Remote working has never been this popular. If you search the web for related topics, such as home office equipment, remote team management software, best work-from-home practices, prepare for the overwhelming amount of very much relevant results. It might just be the first time in history when wandering to the second or third page of Google results is worthwhile.
Even if you take the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic out of the equation, remote work has grown by 44% in the last five years according to a recent publication gathering remote working stats. 54% of US workers and 68% of the global working population do their jobs remotely at least once a month.
41% of companies worldwide already offer remote working opportunities and this number is expected to increase to 78% by 2028. Although the current situation might speed up this process even more. Just take a look at this Google Trends report on the term ‘remote work’ and how its search volume changed during the past 5 years. . In March 2020, we’ve seen double or even triple the interest for this topic than ever before.
This, of course, includes everything related to remote work; career opportunities, tools to utilize for success, remote team management software distributed team management tips, etc.
Things are changing quickly and this new work scenario can be a challenge for companies and line managers. Some may struggle with engaging with employees and managing remote teams. And some will find it surprisingly easy to master distributed team management.
Yet, this is the way to go. Telecommuting is what people want and it can’t be overlooked anymore. With the best remote team management software tools, creating circumstances that suit everyone on the team is not that hard.
Managing remote teams is not all that different from traditional collaboration and management, however, your tech stack will require some updating and extension. Apart from projects and task management tools, meeting and collaboration platforms, you will also find HR software, people analytics tools and video training platforms to be your best friends.
Let us reveal our ultimate list of the best apps for distributed team managers. Let’s dive in, shall we?
There’s no team without team meetings. 10to8 Meeting Scheduling Software helps distributed teams sync up and organize meetings such as daily stand-ups, cross-department meetings, virtual coffees, and more.
If your team is spread across multiple time zones, 10to8 is a must-have with its timezone management feature. You won’t need a separate app for converting BST to EDT – 10to8 does the work for you. Even if you are in the same country, people still get double-booked and confused all the time. 10to8’s 2-way sync with external calendars keeps the diaries organized and the automated reminders ensure that team members show up to meetings on time.
With the native Zoom Video integration, you can run video calls with ease and enable your remote team to reach full productivity.
Asana, in short, is a ticketing system, that helps teams stay focused on projects and daily tasks that make the company move forward. As remote working software, it is a great place for collective team knowledge.
You can create projects with sections in them, and the tickets that you write for every little task will move around within these sections, supporting transparency and better tracking progress.
As for collective knowledge, it is extremely helpful to have everything on tickets that has ever happened in the business. It makes it so easy to see if there had been an attempt to get something done in the past, why did the task fail, what blocked it and what can be done better. On the flip side, it can also highlight what went well.
Asana basically means remembering everything that matters. Properly written tickets also help new teammates to pick up old tasks if needed.
The Asana Workflow will help your work as a team manager see all your remote team’s effort and provide them with guidance when a ticket is stuck or blocked.
Connecteam is an all-in-one employee management app that allows you to manage your remote teams easily and effectively. Whether it’s keeping everyone on the same page, creating schedules, and celebrating success, you and your team can do it all under one roof.
Unlike most disconnected solutions, Connecteam offers everything a business needs to take things to the next level: easily share workflows, communicate and engage with employees, schedule or dispatch jobs, assign tasks and see when they’re completed, and so much more. All of this in one simple, integrated platform that all your employees can use, regardless of how tech-savvy they are.
Unlike most disconnected solutions, Connecteam offers everything a business needs to take things to the next level: easily share workflows, communicate and engage with employees, schedule or dispatch jobs, assign tasks and see when they’re completed, and so much more. All of this is in one simple, integrated platform that all your employees can use, regardless of how tech-savvy they are.
Pumble is a free workplace communications app that keeps employees connected and organized. One of the main issues with remote teams is staying connected to your teammates and Pumble helps eliminate this as a problem.
You can create private and public channels, as well as start, follow, and reply to threads. You can tag people in comments or posts or message them directly, and share important files, images, and documents. Update your status to let the team know what you’re up to, and use emojis to communicate clearly.
With its user-friendly interface and range of features, Pumble will definitely help keep the team together.
TalentLMS is an award-winning Learning Management System (LMS) ideal for training remote employees and delivering engaging online training.
Create courses in a few clicks in a platform suitable for sophisticated as well as inexperienced, aspiring trainers. TalentLMS combines support for multiple file types and multimedia (presentations, videos, iFrame, SCORM, etc.) with simplicity, and an always eager-to-help support team.
You’ll find all the features you need without the hefty price tag. All plans include functionality for building courses, customization and branding, blended learning, multitenancy and, gamification. What’s more, advanced user management, at-a-glance and in-depth reporting, and the ability to sell courses are also included.
Userlane is a flexible digital adoption solution for employee onboarding and training.
Regarding employee training, Userlane is changing the way large organizations adopt and use software. With interactive guides and an onscreen virtual assistant, Userlane walks employees through all in-app processes of any browser-based software application they are required to navigate.
By offering employees a fully interactive experience with contextual performance support, they can learn how to use a software application instantly while actually performing tasks in real-time.
Userlane is simply an overlay that goes on top of the highest layer of any application (no coding required) and employees can, therefore, be trained whenever and wherever with no need for remote IT support.
Demio is a bit of a curve-ball, as it is known as the hassle-free webinar tool for marketers, however, you might find it very useful for internal webinars too.
We think about webinars as a great way of educating others outside of the company and generating leads for sales. But webinar stands for web-seminar, a way of educating people through the web during a video call.
Webinars can be much more engaging and therefore more effective than pre-recorded training videos. Employees can join training sessions from all around the world, ask questions and learn more about your organization’s processes in a more interactive fashion. Demio guarantees a frictionless experience, as attendees don’t need to download the app, they can simply use their web browser.
Once the webinar is over, you can upload the recording to the cloud, send out the replay link to your distributed team and even track attendance to see how popular the training was.
We put so much effort into creating insightful and educational webinars for prospective buyers. What if we did the same for our employees? Can you imagine how it would improve knowledge distribution and employee retention?
CharlieHR is your and your employees’ happy place. Seriously. This tool is a game-changer if your company scales rapidly and you don’t have the time or have better things to do than HR-related admin.
CharlieHR allows you to automate the whole process from onboarding a new employee to performance reviews to time off to offboarding.
So what can you achieve with this program? You can create an onboarding checklist that every new joiner must complete. This can include working device settings, software to learn, company culture to get familiar with etc. You can also set up reminders when an employee passes probation, or when a 6-month or annual review is due.
Your team will be able to request annual leave and see others’ time off, as well as who are working remotely. They can update certain information such as a change in address or bank account number and track remaining holidays.
CharlieHR will save you much time so you can concentrate on more important things.
Culture Amp is a people and culture platform that takes employee engagement to the next level. It provides managers with useful insights on employee experience and performance, as well as feedback and planning tools.
Your team members can fill out regular surveys,allowing you to keep a pulse on what’s going on in your remote team. You can dive deep into analytics and get a feel of how your team is doing. Furthermore, you can put together action plans.
Increase employee retention by showing that you care about your team’s professional development. With Culture Amp, you can set and track goals and give feedback on your staff’s performance. Form an engaged team that is happy to work together.
F4S (short for Fingerprint for Success) is an online people analytics tool that is derived from a 20-year study of some of the world’s top entrepreneurs and business movers. It helps identify your strengths as well as your blind spots, which when optimized, will help unlock greater productivity in the workplace.
As a remote tool, the F4S assessment can be taken by team members across the globe. The results can be compared across teams and insight from top performers in the industry (including CEO’s and startup founders) can be gained.
So what benefit will remote team managers get from the tool? With F4S, you will be able to make better hiring decisions, eliminate time-wasting projects, create specialized benchmarks for your time and improve communication across your team.
Now that your team are working from home, what are they allowed to purchase on company expenses? A new office chair that benefits their posture? Fuel or a rare bonsai tree that improves the quality of their work environment?
Regardless of how much you allow your team to spend, Soldo helps you set up a smarter remote business by keeping your expenses under control. Soldo enables you to manage expenses before they happen by setting up prepaid business cards with customisable budgets and rules. Simplify expense management and reporting to reduce time spent on admin.
Your distributed team can make the financial decisions they need to, whilst you can rest assured that your overall budget is under control. This will build trust and ultimately help you keep an eye on your company’s bottom line.
If you are managing a remote team of software engineers or developers, organizing pair programming sessions for them might be causing you headaches. Of course, you could just hang out in a virtual meeting room – or you could choose a dedicated pair programming software solution.
Adaface PairPro is a collaborative code editor with built-in video conferencing and code execution features. Developers can work together, provide feedback on each other’s code, get code quality scores, and so work better together on meatier projects.
What’s more, this software can be a valuable part of your developer recruitment toolkit as the platform will allow you to assess the programming skills of job candidates during interviews.
What do you miss the most from the physical office space? Is it the biscuit jar, the watercooler chats, or the barista coffee machine? Or is it those fruitful sessions in front of a white board?
Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform that brings distributed teams together. You can draw on it, add virtual sticky notes, connect work items, and invite teammates or others to collaborate on the board. This tool works brilliantly with a touchscreen too, which makes the whiteboard-feel even more natural and kind of futuristic.
And if you thought only software developers or project managers can enjoy a good brainstorming session in front of it, think again. Your Revenue Team will love drawing customer funnels on it, Customer Service will have a platform to build support chatbots, and who knows what others will use it for… Maybe Pictionary or other drawing-based remote team building activities?
Hubstaff is a time tracking software that’s designed to help remote teams make the most out of their time. It automates the process of keeping track of who worked on what and when so teams can focus on tasks that matter.
Hubstaff’s time tracking accurately keeps a record of the projects and tasks that each team member has worked on. This eliminates the need for guesswork, allowing managers to focus on supporting team members instead of constantly looking over their shoulders.
Hubstaff offers productivity features like app and URL tracking, mouse and keyboard movement mapping, and even screenshots for those who want to track their time this way too.
These, when combined with the time tracked data, provide teams insight into how they’re spending time so they can optimize their workflow for efficiency and identify time-wasters. So at the end of the day, their working hours are spent well and their personal life can take over with a clear cut.
Now that you know some of the best remote team management software tools, discover the best remote working tools that your employees need to know about!