While we are in the midst of somewhat of a shift when it comes to work environments and more employers are pulling employees back from remote work situations to encourage more face-to-face interaction and human collaboration, there are still a huge number of companies that have remote employees.
This can refer to employees who work at international offices far from the home office, as well as contractors.
One example of people that often work as contractors are digital marketers. They very infrequently will be in the home office working, and as a result, it’s essential to have the right tools and technology in place to facilitate a productive work environment.
The following are some of the tools businesses need in 2018 if they have employees working remotely in any way.
Expense Tracker
Expense reimbursements are hard enough when all of the employees of a company work within the home office, but with remote employees, it can be even tougher to keep up with expense management.
This is why having a robust expense tracker solution and protocol in place are so important. If your remote employees are working around the globe, it needs to have international capabilities as well, such as different language and tax settings.
Collaboration
Collaboration software and platforms have improved by leaps and bounds in recent years, and one of the best tools for this is called Asana.
Asana is used by large companies who need to manage widely dispersed teams including Deloitte and Airbnb.
This is by no means the only great collaboration tool out there, but it is a good one.
Time Tracking and Project Management
Worksnaps is a time tracking tool for remote teams, and it features the ability to automatically track time and computer activity, which is then added to the Worksnaps server.
What’s unique about Worksnaps is the fact that it shows employers in real time what team members are working on. It’s a live view of what’s being done at any given time, so it’s almost like having an employee in the home office. Worksnaps also integrates with a very of other project management services, which include Harvest, Basecamp, and Freshbooks among others.
Employee Feedback and Performance
Finally, 15Five is an excellent tool for management teams that want to provide feedback to even remote employees.
Regular feedback is an essential component of successfully managing human capital because it allows employees not just to see where they need improvement, but also to engage them by showing them what they’re doing right.
It can be tough to streamline how feedback is provided to remote employees, which is where 15Five comes in.
15Five is a tool that’s based on research and concepts of positive psychology, and the objective of the platform is to move businesses forward using particular methods of employee development.
This tool is useful throughout the employee life cycle, and it has the features necessary for alignment around company objectives, with quarterly and weekly performance monitoring.
