Top 5 Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams

The upsurge in the market of Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams and employee monitoring tools suggests that long gone are the days when the employers were limited to the local talent pool. Today, companies and businesses do not feel confined to the 50km radius for hiring the employees.

The unfaltering connectivity has made possible for people situated thousands of miles away from each other to connect, collaborate and push towards common goals.

This new trend in the business world is supported by the many wonderful collaboration tools including online time tracking tools that we have at our disposal. These tools are crucial for a distributed team to survive.

Why Distributed Teams need Online Collaboration Tools

• Lack of Proximity:
  Proximity is of great importance when teams want to work towards and achieve a common goal. People who are close to us inspire us and keep us motivated. And clearly, considering this point, distributed teams are at a disadvantage. Collaboration Tools make up for the lack of proximity and create a more human connection among the teams. While various online time tracking tools, help keep track of on-going projects.
• Different Time Zones:
  When you are dealing with remote teams, you are dealing with people who come from diverse countries. The morning for one teammate might be the evening for the other. Nobody wants to work the graveyard shift every day. This problem is also solved by the collaboration tools that are available in the market today. Remote contractors work their part and update the online tools for the other teammates to find out whenever they log in to work. Hence, no matter what time zone the team members belong to, they can collaborate and deliver the results using the online tools. On the other, an employer can easily measure productivity through automatic time tracking systems, no matter the time.
• Communication Gap:
  Good communication is the key to success for a team. If there is a communication gap in the remote team, people might feel disoriented and confused. Fortunately, this is not a problem today. Instant messaging services like Skype and real-time monitoring like Staff Timer App, have brought teams closer and made their voices heard, no matter how far they are from each other.
• Lack of employee monitoring:
  The employee Monitoring tool is the key trick of ensuring the productivity of your employees and pushing them towards achieving the goals. Previously, remote employers found themselves handicapped when the question of Employee Monitoring came up. The situation has changed drastically. Many online Time Tracking tools and Virtual Office Softwares equip employers with employee monitoring tool capabilities.

Best Online Collaboration Tools

1. Highrise

Communication with employees can be messy. Communication with clients can be messier. And when the remote employer has to communicate with many employees and many clients, things can get confusing. But Highrise can rescue from all the hassle. Highrise becomes the personal database and online assistant for all the communication. And the employer can control the visibility of the activities by granting access to the employees so that they can assist the employers as well.

The user can also create and track the tasks for the employees through Highrise. It also lets him manage and follow the business deals with the clients.

So if you want to monitor remote teams and you want to be on top of every conversation, use Highrise.

2. Staff Timer App (employee monitoring tool)

Many times in the past, employers felt unsure about hiring telecommuters and remote employees. This is because of the limited employee monitoring capacity while working with remote teams. But now there is a solution.

Employee Time Tracking Software like StaffTimerApp solve all the problems related to remote employee monitoring. It captures screenshots of the employee’s screen after a regular time interval. These screenshots are then processed to calculate the billable and non-billable hours.

Hence, a remote employer does not need to fear being ripped for low quality work. Moreover, the employer can view the real-time progress and productivity of the employees by using the features of Instant Screen Capture and Real-Time Screen Sharing.

3. Basecamp

Working on a project while living away might seem like a bad idea. But it really isn’t. The problem of the communication gap is solved by Basecamp.

Basecamp allows all the team members of a project to engage in collective chats. This way, no one misses out on the important discussion and everything that’s said is on record. Basecamp also gives a common space for saving up the documents. There is no hassle of CCing everyone while sharing the documents.

With this tool, whenever a team member logs in, he can see who did what by when. It also lets the users make interactive To-do lists so that all the projects are under control. So BaseCamp is the ultimate Project Management tool for distributed teams.

4. BeeHopr

The phenomenon of remote work is very thrilling as it opens many doors of opportunities without crossing the physical boundaries. BeeHopr takes this up to another level by building a platform for online business networking. By using BeeHopr, you can meet up like-minded professionals from all around the world.

You can conduct business meetings online without actually leaving your home. You can further your dreams and business goals finding the people who are a great fit for your team.

So if you have a distributed business and you want to find the right employee, use BeeHopr.

5. Slack

Skype was the way to communicate a few years ago. Today, users want much more than the Instant Messaging feature of Skype. Slack provides all that and much more. With Slack, users can have common communication. They can search through the chats for relevant information. Users can create channels relevant to a certain subject.

They can also converse privately. It is a great platform for official communication for a Remote Team. The application is pretty simple to use and has applications for Android and iOS as well. Therefore, users can stay connected no matter where they go.

Conclusion

Using the right tools and mastering their use for collaboration can make the life of a remote team easier and simpler. Using the tools to their full extent can tremendously increase the productivity of the remote teams!

Additional Business and Productivity Trends Resources:

Want to learn more about Business and Productivity trends,

Strategies to Increase Employee Productivity in 2020: 

Employers need to prioritize efficiency. They should let employees make a list of daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. By creating a list, they will have a structure and plan to stick to. This will also give them a reason to chase and decrease their chances of getting sidetracked by irrelevant tasks.

10 Ways Managers Can Help Solve Employee Time Management Issues: 

Every employee has their own way of doing work. Some tackle the hardest tasks first and then move on to the easier ones. Others operate in the opposite way. If they’re completing tasks on time then leave them to their preferred pattern.