These remote collaboration tools, remote team communication tools, and smart home solutions for remote workers will help you create a productive and eco-friendly home office space.
Remote work is all the rage today, but working from home can be challenging if you lack the technology and infrastructure to work productively and efficiently.
Have you found yourself experiencing a new set of challenges since working from home? Perhaps the electricity costs have increased, or instead of the increased productivity that all the studies claim, you find yourself distracted and overwhelmed.
Often, the challenges we face with remote working stem from not having the right equipment to hand, and whether we’re trying to homeschool our kids or set up a home office space, we need a little more than just a reliable internet connection.
While there are many reasons to work from home today, including the flexible hours, ability to spend more time with family and protect yourself from contagion, it’s important to ensure that your home has all the right technology and gadgets you require to be a successful remote employee.
So long as you have the right communication tools and smart home technology available to help you stay productive while carrying out these tasks, working from home can be the perfect solution for employees who prefer remotely working from home.
One of the biggest challenges of working from home is setting up a workspace or home office that separates your working tasks from your home life. Today, there are many accessible tech devices and smart home solutions that can help remote workers get all of their tasks done efficiently.
Some technological advances go beyond the typical ergonomic desk chair, computer screen and headphones, with technology that will not only transform your work-life balance and turn your home into a more efficient, eco-friendly, and secure place to work.
To ensure your home office is both tech-savvy and eco-friendly, we’ve listed some must-have smart home technology to install in your home.
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This list of smart devices and smart home solutions include the very best in smart assistants, sustainable fixtures, and advanced security to help you create a healthy and productive work from home office and workspace.
Aside from the technology essentials, you’ll also want to consider setting yourself up with the latest remote collaboration tools, communication tools and productivity tools to enable you to work from home successfully.
Most work-from-home companies equip their remote workforce with appropriate remote team collaboration and communication tools that enable remote workers to reach their goals even when they’re not in the office.
These collaboration and communication tools for remote teams are especially useful for keeping remote employees connected, productive, and accountable when working at home for an extended period of time.
Some of the most crucial remote software tools for successful remote teams include project management systems, internet communication tools, remote monitoring software and productivity tools.
Essential Communication Tools & Smart Home Solutions For Remote Workers
This list of remote team communication tools, remote working technology, and smart home technology includes some of the latest computer technology available to ensure you’re as efficient as possible when working from home.
Smart assistants make your home more efficient
Having a smart assistant at home will not only help you with work tasks but with everything from finding the ideal recipe to providing you with details about the weather.
These must-have, hands-free, voice-controlled home automation devices are particularly great for mums, as they can use it to schedule weekly activities, whether they are preparing for a virtual back to school or need to keep track of doctor’s appointments.
Your kids can also use smart assistants to ask questions and learn just by saying the name of the device and stating their request.
Try – Siri on Apple products or Alexa if you have Amazon Prime.
Smart home gadgets reduce energy costs
When working from home you may have found that your energy bills have been significantly higher, which is why smart home design, smart home kits, and sustainable energy devices are becoming increasingly popular in households.
One of the smart home features you might consider installing in your home is a smart home lighting automation system that comes with smart home lights and smart home switches.
Many new smart home projects come fully-fitted with smart home lighting which is rapidly becoming a must-have sustainable fixture in smart home automation projects.
In fact, property companies like UK-based RWinvest, are using smart home automation systems controlled by motion detectors and home automation sensors to turn lights on only when people enter the room.
Other smart home gadgets like a smart thermostat to control heating and air conditioning systems can be easily monitored via your smartphone. If you leave the house and forget to turn off the air conditioning, simply do it on the go via your mobile device.
As a remote worker, you now have to bear the cost of all your infrastructure yourself. These home automation devices can help you prevent energy waste and save a considerable amount on your electricity bills too.
Many remote employees are choosing ways to reduce their carbon footprint and become eco-friendly by investing in these smart home automation products as they make it easy to keep expenses in check when working from home.
Smart home security devices protect home & family
CCTV and security cameras have come a long way since black and white videotape and low-quality imagery. If you’re going to be spending more time working from home, you want to ensure that you and your family are safe while doing so.
Installing smart home devices like smart security cameras with high-resolution picture quality and night vision will ensure you are notified if anyone is on your property when they shouldn’t be.
Other smart home security devices to invest in include smart home locks or a smart doorbell, which can be connected to your smartphone and will display footage in real-time if someone is at your door.
You can even have a two-way conversation with some IoT home automation devices before letting people into your home to ensure you don’t have any unexpected visitors. It is also a great way to check on deliveries should you need to leave the house for a few hours.
Besides home security devices, you also need to protect your sensitive financial and other data from being stolen by hackers, not only for your sake but for the sake of any clients you may work with.
This means you’ll need to install professional antivirus software and any other software you need, such as a password manager, to keep your devices and work running smoothly.
Our online security and mobile security tips will help you secure your sensitive data and devices so that hackers can’t steal your information online.
Remote collaboration & communication tools increase productivity
Perhaps one of the hardest things to deal with when working from home is the lack of communication with coworkers and colleagues. It’s not as easy to communicate with colleagues or employers while telecommuting, so it becomes essential to use remote working software that makes communication lines more accessible.
Remote team communication software allows remote staff members to access shared files and work alongside their colleagues. There are many remote team collaboration tools that offer team messaging services and face-to-face video calls.
Remote team collaboration software is also crucial when it comes to collaborating on team tasks. Some of the best collaboration tools, remote conference tools and remote collaboration software are listed below.
Try – Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, Cloudmeeting, Gotomeeting
Project management software helps track tasks better
When working remotely, maintaining a work-life balance can be challenging enough, and you might find yourself struggling to adhere to a healthy working routine, especially when it comes to eating at appropriate times and remembering to drink plenty of water.
Mundane, everyday tasks that shouldn’t require a second thought can become the biggest of asks, even more so when you have a multitude of projects to complete, so it’s imperative that you stay organised.
Remote project management tools that allow staff members to assign jobs to complete will help you stay on top of projects and team tasks through digital dashboards and filing systems.
These types of remote working solutions often track the status and time it has taken you to achieve them, making it much easier to manage your daily routine and plan out the tasks in front of you.
Try – Trello and Monday.com.
Remote team management software for your remote workforce
Do you work as part of a remote team where you’re in charge of managing remote workers? If you’re the one managing dispersed teams or running a business with a remote workforce, you need to be able to delegate efficiently.
If you’re managing remote teams providing outsourcing services, such as an outsource call centre, outsourced customer support, or outsourced IT services, you must ensure that your remote employees are doing the work they’re expected to do during work hours.
Many offshore outsourcing companies managing virtual teams use cloud technology software to monitor remote employees and outsourced staff. Some outsourcing technology, such as remote team management software, can be used to monitor remote employees.
Remote employee management software is a tool for distributed teams that require remote employee time tracking, to check how active employees are when working from home. This helps to keep people motivated and on-target when you need to meet client deadlines.
These remote managing tools for remote workers are particularly beneficial if individual members of staff are falling behind with work, as it helps the management stay on top of things and implement processes for measurement of productivity and preventing recurrence of delays.
Try – Slack, Exotel, Officevibe.
Don’t want to hire remote workers yourself? Do this instead.
Learning how to manage remote teams with remote work tools and remote team communication tools requires a learning curve that not many organisations are willing to navigate, even though they understand the benefits of outsourcing.
Working with remote teams, managing a remote team, and leading remote teams involves a number of tasks, including:
- Providing tools for working from home
- Instituting remote workers best practices
- Project management for remote working
- Using remote team management tools
- Remote employee time tracking and monitoring
- Creating a remote work culture
- Supporting remote workers
- Team building activities for remote teams
Want to enjoy offshoring and outsourcing advantages without having to hire remote workers and become skilled at outsourcing management, remote staff management, and remote team-building exercises?
Here’s how to outsource your remote processes without having to learn how to manage remote workers, how to monitor remote employees or conduct team building for remote teams.
SHEROES remote work programme, Managed Remote Solutions (MARS), is an end-to-end process on-cloud platform that enables significant improvement in quality and efficiency when it comes to building virtual teams and effective remote team working.
MARS Partners are highly-qualified and experienced MARS Certified Remote Professionals (MCRP) that are best in class and already serve top companies with processes, including inbound sales, outbound sales, customer support and operations.
MARS by SHEROES provides a remote project manager who knows how to effectively manage remote employees, so clients can achieve efficient virtual employee management in virtual teams made up of Certified MARS Partners.
In this article in Business Today, SHEROES Founder & CEO, Sairee Chahal, notes that:
MARS by SHEROES is one of the best companies that hire remote workers in India and is currently scaling up to meet the demands of organisations that don’t have the time or resources for hiring remote employees or figuring out how to manage a team remotely.
For organisations that don’t want to spend the time or resources to hire remote staff, managing a remote workforce and supervising remote employees is easy with a project manager from MARS by SHEROES.
If you’re an Indian woman who wants to know how to find remote work and how to work remotely with top companies in India, you can become a Certified MARS Partner with MARS by SHEROES, one of the best work from home companies that hire remote employees.
Did you find these remote working tips for managing staff remotely, managing remote employees and managing remote teams interesting? Do share your own remote team communication tools, productivity tools, and remote working tips in the comments below.
About the author:
Priya Florence Shah is the Group Editor at SHEROES and author of Devi2Diva, an emotional self-care book for women.
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