The Top 10 Remote Tools For Working From Home During The Coronavirus Pandemic

Switching to a new work environment is not easy, especially if, all of a sudden, you find yourself working from home.

You can no longer have in-person conversations or collaborate with your colleagues without facing obstacles.

Don’t worry; we have some good news for you…

There are plenty of software solutions specifically designed to facilitate remote work. However, not all of them are created equal, and you can easily end up using an unreliable, clunky solution that holds you back.

We can help you cut through the clutter. Here are the top 10 remote tools for working from home, ranging from employee training software to email management tools.

Continual professional development

The COVID-19 pandemic has the power to keep us locked in, but it has no control over your motivation to continue professional development. Continuous training can boost employee engagement and retention rates.

Here are some of the best tools from the employee training software category to keep you occupied and productive.

1. ProProfs

ProProfs delivers one of the best employee training software solutions on the market. It is effortless to use. The drag-and-drop interface ensures easy course creation. On top of that, you have the option to automate course invitations and track employee response and progress in real-time.

The software comes with employee training templates that reflect different verticals so that you can launch courses even more efficiently.

Analytics and reports are there to help bridge knowledge gaps and improve the courses. Meanwhile, you can learn a great deal from the free “How to work remotely during COVID-19” course. 

2. Litmosa

Any discussion on virtual classroom software is incomplete without mentioning Litmos. This platform provides a variety of tools to enable you to stay on top of learning materials and their distribution across different channels.

If you’ve already digitized your learning materials, there is no need to recreate them. With Litmos, you can import your content and put it to immediate use.

3. TalentCards

TalentCards is excellent if you don’t have enough time to spare on professional development. This tool is built to facilitate online training through bite-sized learning materials. User onboarding is easy. You can manually add them or send out invitations via SMS or email.

There are a few gamification features built to make online learning engaging and fun. Creating cards and courses is easy, even if you have no previous experience of conducting online employee training.

Streamline project management

Project management is one of the most vital processes in a company. Working from home can potentially affect you and your colleagues’ workflow, extend project deadlines, and potentially costing you clients. Project management tools can help you improve your management practices by 33%.

Here are a few tools to stay on track with project management, even while at home. 

4. TeamGantt

TeamGantt is a straightforward project management tool. During the pandemic, your primary goal should be to stick to simple tools because they come with little to no learning curve. This tool, in particular, is an out-of-the-box solution for team and project management.

Notification system, real-time communication, task dependencies, and delegation are all included in its functionalities. Basically, you have everything you need to keep your entire team going.

5. ProofHub

ProofHub is a project management tool developed to cater to the needs of startups and small businesses. While it is an entry-level tool, it still comes with surprisingly many features. You can use it to plan and execute projects, collaborate on projects, organize tasks, track deliverables, and communicate with team members.

The interface is simple and well-designed.

ProofHub also supports integration with other apps, including Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Dropbox.

File sharing and collaboration on project-related documents with this tool are also easy.

Collaboration made easy

Collaboration while working from home can appear impossible. In reality, it is quite the opposite, especially if you use one of these tools. 

6. Zoom

Zoom is a video conferencing app that facilitates team collaboration. Although used as a temporary virtual classroom software by many institutions, this app is so much more.

Zoom is an all-in-one video conferencing platform. You can use it to organize meetings, video webinars, enable conference rooms, or chat in real-time with your team members.

During the COVID-19 crisis, Zoom proved to be a reliable video conferencing software. It is built to support HD video and audio. More importantly, it is very easy to use and comes with affordable subscription plans.

7. Trello

Trello is a collaboration app designed around two ideas – streamlined collaboration and increased productivity. It is a user-friendly app that you can use to the full extent in under a few minutes.

You will have access to cards, lists, and boards where you can organize tasks, collaborate with colleagues, and exchange information in real-time.

Trello is fully mobile-ready, meaning you can install it on all your devices, and it will look the same and always stay in sync with the latest updates from your team.

8. Asana

Asana is one of the oldest collaboration solutions on the market. You’ll get stunned by how easy it is to use.

While it is a great tool to facilitate internal communication and collaboration, Asana can help you do a few more things, too.

For instance, you can track your employees’ work, create and organize to-do lists, and set up reminders to ensure that nothing gets past your team members. 

Keep communication channels open

Communication goes hand in hand with collaboration. After all, almost 75% of employers find it to be one of the most important things worth investing in.

The following two solutions will help you keep communication channels open at all times.

9. Mailbird

Mailbird is one of the best email clients out there. If your team relies on email communication, it is definitely your go-to solution. You can set it up to sync all your email accounts.

The user interface is entirely customizable. Don’t be afraid to rearrange different elements to speed up your workflow. 

Mailbird can also help you collaborate and communicate with your team by bringing all of them to one email client. Once you do it, you will see how easy it is to track all things related to your email efforts, including internal and external emailing. 

10. Slack

Slack is another easy-to-use communication solution. It focuses on bringing remote workers together under one roof.

Remote workers can easily lose sight of their role in a team and contribution to project deliverables. Slack will help you stay organized and keep your team members on top of the latest developments. 

Everyone onboard can track progress and identify their role in making things happen in your organization.

Slack also comes with support for creating channels to use with your clients and business partners as well. 

Wrap up

Every organization is unique, let alone a team and an individual employee. But all people who are working from home face the same challenges. The tools I’ve shared with you are designed to help you overcome these challenges and facilitate effective work from home.

Guest author: Kamy Anderson is an ed-tech enthusiast with a passion for writing on emerging technologies in the areas of corporate training and education. He is an expert in learning management systems and eLearning authoring tools – currently associated with ProProfs.

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