23 Tools to Help Manage Your Remote Workforce + Our Personal Toolbox

We live in a world with futuristic technologies being created by the day, some that have helped connect teams from all over the world through the means of online applications. As a 90% remote-based company ourselves, we see the value in utilizing specific tools to stay connected, stay on task, and stay productive. Listed below are 23 remote workforce tools that can help both employers and teammates gain the benefits of working from a remote location without having to compromise on quality. We’ll also share our own toolbox with you.

1. Virtual Office Through Team Chats – Communication is one of the most crucial keys to remote workforce management. Applications such as (1) Slack allow teammates to chat, share files, compare completed work and much more. Our tool selection: Slack

2. Screen Sharing and Video Chats – While popular applications such as (2) Skype were used in the past for video calls, (3) Zoom allows users to not only video chat without lagging and share screens while on a call but you can record or even livestream your meetings or webinars right from the app. Virtual team meetings are now a breeze with Zoom. Our tool selection: Zoom

3. Customer Support for Collaboration – For remote teams that work as customer service representatives, (4) Groove is a time saving and efficient choice as it allows seamless customer support collaboration, with the option of leaving private notes that are hidden from customers. We use LiveChat for realtime chat on our website for its easy user interface and integrations. Our tool selection: (5) LiveChat

4. World Clocks for Easy Time Zone Reading – Remote teams that are scattered across various time zones can benefit with the application (6) World Time Buddy. This remote workforce management software program is ideal for teams that have to synchronize their watches for team meetings and calls. We use Google Calendar to display the time in multiple time zones that our team and clients reside in for easy referencing when scheduling. Our tool selection: (7) Google Calendar

5. Project Management Tools for Easy Collaboration – Setting quarterly goals and saving ideas through a comprehensive dashboard is now a reality. (8) Trello has two kinds of dashboard choices, the first for each teammate and the second for selected teammates who need to work together for ongoing projects. Why Trello is a great easy to use tool we need something a little more robust that could also do more advanced time tracking on projects and integrate into our invoicing software so we went with Teamwork Projects. Our tool selection: (9) Teamwork

6. Management Tools for Team Coordinators – To enable at a glance options for managers who want to check the work schedule for the team on a daily or weekly basis while on the move or in a rush, (10) Teamweek is an excellent choice. We do this through Teamwork Projects as well. Our tool selection: Teamwork

7. Cloud Options for Viewing Work Remotely – While there are many choices for cloud-based storage, (11) Google Drive has proven to be most effective for companies that want to store, view and edit data, from different parts of the world. The share option, as well as the invite to edit, along with permissions choices, are easy to use. We use Google Drive but mostly DropBox Business as not all of our clients can use Google and it keeps us more flexible to have collaborative shared files utilizing Microsoft Office applications. Our tool selection: (12) Dropbox

8. Online Journal to Jot Down Notes – (13) Orgzly is a versatile and efficient application that works both as a task manager, as well as a journal to jot down notes, view them later and work on the tasks with the help of reminders. It might be a good one to try out, though, we’ve been using Evernote for years and it’s feature rich well beyond note taking. Our tool selection: (14) Evernote

9. Work and Break Tracking Made Easy – Remote workforce management is all about using time efficiently to complete work and stretch in-between for a few minutes. (15) Vitamin R can help remote workforce teams to divide their days as per their work schedule with just enough time to work, as well as play. Our tool selection: Teamwork

10. Increase Productivity While Tracking Progress – (16) iDoneThis is a simple software program with many customizable options that allow various teammates to stay on the same page with others in their team by tracking the work they have done and matching their team’s level of output. Our tool selection: Teamwork

11. Design Apps for Dev and Ubuntu Coders - (17) Cloud9 offers remote workforces a development environment with the cloud feature and is power packed with a code editor as well as a workspace that runs on Ubuntu.

12. Perk System to Show that Employers Care – (18) Fond offers employers the ability to share credits with your workforce to give different types of rewards based on a number of categories. We use an AI chat bot tool called EvaBot for both employee rewards and sending gifts to clients and contacts who send us referrals. Our tool selection: (19) Evabot

13. Password Management for Team Accounts – Logging onto various websites with different passwords can be a time-consuming task for most individuals. (20) Meldium omits this irritant and allows teammates to log on with a single sign-on password for multiple team accounts.

14. Building Roadmaps for Improved Operations – Remote product management teams can build roadmaps without breaking a sweat with (21) ProdPad, an effective and thought out management tool. Our tool selection: Teamwork

15. Hosting Codes Online for Non-Developer Teammates – Hosting a code online for teammates who are not developers is a mammoth task, but (22) GitHub has made this seemingly tough task finally possible.

16. Tab Management – For all you modern-day-multitaskers, (23) OneTab makes it easy to close your browser or restart your computer without having to reopen every single site. Our tool selection: OneTab

Hopefully you take the time to explore and test out some of these tools as you take your work with you in your travels around the world…okay, your family reunion in Tahoe. Without these tools, we would be a very unproductive, disjointed team.

If you found any of these tools particularly helpful, we’d love to hear about it. For more insight on how to maintain a healthy remote workforce, check out our previous blog post.