Tools for Efficiently Managing a Remote Team

In the current climate, there are many challenges that businesses face. You may have been completely thrown into working remotely, with almost no time to prep before local leadership required that your office close its doors. If that’s the case, fear not!

We’ve been a remote team since our inception and no one on our team is located in the same geographical city (or state) as one another. There are a couple of tools that we’ve come to love that help keep us connected and productive, and there are many more out there that might be helpful to your virtual team throughout this crisis and beyond.

When it comes to communicating with your team, you need a tool that is reliable and easy.

Google Hangouts

Since our email accounts are hosted through Google, Google Hangouts is the quickest and easiest way for us to have a quick chat back and forth throughout the day. Their instant messaging feature makes it easy to have a conversation right from our browser without the hassle of sending emails back and forth. Hangouts also has an app that employees can download to their phones so that they don’t miss messages if they’re not at their computer.

Slack

For groups and businesses with several employees (or more), Slack is a fantastic communication tool. They have both a desktop and mobile app, so you won’t miss a message no matter where you are, but they also have features that allow you to mute messages when you need to, as well. Within your organization you can create channels focusing on different projects or topic areas for employees to join, making it easy to keep teams in sync. One great feature about slack is that system administrators have the ability to create channels that everyone can see, but they can control who is able to share to said channels, which is good for sharing information that doesn’t need a discussion to follow. Slack users can also message one another directly, making it easy to communicate with anyone in your organization.

Zoom

Zoom has gained incredible popularity since the rise of social distancing, but we’ve been using it for years. Zoom is our favorite way to host virtual meetings because it’s free (with paid subscription options), reliable, and anyone can use it from either a computer, tablet, or telephone, without the restrictions of needing an account. Zoom allows you to schedule meetings, password protect them if you’d like, share your screen, take over someone else’s (with their permission), and more.

MailChimp

Sending a weekly, monthly, or even quarterly email newsletter to employees is a great way to keep everyone engaged and in the loop of new happenings. If you want to share more than just a text-heavy email, MailChimp is a great tool. It allows you to send photos, videos, articles, links, and more in a visually appealing design than a traditional email. MailChimp is also great to see analytics about how many times your email was opened and which links were clicked the most.

Trello

Trello is an online bulletin board system that allows for easy collaboration and sharing of information. It’s a great way to stay organized and keep track of the status of different projects across your team. Trello has boards, lists, and cards that can help you break each project down into small, manageable tasks. You can add photos, files, due dates, and comments to cards, so giving feedback and sharing everything you need to is incredibly easy.

What tools have you found to be helpful for managing your team from home? Share them with us in the comments below!