10 Must-Have Tools for Managing Your Remote Team

Managing a remote team can be tricky. There are no face-to-face interactions and the chances of miscommunication are high. Other disadvantages include the lack of access to information, decreased collaboration, and difficulties in creating a team culture.

One of the keys to making remote work work for your team is having the right tools to run your processes efficiently to avoid misunderstandings. Luckily enough, we live in the age of technology where there are thousands of online platforms at our disposal. Here are 10 must-have tools to help you manage your remote team.

1. Set up/Equipment: ZenAdmin

When setting up your remote team, one of the first things you do is onboard new team members. This includes providing them with optimal work equipment such as laptops or monitors, headsets, keyboards, and more, depending on their job description. Doing this remotely can be extremely difficult especially when you’re dealing with purchasing and logistics in a country you’re not familiar with.

Need help onboarding? We’ve got a step-by-step onboarding guide to help you!

ZenAdmin is a one-stop shop where you can set up, equip, manage, and support all of your employees regardless of where they are stationed. Let’s say you have an employee in Vietnam and want to provide her with a laptop and smartphone. You can simply go to ZenAdmin, create their profile, and purchase or lease the necessary equipment for them. ZenAdmin will take care of the logistics, app management, IT support, and more!

2. Communication: Slack

While email is the default mode of communication, there is a faster more efficient way to communicate – whether it be within your team or even with clients and other shareholders within the company. Slack is a communication tool that works as a more professional chat space.

You can create different ‘channels’ (chats) within your Slack workspace for different groups. For example, you can have a marketing-related channel for your conversations, a sales-related channel; you can even have a channel for a specific project, which you can archive after the project is over.

To encourage more fun and engagement, you can even have a birthday-related channel for greetings and a random-related channel for sharing non-business-related topics and more. Check out this list of ways you can keep your remote team engaged.

3. Meetings: Zoom

Due to the pandemic social distancing measures, meetings have had to move from the office to the virtual space. One of the biggest video conferencing tools to have come out of the pandemic was Zoom. While there are a dozen other alternatives (i.e. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.), some benefits to Zoom are its easy-to-use interface, option to go into breakout rooms, and high video quality.

4. Project Management: Asana

When talking about project management, Asana is usually one of the top options on every list. This project management tool helps you create project plans and keep track of your team’s initiatives and tasks.

Asana also lets you visualize your plans, create and assign tasks to team members, and keep files, instructions, details, and more all within one platform. You can even customize workflow processes around your company’s needs to ensure that no task gets lost and everything gets done in an efficient and streamlined way.

5. File Management: Google Drive

Have trouble sharing files? This can be a huge bottleneck in your processes, especially if the files are large and take forever to upload over email. One solution you can consider (if you haven’t already) is Google Drive.

Google Drive is a cloud-sharing platform that helps you store, share, and centralize all your files in one secure place. If you use Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and/or Keep, you can also create, edit, suggest, and view documents and other files as well. Another benefit is that you can sync Google Drive across all your devices, whether laptop, desktop, or phone.

6. Productivity: iDoneThis

One of the worries managers have is knowing whether or not their team is actually working. With tools like iDoneThis, you can easily track everyone’s progress on specific, daily to-dos. You won’t need to manually message or email everyone to ask about their progress or what they’ll be doing for the day. This app does the work for you. You even get daily reports too!

7. Time Converter: Every Time Zone

If your remote team consists of members from varying time zones, it can be difficult to set meetings or even know the time they will be online. With Every Time Zone, you can easily view the time for all your team members, which makes it easier to set meetings, communicate, and expect responses. Say goodbye to long and confusing time zone computations with this tool!

8. Password Protection: LastPass

One of the concerns of having everything online when you work in a remote team is security. How do you share passwords? Is it safe? Does sharing the password for your accounts make your account more vulnerable to hacking?

LastPass is a password manager that allows you to easily generate and store encrypted passwords within a ‘vault’. This is a much better option than writing complicated passwords down on a piece of paper and losing it.

9. Payroll: Multiplier

Paying your remote employees can be a complicated and costly endeavor. How do you handle the different currencies? How do you handle the local taxes and other necessary benefits such as health insurance and more?

With a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) like Multiplier, you can easily pay your employees no matter where they are. This ensures that you comply with local labor laws to avoid complications with local legal departments in the future.

10. Rewards: Kazoo

How do you make sure your employees are motivated to continue working? Set up a rewards and recognition scheme. This can be difficult if your employees are scattered all over the world, but platforms like Kazoo make it easy to centralize.

Kazoo is an all-in-one employee experience platform that enables employees to recognize employees. They can encourage each other by sending personal messages, leaving comments, and more. Employees earn points for achievements which in turn can translate to rewards such as gift cards and other experiences.

These 10 tools are merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to online platforms and solutions to make your remote team work. There are thousands of resources available online and you can truly have your pick of the crop. Overall, the most important thing is to identify your pain/problem points before finding the tool that works best for your team.