A ranking of the best work from home productivity tools you need to try if you’ve recently transitioned to working from home.
The concept of working from home is new for most businesses and employees. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has forced nearly every American worker to work from home unless they work for what is considered an essential business. For those workers who can’t work from home, this has caused a decrease in productivity and results, leaving businesses scrambling to resolve the situation.
However, other companies have allowed employees to work from home either permanently or on occasion for years, and the transition has been met with zero loss, even an increase, in production. Why? Mainly because the employees use the right work from home productivity tools to be as efficient working at home as they are working in an office.
For the businesses that are struggling with employee production, consider the following work from home productivity tools to increase efficiency:
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1. Aline Phone Systems
Businesses that rely on a traditional landline telephone system or a physical phone to conduct business have been met with some efficiency challenges.
In these cases, employers have taken one of the following actions to fix the issue:
- Forwarded the office number to one employee to take all inbound calls.
The problem: There is no ability to transfer calls. One person is receiving all inbound calls to their cell phone and must write down the information of callers to pass off to the intended employee who will call them back (if they remember).
- Allowed employees to unplug their phone and use it at home.
The problem: employees are unplugging their phones and bringing them home, which can increase the chances of damage or theft.
The solution: Aline’s mobile cell phone app.
The Aline phone app can be downloaded on any cell phone so everyone doesn’t have to haul physical phones home. Plus, all employees can receive calls and transfer instantly. With the app, communication is streamlined with no delay in serving the customer.
2. A Comfortable Office Chair
A comfortable office chair is perhaps the most important work from home productivity tool.
The wrong office chair can cause a variety of health problems such as back and neck fatigue. Over time, this fatigue can lead to serious problems that could require a visit to the doctor. You’re spending hours in a chair all day long, so make sure it’s one that supports your health. Plus, how productive can employees be when they’re in pain?
Another avenue to increase productivity and improve your health is to use a standing desk. Sitting for long periods of time has been linked to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and early death.
Do your health a favor and choose a comfortable office chair early on to decrease the chances of acquiring a health condition later.
3. Call Logic
For salespeople, in times like now with COVID-19, the sales aren’t coming to them through referrals and inbound marketing. Salespeople must pick up the phone and make calls themselves.
A tool like Call Logic can increase outbound call production by up to 2-3 times versus manual dialing. Industries such as insurance, real estate, and financial advising are all seeing a decrease in sales. Call Logic works by eliminating manual dialing activities. Users can simply upload a spreadsheet, pick up the phone, and get those sales!
4. Zoom
Zoom is a web conference service that allows users to hold remote meetings. Users can share their computer screens and even video conference together. While in-person meetings may not be happening again for some time, businesses can still have that much-desired human interaction through Zoom.
Zoom is widely used in a variety of industries, but perhaps its biggest impact has been in education. With Zoom, teachers and professors can still lecture their students and students can use the chat feature to interact with the instructor.
5. Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive
Both Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive are some of the best work from home productivity tools when it comes to internal file sharing. Rather than using email to send countless documents, with a cloud sharing service like OneDrive and Google Drive, users have access to a library of documents at their fingertips. The libraries keep documentation well-organized and easily accessible.
Plus, administrators can provide permissions to selected employees to edit files or simply view them. Best of all, these cloud sharing services can be accessed from any device, anywhere, with an Internet connection.
6. Trello
Trello is a project management software that helps teams to complete projects efficiently. With Trello, you can easily assign tasks to team members and track the progress of tasks. It also can integrate into cloud sharing services like Google Drive so that users can easily access files needed in a project.
Trello can be used for small projects within teams or larger projects that require multiple departments. Set goals, due dates, and get more done faster versus a long, unorganized email chain.
7. Microsoft Teams
If there’s one application that can keep employee morale up, it’s Microsoft Teams. With Teams, you can video conference, chat individually or within groups, stay organized with a calendar, and much more. Can’t meet in the office for a team meeting? Use the video conferencing feature to see all team members on your screen when they speak. This is much more personable than a conference call. Have a funny meme or gif you want to send to your coworker? Teams has that ability too.
Teams will keep the entire office connected and just a chat away. Plus, if you forget the information that was sent to you in a chat, you can use a search bar to find what you were looking for.
8. Toggl
When employees are working remotely, it can be difficult to measure productivity. However, time tracking software like Toggl can help.
Toggl allows individuals and teams to use a timer to track the time it takes to complete tasks. This allows employees to better budget their time and managers to analyze results and adjust where necessary. For example, are customer support tickets taking too long to complete? Perhaps the customer service representative needs more product training.
Toggl also conveniently has web browser plugins available so you can easily track time spent on web-based applications. This application may be the best time and money you ever spent.
Use these work from home productivity tools and bring more to your workplace.
COVID-19 and stay-at-home orders won’t last forever. Sooner or later, Main Street will open and Americans will be back in the office.
However, businesses will learn a thing or two about what it takes to run a company completely remotely. This event will force companies to be prepared for future unforeseen events. Being prepared starts with having the best work-from-home productivity tools to ensure that efficiency and production do not decrease.
Is your company prepared?
Aline is a cloud-based, VoIP phone system that makes your business more efficient and easier to manage. Click here for a free quote from Aline!