A good tool improves the way you work. A great tool improves the way you think. — Jeff Duntemann
In the era of the digital world, many businesses are getting their sales leads online. The needs of an office as a working space for employees is decreasing over time. In 2020, an Owl Labs report showed over 60% of workers aged 22–65 in the United States have the experience of remote work in the past. On the other hand, Buffer also discloses that 44% of workers say part of their team works remotely full-time. These stats have shown a rising trend of remote working in the corporate culture.
Seeing this trend, how to manage the team online and what tools to use become the two main questions. As a startup, Giftpack has been practising remote working culture since its foundation. In an article written by Archer, CEO of Giftpack, we provided a list of applications Giftpack is using for remote working. In this article, we will introduce 6 useful tools that we see potential in using for working remotely.
№1 Krisp
The most important thing about having a remote working culture is to make sure everyone in the company knows the direction. Therefore, having remote meetings regularly is extremely vital. Giftpack has a daily meeting from Monday to Friday in each department in order to know what everyone’s completed tasks for yesterday, to-dos for today, and potential schedule for tomorrow. While having all these online meetings, one major problem is Internet connection and background noise. Let’s be honest. We can’t really solve the Internet problem because sometimes people are traveling and there are areas that has weak connection or even no connection at all.
However, we can solve the background noise problem by using Krisp. Krisp is a desktop application and a Chrome extension that works with conferencing apps such as Zoom and UberConference. Without a noisy background, the quality of online meetings certainly improves much and hence have higher efficiency.
№2 GanttPRO
When it comes to project management, many think of Gantt chart. That’s exactly what we want to share about today. Instead of drawing Gantt chart with old-fashioned softwares or even with pencils, GanttPRO helps your team to keep all resources busy and balanced at the same time. Not only is it used internally. but also externally as an effective visual tool for updating clients on project progress. A chart easily created on GanttPRO will do the work and save you so much time.
№3 Github
Github is a platform for developers to efficiently host, share, review codes with other developers and manage their projects in a collaborative manner. When applying a remote working culture in the company, most of the time it requires engineers in your company to build a website and manage software projects. In order to keep track of software projects, it is very common for developers to use a version control system. One of the most common version control systems out there is Git. You may think it as some sort of saving feature in a game, except it is much more powerful and works beyond that. In order to host projects onto the cloud, there are also many options out there as well. From the experience of Giftpack’s software engineers, it is almost impossible for anyone to work any project without using any sort of version control system, especially if working as a team. By using Git and Github, individuals can easily work on the same project, or even on the same code file, while still being able to synchronize all progress of the project from other collaborators.
№4 HubSpot
Most of the people may be aware that HubSpot is a growth platform for the whole company to work together. The tools provided include CRM, CMS, Marketing, Sales, and Service, basically everything a company you’ll need for inbound marketing. While some might not know that HubSpot also provides training courses as well. From its blog post, in the HubSpot Academy, there are 55 hrs of video material for education. Watching videos and passing assessments can also earn you employees certifications, which will certainly be very helpful in the future career. Having access to abundant educational resources is one of the main reasons why Giftpack uses HubSpot.
№5 Every Time Zone
As a startup that provides gift delivery service in 22 cities and 6 countries all over the world, Giftpack also recruits talents located in different regions. In this case, since everyone is in different time zones, having a company reunion becomes almost impossible as a time that works for one may not work for the others. We usually resort to Google for time zone comparisons, but it’s not the most user-friendly fix. Every Time Zone enables companies to customize timeline, share events, personalize time zones, and pick meeting times effortlessly to connect teams and contacts.
№6 HelloSign
While working remotely, there are times we’ll need to sign contracts with either employees, partners, or clients. Paper contracts are slowly being phased out and digitalized as face-to-face meetings may not always be possible in remote work. HelloSign is an easy-to-use solution for corporations and startups to send documents, track the progress of requests, and sign documents from any digital device. This helps Giftpack to save time for signing contracts in persons with employees all over the world. We also use this for business development so that everything will be online and be done quickly.
You should also think of Gifting
Of course, a remote working culture comes with its own set of challenges. We see some companies have the needs of employee gifting, especially during the pandemic. It has been suggested that people who work from home for a long period of time have chances of suffering from depression, and one way to solve this is probably sending a gift to show your appreciation to the people who work for you. If you’re thinking about sending gifts for boosting the team’s energy and productivity, Giftpack.ai provides personalized AI gifting service at scale with just one click. Save time for more important things with us and send warm gifts that your employees would truly love.
Creating a culture of remote working has never been easy. However, knowing what tools to use and actually applying them to your company can reduce the pain during this transitional period. Most importantly, save valuable time and money by utilizing these tools to help your company improve its efficiency to focus on strategic change.