4 Tools for Managing a Remote Team During COVID-19
Managing remote teams during this crisis requires organized leadership. With the help of technology, you can efficiently operate a remote team like you’re running a physical office.
Now, it doesn’t matter whether you’re remotely managing a creative team or an accounting firm. The basic tools you’ll need will all be the same—for communication, collaboration, organization, and productivity.
So we made a list of the four most important tools you need to manage your remote team:
Zoom for Interactive Team Meetings
Team meetings are vital in keeping your remote team in sync. Especially during this time, conference calls are the only way to discuss projects in detail and check how everyone’s doing.
Zoom is a great video conferencing platform for remote teams. It is reliable, easy to use, and the premium version is affordable.
Aside from basic conference calls it also has the following features:
Customizable backgrounds
Meeting list
Directory
Channels
Collaboration-enabled conference rooms.
HD video
Video webinar hosting
Phone system
App integrations
Slack for Seamless Remote Team Collaboration
Communication is the key to successfully managing your remote team. So you need a platform where your team can send both direct and group messages.
Slack is a business communication platform that enables teams to connect closely and in an organized way. It has dedicated channels for separate projects, topics, or teams.
You can also integrate applications like Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Trello, and more. It’s like your one-stop shop for all daily team communications and updates.
Google Drive for Centralized Data Storage
Your team needs a central location for all your documents and files. Otherwise, you risk their security, and that’s one huge issue you can’t afford to have when working remotely.
So use Google Drive, a cloud-based storage solution your teams can access from different devices. It’s a collaborative tool that enables everyone in the team to make real-time edits on documents, slides, and sheets together.
It comes with a larger storage space for G-Suite users. If your team is not using G-Suite yet, you should start setting that up to also make sure all your files are just accessible within the team.
These days, you need to be extra careful with confidential client information and all your original intellectual and creative properties.
Trello for a Productive Remote Team Management
To track your team’s progress and the status of each project you’re working on, you’ll need a project management tool. It will allow you to monitor every task and the overall performance of your team.
Trello is one of the most user-friendly workflow tools out there. It uses Kanban boards which you can drag and drop.
These boards can be categorized per project or sub-team. They also contain multiple drag-and-drop task cards with the following features
Title
Description box
File attachment
Comment section
Member assignment
Color-coded tags/labels
It’s like a digital post-it, only handier and more organized.
Takeaway
The tools we have listed above all value the importance of being able to visualize your process as a team. So with just these four basic remote work tools, you can already create a solid structure for your team to follow.