Coronavirus Outbreak: Must-Have Tools If Your Team Is Working From Home

Last updated on September 20th, 2024

The coronavirus outbreak has turned out to be the foremost and deadly human tragedy, affecting millions of people all around the world. Its impact is not limited to lifestyles but affecting the whole global economy. The outbreak is moving so quickly which has led businesses to choose the path of mobilizing its operations from home. Even, a majority of businesses have asked their employees to work from home due to the COVID-19 crisis. Now, companies need technologies that can help employees to effectively coordinate and communicate when working on a project from home.

To run a business successfully, you have to manage its various aspects and departments perfectly with the help of professionals. The team leaders, officials, and other employees work in perfect coordination with each other to make the project a success. The accessibility of small business tools, including HR tools, has further strengthened this coordination and brought everyone on the same page.

Now, because of the coronavirus outbreak, working together has become a big challenge for businesses when most of the employees are home-based. The biggest challenge is in helping them communicate well while doing projects from home.

Fortunately, dozens of new communication technologies are accessible to businesses in the present crisis. When working from home, your employees need a wide range of communication tools to work on a project in a well-organized way.

These tools help save time and are a great asset in increasing productivity as well. Many of the tools are available free for small businesses, but we would recommend having premium versions of the tools also available with added features.

So, Here Is A Precise List Of The Tools Your Team Must Be Equipped With While Working From Home

Project Management Tools

With the help of project management tools, your employees can coordinate well when they combinely work on a project remotely.

Before we talk about the tools, it’s essential to understand the project life cycle. Project initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closing are required step-by-step.

Once the project has been initiated, you need full-proof planning to ensure its execution, monitoring, and finish. For that, you can leverage various project planning tools to move ahead.

Now, let’s get back to the project planning tools we discussed.

Here Is A Precise List

i. Trello

Trello allows you to display your work on boards and cards. You can create cards and name them according to your project needs.

To highlight the project works, you can use images, emojis, and text on the boards. Your employees can instantly see your project assignments and completion stages.

ii. Asana

Asana has a clutter-free, sleek, and clean design that lets your team members have a clear vision of where your project stands. It is an easy task management interface that lets you assign tasks and track projects as it progresses.

iii. Wrike

Wrike is a powerful software for all types of businesses. You can also access its mobile app to track time and manage projects. However, this may be an expensive tool for small businesses but is effective for big projects.

iv. Process Street

Process Street is a modern process management platform for teams. They help teams share their core processes, then transform them into powerful no-code workflows.

Start with employee onboarding to set up new hires for success, then build various workflows such as customer implementation, content approvals, and tenant screening. You can also manage your team wiki and company wiki seamlessly, keeping both resources accessible and up to date. Additionally, the platform allows you to handle your company handbook 100% free.

v. Jira

Jira is another useful software to manage any type of project. It comes in different editions, such as Jira Core, to organize projects and set your priorities. You can track time and measure time bandwidth. It is amongst the most affordable software for small businesses.

vi. Basecamp

Basecamp is amongst the popular and most used project management tools to manage projects from home. You have many features, such as group chats and message boards that help in continuing with your conversation while working on the project.

vii. Monday.com

Monday.com is another useful software tool that allows you to assign tasks and organize various works in a simple but efficient way. When a prerequisite task is completed, team members are alerted. This lets you create a nice workflow amongst the members.

Document Exchange Tools

Businesses have endless options when it comes to picking a suitable document exchange software tool. Plenty of file-sharing tools are available for free to small businesses or at a price if they need premium features.

Here, We Give You A Shortlist Of The Tools That Help Your Team Collaborate By Sharing The Documents

i. G Suite

Coming from the house of Google, G Suite gives you access to many document exchange tools such as Google Docs, Drive, Gmail.

What is more, these high-quality and most popular tools are available for free to individuals and businesses. Premium versions let you have unlimited storage and admin control, etc. features.

ii. Microsoft Office 365 [Online Version]

Most businesses are familiar with Microsoft’s tools such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and many others.

Office 365 is the online version of these software tools for document exchange. You also have One Drive. This cloud storage tool is useful for team collaboration.

iii. Box

If you are looking for a high-end document exchange and cloud sharing tool, then Box is the right option. This tool comes with a simple interface to create folders and manage your files in one place. But a key feature of Box is that you can use more than 1400 apps with it.

iv. Hightail

Hightail is amongst the best document exchange software tool for group collaboration. It is built around shared Spaces where you can create projects and get approval through video, photos, and files. You are also allowed to drop files from your computer, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive.

v. MediaFire

MediaFire is particularly suitable for small businesses that work on a limited budget. It lets you upload up to 4 GB files for free, and you can share files links on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Blogger.

Video Conferencing Tools

Video conferencing is a must-have tool for your employees when they are working from home. This software allows your team members to organize meetings for elaborative discussions and collaborate effectively.

When you integrate VoIP technology into your video conferencing tool, you enhance the quality of video calls. But what is VoIP? VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, allows you to make voice calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular (or analog) phone line. VoIP is better than the traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) technology.

Here Is The List Of Top Video Conferencing Tools

i. Lifesize

Lifesize is an award-winning software for video conferencing and meeting room solutions. It is also touted as the world’s first 4k video conferencing solution.

Have this software for a number of great features such as modernize presentation with wireless screen sharing, record, document, and share meeting room arrangements, use it across all platforms and devices.

ii. Zoom

Zoom is the video conferencing software to host large crowds. It can accommodate upto 100 participants at the conference. It is excellent to conduct video webinar, cloud & local recording, integrated scheduling, meetings, and group collaboration.

iii. Skype

Skype is the world’s most popular video call technology that lets you make high-quality video calls. It is considered as the best affordable VoIP service. It can host up to 250 people at a conference from wherever they are.

iv. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is another popular video conferencing tool that allows for making voice and video calls from the workplace. It is an easy tool that lets you create individual and team conversations.

v. GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting is a straightforward video conferencing software popular for web-based meetings. It works well with most platforms and devices. You get personal meeting rooms, desktop/ application sharing, meeting scheduler, one-click recording, etc., a great feature with this tool.

vi. Whereby

If your team comprises fewer members than Whereby is the best-suited option for your video conferencing needs. You can host up to 50 people with this software that is available on browsers and iOS mobile.

Time Management And Tracking Tools

Time management and time tracking become even more critical when your employees are working from home. These software tools let employers know how team members are spending time to accomplish a project.

These Are The Tools You Can Rely On

i. Timely

Timely is a subscription-based tool that allows you to set off a timer. This timer then is able to convert the tracked time into billable items. The software has a built-in reminder and messaging feature for employees.

ii. Time Doctor

Time Doctor allows you to track time manually or automatically. It tracks the total time every employee spent in working on a project.

You can also get a breakdown of the time spent on a project. It also lets managers have a weekly report on how employees spent time on different websites and applications.

iii. Toggl

Toggl is another popular time tracking tool that businesses use to perform executing tasks. This free software provides time tracking and reporting services on mobile and desktop applications. You can track time-based on the projects and tasks you assigned to the employees.

iv. Hubstaff

Hubstaff offers you a wide range of time management and time tracking features that help monitor your employees. Access this software for time tracking, GPS tracking, online timesheets, reporting, productivity monitoring, team schedules, and many more.

v. Everhour

If you want to pay your freelancers on an hourly basis, then Everhour is the time tracking software you should install. You get a comprehensive report on how your employees spent time on projects and took how many breaks.

Messenger Tools

Messenger tools are a great help when employees need to communicate regarding a project. This is a crucial tool, especially when your team members are working remotely from home and do not share the same space.

Provide Messenger Tools Such As These To Your Employees

i. Troop Messenger

Troop Messenger is a comparatively new instant messaging for businesses and looks similar to Slack. But it is an affordable tool for small businesses. You can chat, make a voice or video call using this messenger, which makes it an attractive option.

ii. Slack

Slack is one of the popular tools to organize conversations and channelize them. This tool lets you share files and make a call while you are still on the platform.

iii. Mattermost

Mattermost is an open-source platform that you can use for the basic one-to-one chats. But it is not a cloud-based tool. So, you need to some sort of a setup to start with this tool

iv. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a text-based messenger that lets you have the basics of bringing meetings and chats to the environment. You can incorporate video conferencing capability as well with this tool

v. Rocketbots

Rocketbots is a conversational messaging tool that combines your users and brings them into one CRM. This instant messaging is designed especially for businesses. The users can connect from different channels such as Facebook, WeChat, Slack, etc.

We hope that these essential tools, including HR tools, make working from home convenient for your employees until the coronavirus crisis is over. You can pick these technologies as per the immediate requirements of your business and budget.

Wrapping Up

Coronavirus outbreak has made working from home a challenging task for businesses. However, new communication technologies enable big and small companies and employees to work professionally from home. They can access a wide range of tools for efficient project management, messaging, video conferencing, and time management.