62% of remote workers want employers to provide better technology that helps them stay connected with their colleagues
Truthfully, people are what make a company. Without a mix of personalities that are able to drive a corporation forward, and demonstrate teamwork, friendly competition, and a go-getter attitude, there wouldn’t be a suitable work culture that links to an overall mission of a business.
Sometimes, in order to hire the right employees, companies consider offering a remote work policy that allows individuals to get the job done from anywhere. In fact, according to a 2019 survey, 61% of global companies offer some sort of remote working policy to their staff.
On the other hand, staying connected is one of the biggest challenges for distributed and remote employees. A report conducted by Polycom stated that 62% of remote workers want employers to provide better technology that helps them stay connected with their colleagues. With that in mind, providing the right tools and services to suit their needs is important to consider. Since being in a remote office or working from home can potentially take away from efficient communication and workflow.
So which productivity tools are needed for a business to properly set their distributed teams up for success? Here are some ideas for consideration.
Knowledge Management Systems
Sharing information with distributed teams is a time-consuming and ineffective process. Most of the time, information is scattered between Excels and PDFs, becoming difficult to control updates and even share feedback. Using a Knowledge Management System will allow you to centralize internal information in a more appealing and intuitive layout, so remote employees can find information quickly and update it in real-time.
As one of the largest hotel groups in Europe, the Pestana Group faced this challenge: to efficiently update content and internally share information with their distributed call center team. Since all their hotels’ information was in one massive Excel sheet, the process of finding the correct data and answering customer inquiries was time-consuming. Another major challenge was collecting feedback from the call center team, as it was often necessary to report errors and leave notes with last-minute changes regarding the hotels.
After moving to move to a Knowledge Management System, Pestana was able to reduce response time in 70% of their daily interactions, since the information was always accurate and quick to find. Implementing Knowledge Management solutions will help you communicate and share information with your distributed teams and, at the same time, improve their productivity.
Project Management Software
For businesses with remote employees who are in contact with members of a project management team, it’s imperative to initiate a software that highlights time-critical data — listing client-specific goals, due dates and implemented actions for completion.
Ensuring that each member of a team is aware of the tasks that they are bound to complete and the amount of time they have to work on, is vital. Without an organized project management tool that is remote-friendly, a company’s distributed teams will lack access to the details that associate heavily with the overall success of a business.
Some of the most popular tools include Trello, Basecamp, and Jira if you are part of a software project.
Software Training Tools
Software is part of our everyday lives. We use software to send emails, organize tasks, book vacations, plan our business strategy, and the list just goes on. Naturally, some of the essential tools that your company uses require some learning curve for employees. Especially when it’s a software that was custom-built for your company.
When employees are at the office, is easier to explain these tools through a quick face-to-face meeting with a mentor. But when you have a distributed team, you will need to find better and more autonomous ways for employees to learn.
Tutorial Videos are an effective way to teach distributed employees on how to use a specific platform. According to Forrester Research, employees are 75 percent more likely to watch a video than to read documents, emails or web articles. Using tools like Helppier, you can easily record a tutorial video on top of your software and present them inside the platform itself, or export the files to share via email or chat. This way, your company reduces costs with traditional training and video creation, while boosting autonomy for distributed teams.
Payroll and Banking Tools
A payroll, human resource, and tax service can lead employees to a space centered around their finances. Whether it’s online, through an app or both, in-office and remote employees can access the amount of money they’re making, when they’re getting paid and a list of company benefits to reference at all times.
Electronic payroll systems are very beneficial for remote employees who have to manage their money on the go. As some employees may take advantage of an online budgeting and banking app or a money management software on a desktop, this makes it simple and convenient for their financial tool to interconnect.
Effective Communication Hub
As previously mentioned, effective communication is key among a remote team. Since there is a lack of face-to-face interaction, it’s vital to provide a communication platform that allows your distributed crew to chat about daily work production, and video and voice call for a weekly team or client meetings.
This hub can be used throughout an entire business because it is also essential that the in-house employees can communicate with remote employees whenever needed. A company-wide communication software can make conversations timely through real-time alerts and the quick ability to type a message.
In Conclusion
With the increasing popularity of remote work over the past few years, distributed teams will become an important part of any organization.
It’s important to set them up for success and give them the proper tools they need to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Some of these should include communication tools, project management software, knowledge management systems and tutorial videos to facilitate training inside internal platforms.
Hope you enjoyed these suggestions and are able to increase productivity inside your company. Also, if you’re interested in reading more about employee training make sure to follow Helppier on Facebook and Twitter to get updated on our latest news. 📣
In case you’re looking for a tool to improve employee training go ahead and check our website. 😉
