The rise of the remote workforce shows no signs of slowing: 83% of employers think remote work is successful, 73% of workers hope flexible remote work options continue and 42% of remote workers plan to work remotely more frequently in the next five years. To deliver the employee experience that workers expect, the right remote workforce management technology is a must.
When thinking about remote workforce management, your focus should be on technology that helps to replicate the positives of in-person experience. Let's look at a few technologies that can drive collaboration, coordination and communication between remote colleagues.
Working together with collaboration software
Just because colleagues are apart doesn't mean they can't work together. Collaboration solutions include:
- Cloud storage solutions like Google Drive or Dropbox that allow employees to access all the files they need at any time and on any device.
- Productivity suites like Google Workspace and Office 365 that let remote colleagues work together in the same document at the same time, perfect for group work.
- Tools like Miro and Mockplus that let employees design and sketch ideas on virtual drawing boards, allowing them to work together during brainstorming sessions or when designing layouts.
Keeping track with project management tools
With your people spread far and wide, a challenging aspect of remote workforce management can be understanding who has done what.
Tools like Jira, Asana and Monday provide complete visibility into project status and employee tasks. This enables employees to easily communicate and stay informed about each project and every step, ensuring the relevant conversations, notes, requests for edits and approvals are tied to the project for the entire team to reference instead of being stuck in someone's inbox.
Project management tools also facilitate greater accountability for individual tasks within a broader team's work, helping managers determine which staff are performing at what levels. Further, by facilitating real-time accurate reports at the push of a button, managers can spend less time talking with staff to find out what's happening and more time on how things can be improved.
Enabling communication no matter where
A remote workforce means each employee needs to be able to effectively reach out to colleagues, customers and partners —and be reachable themselves—no matter where they're working.
Instant messaging is a useful communication tool, particularly for remote workforce management. It helps resolve business concerns faster by reducing back-and-forth phone calls or emails (and resultant waiting times). When used appropriately, it also facilitates a greater sense of camaraderie between team members by allowing them to have conversations that might have previously been discussed around the water cooler.
Highly rated video platforms have a range of features to enable meaningful collaboration. Examples include:
- Breakout rooms facilitate large-scale collaborative meetings.
- Smart meeting highlights and transcriptions track important action items and select topics for future follow-up conversations while also providing crucial details to those who couldn't attend the meeting.
- Annotations and digital whiteboards provide space for ideation and problem-solving.
Unified communications solutions like Verizon One Talk make it possible for a single phone number to ring multiple devices at once, such as a desk phone, mobile phone and PC, so that employees never miss an important business call and have more opportunities to connect to clients and colleagues.
Verizon is a trusted communications partner that can help you simplify remote workforce management. Check out our resources for everything you need to know about adapting to a flexible workplace, evolving toward anywhere work and enhancing the employee experience.
The author of this content is a paid contributor for Verizon.