Since the pandemic, a large portion of the global workforce has transitioned to a remote work environment. The majority of remote workers are new to working remotely and this can cause a decrease in productivity. Fortunately, there are a host of free and paid remote working tools that can help remote workers improve their productivity and achieve their desired work life balance. This includes CRM tools, video conferencing tools, file sharing tools and more. You can also use a Small Business CRM Software to effectively manage your team and increase productivity. Below are the top 9 remote working tools to improve productivity. 

Zoom

Zoom is one of the most essential tools to work remotely and you have likely used it many times. Zoom is a video conferencing tool that allows you to start a meeting with anyone in the world with just a link. It has extensive features that allow you to communicate easily with anyone while working remotely. With Zoom you can do meetings, chat, webinars, phone calls, attend online events and more.

Zoom has an app marketplace for virtually any integrations you’d like to add to Zoom. This type of integration is slightly tough with other Zoom alternatives like Dialpad Meetings, Uplead, Lead411, etc. You can add apps like Google Drive, HubSpot, Salesforce and more. Zoom is very easy to set up, you can use either the web app, the desktop app or your mobile app to start a meeting in seconds. This is essential for conducting meetings and talking with your colleagues and team when working remotely.

OnePageCRM

OnePageCRM is a unique CRM system built for actionable contact management. It’s the only tool that transforms a database into a dynamic to-do list where every contact has a task or a reminder set next to them. Built on Getting Things Done productivity principles, OnePageCRM encourages you to take action every single day.

Besides its unique functionality, OnePageCRM has all the usual features of a simple CRM system: sales management, document uploading, pipeline management, mass email communication, reporting, mobile CRM, and so on.

BrowseReporter

BrowseReporter is an employee monitoring software for tracking employee computer activity. It is the ideal tool for enforcing acceptable use policies and protecting your network against unwanted computer activities.

BrowseReporter captures the websites your employees visit and the applications they use. It includes a reporting utility for generating tabular and graphical user activity reports. It also provides screenshot monitoring features that allow you to record multiple screen displays when specific apps or websites are visited. These high-resolution and compressed screenshots can be automatically deleted after a set period of time to help you manage your storage and data retention requirements. BrowseReporter’s productivity reports compare the time that employees spend on websites that are productive vs those that are not. These classifications come pre-configured and can be customized to better fit what is considered productive for your organization.

VMware Monitoring

For those who use virtualization to organize their remote workspace and optimize the use of hardware resources, VMware Monitoring from NAKIVO is a necessary tool to ensure maximum efficiency. It lets you view all the critical metrics of hardware utilization by VMware VMs.

Using a friendly and intuitive interface you can see the CPU, RAM and disk load of every VMware virtual machine in your environment. With real-time and historical data at hand, you can predict resource deficiencies and react to them promptly. A bonus is that you can use the same solution to back up and recover VMs.

Aritic Swarm

An Instant Messaging Tool for internal company collaborations. Aritic Swarm takes team collaboration to the next level with an encrypted secure messaging option.

The rich UI, along with group messaging features, among others, make Aritic Swarm a go-to-platform for teams that rely on the ‘work together’ motto. It brings all your teams together on Aritic Swarm to coordinate and drive business growth.

• Encrypted Messaging
• Messaging and Group Chat
• Team Collaboration
• Secure File Sharing
• Audio and Video Conferencing

Fyle

Fyle is an AI-powered expense management software that streamlines and automates the entire pre-accounting process for businesses. Expense report tracking, reporting, approvals, and processing are all very time-consuming, error-prone, and frustrating tasks that every working professional faces. Although not a core job for anyone, expense management takes up a huge chunk of time for everyone.

Fyle provides easy-to-use tools for all employees, admins, and Finance teams to completely automate this process while eliminating the chance for errors completely. What’s unique about Fyle is that it allows businesses to continue with their existing/preferred corporate card vendors and facilitates direct feeds while delivering a great experience. Finally, it has tight-knit integrations with all major accounting software to free the accounting process from any manual work.

Todoist

Todoist is one of the most popular to-do tools for remote workers. With Todoist, you can organize tasks, set deadlines and 

Virtual office space

Remote teams can improve their productivity by utilizing a virtual office space. A virtual office space allows team members to collaborate efficiently in a remote work environment. One of the key issues that remote workers have is the lack of teamwork and camaraderie  when working remotely.

A virtual office space enables remote team members to collaborate easily and it integrates the different apps and programs each remote worker uses. Many new collaborative software programs enable remote teams to mimic a similar environment to a physical office with a virtual office space.

Ergonomic chairs and desks

With many remote workers sitting for 8+ hours a day, modifying the work environment can significantly help increase productivity. More specifically, remote workers can benefit greatly from using better ergonomic office chairs and desks. By using better chairs and desks, remote workers can improve their posture, increase comfort and their productivity.

This doesn’t need to be an expensive purchase; just buying an ergonomic chair and a small writing desk is enough to improve the work environment of remote workers dramatically. This can help make the remote working experience much more enjoyable and productive, especially when you’re also making sure your teams sleep well and have balanced lifestyles. Bad sleep cycles (which can be fixed) can negatively impact work performance just as much as a bad working environment.