This week has brought about a MASSIVE shift in how the world works.
Since Monday, we have learned that working with distributed teams and flexible schedules can be a nightmare to manage and can send your business into chaos if not properly managed.
As a company in the tech space, we have become accustomed to our virtual and distributed teams and have put together a list of ways to keep your team sane, connected and productive while we stay self-isolated.
1. Communication: now more than ever it is crucial to keep information flowing and to keep your team communicating with each other. Since coffee room chats are out of the question, we need to move to more digital communication to keep our teams engaged.
Slack: Slack is an essential tool for teams. It allows teams to create channels for sharing communication and for private and group messaging. It is available on mobile and desktop so it allows for teams to stay always connected instantly.
Collabware: With communication crossing multiple platforms collabware offers search capabilities across platforms that dig deeper and are more exact, saving frustration and time. It provides teams with a way to properly manage the entire lifecycle and review process of all electronic, physical and email records with easy-to-create workflows.
Vidyard: As we are all buried behind our screens, now more than ever we need to see some smiling faces. With Vidyard you can create internal communications videos to engage your team, just remember to put on a shirt and smile!
2. Information Sharing: with everyone away from the office, we all need to be able to access information and documents remotely. Digital file-sharing systems are essential to ensure that information is protected and we all have real-time access to the documents we need.
Dropbox: Although they aren’t Canadian, Dropbox is essential for file sharing so we wanted to include them. Allow your team to upload documents into a shared drive that all your team can access in real-time. Accessible on desktop and mobile you can share, work on and collaborate on documents from anywhere, no more asking “can you send me that file?”
Sync.com: Sync is another great tool for storing, share and access your files from just about anywhere. Sync’s encrypted cloud storage platform protects your privacy by ensuring that only you can access your data. Your confidential documents are completely safeguarded from unauthorized access, which is the only way you can truly trust the cloud.
3. Workflow and team management: juggling work and home demands are creating havoc for normal schedules and workflows. Allow your team the flexibility to work around their demands by using tools to keep projects and workflow on track.
Flow: This is a simple task tracking and project management software for teams. It will allow you to plan projects, prioritize to-dos and delegate tasks. They offer a free trial, so get your team going and into a new flow.
Unito: This is another great project management tool that allows teams to collaborate across tools and projects. Unito allows for two-way sync which means that every task and project is always up-to-date. There is no more copy and paste and no more duplicating effort. It easily integrates with other popular tools like Asanna, Trello, Basecamp, Github, and Hubspot
4. Security: working remotely creates an added challenge for ensuring security.
1password: This is the essential password manager for remote teams. Never have to remember a hundred passwords again, with 1Password you save all your passwords in a vault and you can share passwords with team members in secure vaults, allowing access to those who need it.
5. Team Motivation: is key this is going to be a difficult time for people and it is important as leaders to keep your team motivated and help support them with the shift in work-life as we adjust to this new temporary reality.
Shift: SHIFT helps you guide your team through change which is essential in this time of ambiguity. It will teach your team to be more agile, adopt a new culture, and adjust to new ways of working which will be needed now more than ever.
Kudos: Kudos will help keep your team motivated and maintain your corporate culture. This employee experience and culture platform that leverages the power of employee recognition, feedback, surveys, and analytic insights to help organizations reduce turnover, improve culture, and boost performance. Which in this time of change it will be essential for improving moral as companies move remotely.
In addition to all of these great online productivity tools, we have one more and it is the MOST IMPORTANT. The good old fashioned walk! Take a break when the sun shines, breathe in the fresh air and be grateful that we live in a safe, vibrant and peaceful country.
Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn to keep up to date with our content around Covid-19.
Tiona Corcoran is the VP Recruitment & Immigration with Global Talent Accelerator.