Remote work has been accelerating in the US for the last 15 years. Most of the technology sector has successfully gone remote. According to the Bureau of labor statistics, only 29% of Americans can work from home. The corona virus pandemic has triggered uncertainty with everything. Schools, restaurants, stores and all public places closed, people are forced to stay indoors to keep the spread of infection. As the number of active cases are growing, most companies have asked their employees to work remotely.
Below is a list of 10 best tools for virtual teams to get more work done in less time.
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Slack
An instant messaging platform that has all the tools for remote teams to stay productive no matter where they are working from. Conversations happen in dedicated Channels and you can set up a weekly status meeting through eventbot calendar. It is easy to find important information through searchable archives. You can choose privacy settings for all discussions. Bots, automated software agents,can help with managing tasks and running meetings efficiently. Emojis and gifs provide a fun way to be used to stay positive while working from home. Sign up slack today for your virtual team.
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Microsoft Teams
A hub for remote employees. It provides team communication and collaboration from a single place anywhere in the world. It has messaging, online meetings, calling capabilities, file management, native integration with other apps and a new meeting scheduling tool all in one place. Chat can be done privately and in a group as well. In the team section, you can collaborate with other team members who are working from home. Meetings can be shared with people outside of the organization as guests. Microsoft offers an Office 365 Premium subscription for Microsoft teams. Overall it is a useful work from home tool for large corporations.
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Google Hangouts
Google Hangout also known as Google Meet is used for remote teams.Video meetings can have 250 participants and you can do livestream to 100,000 users within and outside of the organization. It is enabled with the regular gmail account and if it isn’t then an administrator is required to enable it. Just set up a meeting link, share and record it with your virtual team. Choose your G Suite edition today.
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Zoom
A cloud video conferencing platform that can be used for video/audio meetings, webinars and live chat. Zoom offers four different pricing tiers for businesses.You can sync your calendar to make sure that no meeting is being missed. Zoom room is a physical hardware setup for companies to launch meetings from their conference rooms. It requires additional subscription and is good for large corporations. Overall it is a leader in video communication and a reliable cloud based platform for remote teams.
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WebEx
Owned by Cisco, it is one of the leading platforms for video conferencing, remote team collaboration, digital white boarding and moving projects faster. WebEx offers integrated audio/video and content sharing with highly secure web meetings.The mobile app lets you schedule and connect to a meeting in a snap. Choose a plan that fits your company’s virtual team goals today.
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Asana
It is one of the best remote team collaboration tools for project management. Asana helps you to keep your teams organized and connected. With their mobile app virtual teams can stay on top of their work from anywhere. It is a cloud based CRM software which integrates with other applications like email communications and calendar. They offer four different plans from basic to enterprise.
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Mural
A remote team collaboration white board where you can share work and be productive.There is a collection of frameworks and templates to guide your sessions. It provides personalized webinars, workshops and training. Mural mobile app makes it easy for anyone to do work from home collaboration. Teams can plan/ brainstorm ideas in the design process and evaluate their team’s performance to make better decisions. Mural offers plans for virtual teams and enterprises as well.
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Adobe Creative Cloud
A collection of 20+ desktop and mobile apps for design, photography, video and UX design remote teams. It provides Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere Rush and Adobe fonts for all your design needs. Collaboration is fast and easy by sharing common assets in team libraries. Adobe Creative Cloud is perfect for designers and UX designers who are working remotely. There are various plans to use Creative Cloud.
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Miro
The online collaborative white boarding platform for remote teams.You can do research, design, planning and mapping at one place to understand the workflow of your projects. It makes work from home collaboration easy with enterprise-ready security and administrative controls. Whether your teams are distributed or fully remote, Miro provides an engaging in person collaboration experience on white board. There are four pricing plans from free to business and enterprise level.
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Notion
A best remote work tool which provides notes, documents, spreadsheets and database all at one place. It gives 30+ media types for your beautiful writing experiences. Knowledge base is a place to find answers for all the questions. Notion allows you to create task list views and keep a record of your work in the database.Teams can collaborate in real time to boost productivity. They offer four types of packages for team collaboration.
If you are managing remote employees, these tools will help you to surely lead an effective virtual team. Working from home is awesome because it can save a lot of time and energy but it can also make you lonely at times. Without the human interaction that the office environment provides, you may also crave for face to face interactions. By using the right tools for virtual teams, you can minimize the feeling of isolation and make them more productive.
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