Working remotely comes with its fair share of distractions. No matter how hard you try to focus on work, the hey from a friend and fun in the coffee shop can steal your concentration a bit.
Productivity tools help you to complete tasks faster and minimize distraction. It forces you to go straight to where the solution is instead of searching endlessly on the internet and then mistakenly get carried away again.
Studies by Hubspot show that 89% of employees prefer to work alone to hit maximum productivity. By being alone, they want to face their tasks head-on without anyone, any app, or any notification popping up to say hi.
In this post, I will share the eight must-have productivity tools for remote workers.
Benefits of Productivity Tools for Remote Workers
You can achieve a lot with little focus. Productivity tools allow you to solve specific tasks in a faster and easier manner, thereby helping you save time. It also helps ease your mindset so that your creativity juice can flow out peacefully. You can use remote monitoring for your employees so that you can know how they are working on their tasks and how everything is going.
Here are some benefits of productivity tools.
1. It improves your quality of work
With a calm mindset and easy access to tools comes an improved quality of work. Productivity tools integrate into your system, so you don’t leave your workspace to solve any issue.
2. It helps you save time
Productivity tools provide you with crucial time efficiency. The tools help you manage your time so that you can deliver tasks faster and save the client relationship.
3. It eases mobility and remote working experience
Productivity tools make the modern working life experience awesome. It offers you the freedom to work from anywhere and at any time.
That means you can start a document from your desk at home and complete it while you commute to the grocery store. Or you can voice that long email and request Siri to send it at a particular time.
That said, productivity tools are available in different categories. Some save time, money, and effort, while others just bring ease to your remote working experience.
Categories of Productivity Tools
If you work remotely or plan to do so, here are some productivity tool categories that can help you achieve more in less time.
Mobile Office
These productivity tools allow you to access cloud-based applications so that you can seamlessly share data, communicate with your team members, and collaborate on projects. Examples include Microsoft Office 365 and Google’s G Suite.
Workflow Improvement
Workflow improvement productivity tools streamline operations and potentially automate peculiar instances in the workflow process. Examples are Everything and KeyFinder.
Centralized Communications
These productivity tools allow organizations to achieve a professional level of work purpose communication by creating a centralized environment for effective communication management. Examples are Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Project Management
These productivity tools allow you to manage projects by creating tasks and assign workflows to specific resources and document their progress in the form of notes and time entries. Examples are SweetProcess, Trello, and Asana.
Resource Planning
These tools take care of the basic back-end operations and automate your workflow for improved operational efficiency. Examples are Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.
Business Intelligence (BI)
The BI productivity tools help you to make sense of data for the benefit of finding flaws in your internal operations. Examples are Microsoft Power BI and Tableau.
8 Must-Have Productivity Tools for Remote Workers
1. Google Drive
Google Drive is a handy productivity tool for remote workers which was developed by Google. This is because it has a lot of features that make it easy for team members to collaborate in a lot of ways.
Take, for instance, using Google Docs; you can write pieces of educational content, create manuals, templates, SOPs, and so on that your team members can use easily for free.
Any document you create with Google Docs is securely stored on the cloud, and any member of your team can easily gain access to it, irrespective of their location.
Also, you can decide on the specific access for each person on the team, depending on what you want them to see.
Other features of Google Drive include spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and forms, which can be used in a unique and collaborative way, depending on your team’s needs.
2. Evernote
Note taking is one activity that you’d have to engage in if you work remotely. A great tool that helps you do this really well is Evernote.
With it, you can easily organize and sync your notes across different devices. That way, you can access your notes from anywhere, either at home or in the office.
Another great feature of Evernote is that you can use it to clip valuable information and helpful insights from the web. Hence, you would no longer be worried about losing data when you need it most.
It also integrates with other apps, which enhances its functionality and makes it easy for you to use it with other software.
A note-taking app like Evernote is a great asset for remote workers. However, most of Evernote’s advanced features for organizing information are only available on premium plans, which are more expensive than those of similar apps on the market. So if you have budget constraints, it may be worth exploring Evernote alternatives that offer similar features at a more affordable price.
3. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management platform that helps you to save more time by automating your social media activities.
The tool supports and integrates with social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube.
With it, you can share and schedule content efficiently across your various social media platforms. Not only that, but it’s also a great tool for engaging with your friends and followers on social media.
Finally, you can monitor your social media performance and measure your results with it.
4. Rescue Time
Rescue Time is an automatic time-tracking and distraction-blocking productivity tool that ensures you waste less time and get more done.
This outstanding tool monitors how you work and provides daily and weekly intelligent insights on what you do and areas that you can improve.
If you want to motivate your remote team and make them more focused and productive, this is the tool for you.
5. Grammarly
Most remote teams communicate through writing. What this means is that investing in a tool that enhances your team’s writing skills and makes them communicate with one another efficiently and effectively is worth it.
Grammarly is an example of a writing tool for a remote team. With it, your team can correct common writing errors such as spelling, syntax, punctuation, clarity, and so on.
6. LastPass
When working remotely, you open accounts and sign up on different websites and platforms. Hence, you need a way to securely manage your passwords so that your employees can easily access them and they won’t be prone to hackers’ attacks.
With LastPass, you can save a password on any device of your choice, and it’ll be available whenever you want to access it from other devices.
You can also use it to connect employees to a specific password that your company uses and unify their access and authentication.
7. Trello
Trello is a visual tool for organizing your work and life. It’s a great tool for ensuring that all members of your team are on the same page and working towards achieving the same goal.
With Trello, you can assign tasks easily to anyone on your remote team and monitor the progress until they complete it.
You can also use it to set up and manage your team’s workflow and activities.
8. Fyle
Fyle is a spend management tool that automates your entire pre-accounting process end-to-end. It ensures that your employees and Finance teams can collaborate seamlessly over the submission and tracking of expense reports.
Fyle efficiently enforces compliance by automating pre-submission checks; this ensures that Finance teams don’t have to check every submitted expense against company policy manually.
They can also design custom policies and workflows depending on the needs of your business.
Conclusion
Before picking a productivity tool, make sure that you clearly define what you want to achieve. That way, you can take full advantage of any tool you opt for.
As a remote worker, your company may have the tool(s) they already use. What’s important is that any tool you choose helps you get the much-desired freedom to enjoy your own time and the efficiency to deliver tasks on time.
Author Bio
Owen McGab Enaohwo is the CEO and co-founder of SweetProcess, an easy-to-use and intuitive business process management software founded in 2013. The software makes it possible for company executives and their employees to collaborate to document standard operating procedures, processes, and policies quickly.