-based messaging. All information is stored in perpetuity, so you never have to worry about losing even a kilobyte of critical information.
Read More: Happiness + Productivity Rethinking the Way We Work In Light of COVID-19
Tech Tools to Boost Productivity
If your teams are having a hard time staying up-to-date on critical projects while working remotely, consider using x.ai as the scheduling assistant they never knew they need it. It’s designed to behave like an actual human assistant that is time-zone and calendar-aware, which means that it’s a great source for determining which tasks are time-sensitive and which ones can wait until later.
The ability to quickly see the current status of all your team members’ tasks is one of the keys to remaining productive in a remote world. To that end, project management tools like Asana prove invaluable, as they allow your employees to do exactly that in a visual way that is easy for everyone to understand. Asana helps your team project manage and prioritize initiatives, and the transparency can help stimulate and motivate them to ensure all tasks are completed on time.
Tech Tools to Stay Organized
Whether organization is an issue for your team or you want to improve on existing processes, Google Keep is an excellent resource to have handy. Not only does it allow employees to quickly create and edit notes with a few clicks of their mouse, but they can also share everything from documents to web pages through the system, too. The best part of all is that it integrates with all of Google’s other cloud services, meaning that important information follows your team wherever it goes.
Finally, no discussion of the best tools to stay organized would be complete without the mention of Evernote – a powerful tool that captures information, ideas, and strategies through a series of digital notes, bookmarks, and other references. Evernote is easily searchable and organizes information based on user preference, allowing for a customizable experience that works for each member of your team.
Keeping your teams productive, efficient, and happy while working from home is a challenge. However, incorporating the use of a few essential productivity tools can help your teams stay on track while everything else in the world is going haywire.