Tips and best collaboration tools you need for working remote

Here are some of our favourite digital apps to use when working from home or remotely during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Many of us simply didn’t see it coming, and now the current situation has changed how we act, live and work.

The response to the situation has ranged from hoarding toilet paper to cancelled appointments, and everyone seems to suddenly be a virus medical professional (but seriously wash your hands as much as you can).

We can all agree though that this virus is more than just an inconvenience, it's a real concern and has propelled us into a world of unknown.

It a time to help others around you.

It's encouraging to see the acts of generosity and care to those at risk. Please take time to consider how you can help the community around us and organisations like Foodbank or Street Friends to support those most vulnerable.

If you’re a business, maybe look for ways you can help or accommodate changing clients’ needs and circumstances. For example we’re still offering our free 2-hour consultation (over video of course) for anyone who needs help setting up their teams for working remote, looking to build an intranet to stay connected, or transform their website to meet their clients (as consumers are heavily relying on digital to get/find what they need).
 

How to respond as a business, leveraging a remote workforce and battling staff isolation

At this time many workplaces have been quick to respond well (a great example is restaurants launching new takeaway menu’s and medical specialists conducing video appointments), others seemingly had no response and are still acting like it's ‘business as usual’ – and you’d have to if you simply had no way to respond to the current situation.

There are some really basic and quick adaptations that can be made today that can help reduce the impact to your business right now.

We’ve seen the trends already of organisations looking to re-invent themselves and stay ahead of the news around us. If fact many of our clients have been doing this for years, and for them now in many ways it really is ‘business as usual’. 

We’ve been helping workplaces work remote, while increasing communication and productivity, for years. Referred to it as being prepared for the ‘future of work’, many still think that simply means that technology is changing and AI is taking over jobs, however a clear example is the world as it is right now. Now is the time to think about cloud based platforms, integrated internal systems and tweaked processes to support your teams as they work remote, both now and in future. More than even your staff need remote access to your systems and you need the ability to adapt your systems based on how the current situation evolves.
 

The best digital tools for working remote that you can use right now

It sounds so simple but believe it or not you can still build a 'team' and also create increased sales opportunities without even leaving your home. Organisations have been doing it for a long time already. While the global and local market truly shifts towards software-as-a-service (SaaS), true leaders today recognise there is a big window of opportunity and responsibility for actioning change now.

We’ve collated some of our favourite easy to use digital tools to to help you work remote and survive social isolation, many of them are free.

• Video meetings – Zoom, Google Hangouts even Slack let’s you chat over video.

^{As isolation because a real issue we recommend scheduling face-to-face meetings to remind us all that we have a team around us and to give our clients the attention they require.} 

• Online chat – Slack, Whatsapp, Microsoft Teams, even Facebook private groups are great to use.
• Project management – Trello, Airtable and Wrike and Jira are all handy at displaying and sharing project information.

^{Anything cloud based that your clients can sign into (without having to subscribe or pay to use) that allows simply sharing of information and two way collaboration. It will be handy if you can assign a team member or status to a task to help give the additional transparency with working remote.}

• Intenal worklogs & staff tasks – Jira, Toggl, Trello, Wrike, or Airtable.

^{Anything that allows you to set up a workflow, assign a statues and features such as worklogs, attaching a file or making comments will be key to keeping things on track and transparent.}

• Cloud-based note taking – Evernote or Microsoft OneNote
• Document & file sharing – Dropbox and Google drive (Slack and Trello also let you do this)
• Client approval & document sign-off – DocuSign hands down should be your go to.
• Document proof & review - Google drive , Trello, Wrike or even Adobe pdf comments works fine. If your using Microsoft Word, make sure you take advantage of 'tracking changes'.

Now more than ever we need to remain organised and transparent

And free tools are a great start, for bigger organisations setting up your Intranet, Extranets and Portals on the back of your CMS or using Microsoft SharePoint should be on your to-do list right now (we can help with that).

Stay indoors, play it safe, help a neighbor and we'll get through this together.

Read our follow-up article on how businesses should leverage this new era of remote workplaces.