Since the dawn of time, humans have been using tools to accomplish things they otherwise couldn’t do with their bare hands.
Back then, tools were as simple as jagged pieces of stone. In today’s tech-focused world, there are now plenty of digital work tools out there — and that’s good because the trajectory towards remote work doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
So in this article, we’ll talk more about what work tools are and their benefits — particularly in terms of digital tools — then look at several types of tools to consider investing in for maximum success on the job wherever you may be.
What are work tools?
Work tools are any type of implements you can use to accomplish tasks at work.
In this case, we’re talking about digital tools such as software, which make for excellent remote work tools.
Digital software tools provided help in completing all sorts of tasks across every industry, even before remote work was a big thing. They offer plenty of benefits to an organization working in person, from better collaboration to more efficient time management.
Today, with the virtual work trend increasing, organizations have to pay closer attention to which tools they invest in to make sure their teams are also fully equipped to work from a distance.
According to a survey, about 82% of company leaders plan to offer employees the ability to continue to work remotely part-time. Getting the right work tools can help companies adapt to this hybrid workforce.
What are the benefits of using remote work tools?
Obtaining remote working tools requires a financial investment, as well as some time spent shopping for the best ones — not to mention training yourself and staff on them.
However, adding the right tools to your work arsenal offers several advantages, such as the following.
Enhances productivity in or out of the office
These days, most companies use some sort of software as a bare minimum in their daily operations — in or out of the workplace.
Work software increases productivity regardless of an employee’s location.
But, software that connects remote workers is crucial for enhancing productivity.
You’re not going to be able to move work forward if you don’t know what you or others are meant to be working on. Which is challenging when you’re geographically spread out, if you don’t have the right work tools.
And, in many cases, teams that work entirely in-office benefit, too.
For example, tools that let you manage projects and track progress on tasks make it easier for both in-office and remote employees to have a handle on everything the organization is working on.
Keeps people in touch
Not all employees want a 100% remote environment.
Although FlexJobs found that 65% of respondents wanted full-time remote work post-pandemic, around 31% prefer a hybrid arrangement with some in-office days.
With a range of preferences for working remotely, you need a way for teams to stay in contact with each other. This isn’t just critical for getting work done — it helps maintain a sense of cohesiveness among your team, despite the distance.
If you fail to keep in touch often enough with remote employees, they may feel less connected to the organization, and their productivity and job satisfaction could falter.
Good remote work tools make keeping in touch straightforward, especially if they integrate with your other workflows.
Facilitates collaboration
According to a Statista survey, about 35% of respondents listed collaboration with colleagues and clients as their most significant virtual work challenge.
Whether in or out of the office, remote work tools can help out. They allow for file sharing, communicating on tasks, and much more.
Once again, the benefit is obvious for employees working from their home office.
However, excellent remote collaboration software also reduces the number of times that in-office employees need to haul across the office building to chat with another team member about something in their virtual workspace.
Instead, they can just chat, leave comments, or share files right in their shared digital platform.
Improves time management
Remote work tools improve everyone’s time management — directly and indirectly — depending on what kind of solution it is.
Time-specific tools, such as calendar apps and time-tracking software, directly assist in better managing your time.
Of course, viewing your schedule with calendar apps is much easier when integrated with the rest of your workflows — those few seconds you save opening your calendar software can add up.
Meanwhile, apps not related to time, such as automation tools, save more time that’s better used elsewhere.
Put these all together, and your team will find more capacity to accomplish what needs to be done every day.
Types of remote work tools to consider
If there’s something that you need to do, there’s likely a digital tool or program out there for it.
Here are some of the different apps to consider investing in if you want to be more effective when working online.
Time-tracking tools
Remote employees may enjoy not having to go anywhere to work, but they face additional problems.
In the Statista survey mentioned earlier, some of the top remote work challenges respondents listed included managing distractions, taking time away from work, and disconnecting from work to prevent burnout.
One remote work tool that everyone — but especially your remote employees — can benefit from is time-tracking software.
These software solutions can reveal to an in-person or remote worker just how effectively they’re using their time. When they have a time clock ticking away measuring their hours, they may be more motivated to ditch distractions and focus on their work.
Additionally, they’ll be able to unplug at the end of the day, knowing they got more work done and that they worked an entire workday and should put the computer away.
Ideally, you want your time-tracking software to integrate into your workflow. That way, you don’t waste more time checking your time.
Here’s what that might look like in monday.com:
Notice how, by integrating the time tracking column into the board, employees on the board can monitor their time on one screen without jumping to another tool. They can also start and stop their time tracking with the click of a button.
Calendar tools
Another tool that’ll help everyone manage their time better is a calendar app.
Calendar apps are perfect for scheduling virtual and in-person meetings across your organization, but individuals can also use them to plan out their workdays. Integrate them into your workflow, and you can always stay on top of your meetings and appointments.Just like the time-tracking widget, monday.com offers a calendar widget you can add to your board:
Thanks to this widget, you can have board items flow through seamlessly to your calendar. That means less work on your part in keeping track of your meetings and projects — and more time for the tasks that matter.
Communication tools
Without adequate communication capabilities available for your remote and in-person teams, you won’t get very far.
There are plenty of options out there nowadays, now that distributed teams are much more common. Not just any communication tool will do, though — you need a way to keep in touch with everyone without any major upsets in efficiency.
Luckily, monday.com integrates with the best of them to keep your communications and workflows in one place.
For example, monday.com can connect to your Slack or Zoom so you can do video calls right from your digital workspace:
These integrations make it easy to seamlessly switch from working to video meeting — or instant messaging — and back to working.
monday.com also has several ways to communicate within the platform, especially when collaborating on board items.
Collaboration and file-sharing tools
Alongside communicating from a distance, people within your organization must be able to work together efficiently.
The easier you make collaboration, the more productive your team members can be.
In particular, your remote and in-person teams can benefit from collaboration tools and features that let you share ideas, leave comments and updates on work items, and send and receive files securely, among other collaborative tasks.
Guess what? You can do all of this and more inside monday.com.
For example, leaving comments and updates is as easy as navigating to a board item and writing an update on it.
Not only can you leave updates, but there is a “like” feature built in to offer as many ways as possible to confirm you’ve seen an update. It works almost like a social media feed.
As you notice in the image, file sharing is easy, too, thanks to the files column:
Since monday.com is in the cloud, you can take advantage of cloud storage and access your files from anywhere — whether through your desktop or on our mobile app.
Project management tools
You need a way to keep a handle on project and task progress while your team is scattered and working remotely.
That’s what a project management tool is useful for.
Project management tools offer you and your remote workforce a range of possibilities.
You can assign tasks, monitor project progress, check in with teammates on their tasks, view analytics, centralize documents, and more.
Plus, good project management solutions offer multiple views so you can gain more insights into project progress.
As you can see, monday.com has several views available depending on your needs. You can look at the timeline view to check on project progress, open the file view to find relevant documentation, and so much more.
No need to build a project management board from scratch, though. You can get started fast with our fully customizable Advanced Project Management template:
It’s great for managing projects small and large, within or across departments, and remotely or in person.
Automation tools
Almost any tool that saves time and your employees’ mental energy is a good thing to pursue.
Think about the lists of manual tasks on your team’s to-do list. Employees can get distracted easily and make errors or simply forget to handle these tasks, given their time-consuming and repetitive nature.
That’s why automation software is a good work tool to invest in. More automation is seldom a bad thing when it comes to streamlining your workflows.
monday.com knows the pain of tedious manual tasks, and so we focus heavily on workflow automation. Inside the monday.com platform are plenty of prebuilt automation recipes:
As you can see, there are tons of categories to choose from. When you find the recipe you need, simply fill in the blanks and implement it into your workflow. You’ll notice the boost in productivity immediately.
Adapt to the new work environment
Humans have used tools for as long as we’ve had to do work. Today, the right work tools can help firms adapt to remote and hybrid work situations by enhancing productivity, collaboration, and time management.
But why get several separate work tools that you have to jump between when you could invest in one Work OS platform like monday.com that lets you integrate your tools directly into a single digital workplace?
Keeping all your tools in one platform alongside your workflows only adds to the benefits your remote work tools provide, so try out monday.com today.
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