More and more companies are having their staff work remotely. Because of this radical change in the way that we will work, it is important to have the tools needed in order to hire and manage the team that could be located anywhere on the planet. The good news is that there are now several tools that are designed to help manage remote workers. These tools can allow any manager or management team to staff, supervise, and track any number of people from different locations. Here is a look at six indispensable tools for hiring and staffing remotely.
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1. Remote Managing Software
The first thing that you will need is software that is able to track the critical time and attendance of a team. One of the top tools for that task is Hubstaff. This tool will allow you to see who is working and when. You will be able to track workflow and have a great idea of what your team is doing at any time. Also, this tool makes it great for billing purposes and keeping track of a project’s progress over time.
2. Automated Communications
When you are managing a team, you will have to make sure that you are able to stay in constant communication with everyone. That can be a challenge if you are dealing with 10 different people in five cities and three time zones. That’s why you should use a tool that allows for mass staffing calling and texting. These kinds of tools will allow you to easily communicate with your own team in a consistent and predictable way. You can keep a record of all the messages that are sent, see who opened the messages, and when the message was opened or accessed through web applications.
3. Live Video Conferencing
One of the most important remote working and staffing tools is the ability to meet with an individual or team via video conferencing. With the emergence of video conference companies like Xoom, you can easily set up a room that can deal with meetings large and small. One of the great advantages of these types of video conferencing services is that the meetings can be recorded. This is great for employees who need to take notes or a great tool for accessing information when it is needed.
4. Employee Feedback Tool
When people are working remotely, you want to still have a feel for employee satisfaction. The last thing you need is to have a group of productive employees who are not happy and may jump ship at any moment. You can use tools such as Chimp or Champ that can allow employees to anonymously give management feedback on a specific project or overall job satisfaction. This feedback tool allows you to track your employees’ feedback over time and also allows you to keep a valuable database.
5. Remote Productivity Tracker
During your workday, you will need to track a number of things such as documents, files, calendars, and more. To help you organize all of this information for the remote team, it is important to have some sort of productivity tracker. Top productively tools such as Freedcamp can provide you with a bundle of services in a single piece of software. This will allow you to be better organized no matter how big your team grows.
6. Remote Drive
The one thing that every manager and employee will need is some sort of remote drive where files can be stored, accessed, and shared. Right now, you can use a number of free services such as Google Drive or Amazon Drive. These remote drives allow you to store and share documents, sound files, videos, and more. With most of these drive services, you can store up to a certain amount of data for free. Beyond that, you do have to pay a monthly fee. However, the fee is usually not that excessive. As 50% of people are expected to work remotely, having a remote drive that is readily expandable is extremely useful.
Getting Your Remote Tools Together
You will have no problem staffing up your remote staff with the right tools. Make sure that you have a software stack that will allow you to track time & attendance, allow for communication, provides live video conferencing, permits employee feedback, bundles productivity tools, and provides remote data storage. With the right tools, your remote team will be more productive than ever.
