The trend of remote working is on the ascent. Over the past 15 years, the remote workforce has significantly increased. The American Community Survey 2018 of the US Census Bureau revealed that 5 million US citizens work from home, at least half the time. Of those studied, 80 percent detailed that they willingly work from home.
The COVID-19 episode sped up this pattern, making an enormous scope, unexpected analysis in remote work. It is assessed that 25 percent to 30 percent of the entire workforce will be assuming work from home by the end of 2021.
Remote workers have found new ways to keep themselves entertained while working from home. Especially amidst the pandemic, internet, and cable services have come in real handy to keep remote workers engaged and occupied in their free time. Service providers have also stepped up in slashing service prices to accommodate people during this tough time. Triple service plans like Spectrum triple play came up as a bundle of joy for remote workers providing them with more than 125 HD channels, superfast internet speeds, and unlimited calling options at reasonable rates.
Furthermore, as indicated by a study conducted by Stanford University, the disgrace once connected with remote work is blurring, with the average representative hoping to work remotely at least two days a week even after the end of this global pandemic.
If you are working remotely and want to continue this regime, you need assistance from some great remote working tools and programs. As such, we have come up with a rundown of the best remote working tools for our readers.
- Best Project management tool – Basecamp
Basecamp is a specialized project management software that has gained popularity amongst teams, managers, agencies, and freelancers. It has a simple functioning and can be used to manage projects and collaborate with peers and clients.
It has a number of features for organizing conversations, keeping everyone on the same page, and sharing ideas throughout the project.
While it brings great usability, there are some drawbacks too. This project management tool does not offer time tracking abilities and has no option to tag subtasks.
- Best team collaboration tool – Slack
Slack is a remote working messaging tool that assists communication among peers, allows sharing comments and feedback in real-time. With this collaboration tool, you can be sure able to communicate with your team at any given moment.
Remote teams around the world use this software for smooth collaboration and instant messaging. Furthermore, Slack is available as a mobile app for both Android and iOS systems.
- Best Cloud Storage Service – Dropbox
Remote workers have to continuously share heavy files amongst their teams and with the clients. While there are some restrictions to share large files through email, you can use Dropbox for this very purpose.
You can easily share, collaborate, and sync documents using Dropbox. It is developed with Application Programming Interface (API) that makes it a lot more useful for remote workers. You can even share presentations, sketches, and photoshop files with anyone using Dropbox.
- Best Productivity Tool – Todoist
Todoist, as the name suggests, is a great productivity tool. With this remote working tool, you can add tasks and subtasks, create projects, upload files, add notes, set reminders, flag tasks, and generate a productivity chart.
- Best Call center software – Dialpad
Dialpad is a remote working platform that promotes unified communications and offers video conferencing, calling, and AI-powered contact centers. The inbuilt voice intelligence in Dialpad allows your team to make smart calls from any given device. It also gives you the option of automated note-taking, call transcription, and provides integration with Salesforce, G Suite, and Zendesk, etc.
For sales and customer service teams, Dialpad is great software as it releases them from the worry to take notes during the call. Its smart features including real-time sentiment analysis send alerts to managers whenever a negative sentiment gets detected that enables them to improve customer experience.
- Best time management tool – Kickidler
Kickidler is great time management and employee monitoring tool. It has a strong toolset that increases the dedication among team members. Kickidler offers features like efficiency dynamics control, employee productivity analysis, time tracking, and screen recording option.
A recent update called the Autokick allows monitoring staff in a democratic manner. Through this update, you can enable a self-monitoring interface and automatic notifications.
- Best Video Conferencing and Screen Sharing Software – Nextiva
Nextiva is a great cloud phone service that enables teams to collaborate with peers and clients. This video conferencing and screen sharing tool offers a number of features including call forwarding, mobile app, website live chat, and call groups, etc. These features allow your team to communicate with people whenever and from wherever, using whichever device: smartphone, office phone, tablet, or laptop.
- Best work-life balance tool – Timezone.io
Many companies recruit remote employees from around the world, who work in different time zones. This amazing remote working tool helps remote workers manage their personal and work lives by giving them a note of what time zones different remote employees work in.
