Last year was transformational in every way. It has affected every aspect of our lives, but it also profoundly affected the way companies do their business. The world was already embracing remote work when the COVID-19 pandemic turbocharged this trend.
With these sudden changes in the business field and the rise of virtual teams, we have also seen a massive increase in the need for reliable communication tools.
With more remote employees on board, it’s imperative to enable seamless collaboration. Tools and platforms designed with that exact goal became the backbone for many businesses striving to be efficient and productive during the ongoing health crisis.
They also enable transparency and make it possible to follow every phase of the project at every moment, both across teams and the entire organization.
Let’s explore the best online communication tools and platforms that can help businesses thrive in 2021.
1) VIDEO CONFERENCING TOOLS
Conferencing tools like Zoom and Jitsi, a free, open-source software, became indispensable during 2020. They have made remote collaboration and productivity possible. The lack of regular in-person meetings and brainstorming sessions was starting to cripple businesses, and that’s where video conferencing made all the difference. It helped companies organize their workforce and make sure that everyone knows what their assignments are.
Conferencing tools allowed remote teams to come up with strategies and solutions by working together in real-time while strengthening the bonds between employees at the same time.
Jitsi offers its users a range of useful features like screen recording, blurring your background, and eliminate speaking over each other with its “raise your hand” feature. And what’s also great about this tool is that it’s free without any call time limits.
2) EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT TOOLS
The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on how important engaging employees is for their motivation and commitment to their employer. It’s viewed as one of the most important factors in overall company success.
Poor company communication is one of the reasons behind low engagement. Again, the technology is helping businesses step up their game with specialized software for employee engagement. This incredible software allows companies to unite their teams, improve morale and work quality.
It connects workers and drives stronger bonds, regardless of worker’s location, shifts, or roles.
This type of communication software is focused on improving engagement and transparency while offering a range of valuable features. You get to stay in touch with your workers using the channels they prefer, so it’s easier to recognize and reward stellar work.
Ultimately, it enables you to monitor engagement on a macro and micro level so you can ensure employee satisfaction and effective collaboration.
3) PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Being well-versed in the best project management techniques is a must, especially when your company constantly works on numerous projects. With multiple people involved in the project, making it a successful endeavor requires adequate software as well.
Instead of mapping out all the important steps by yourself, it will allow you to easily establish a hierarchy of tasks. In addition to this, it helps you determine which tasks are dependent on one another and which ones are sequential.
This is incredibly useful and saves time too! Once you identify the most important steps, you’ll know which tasks to assign to whom.
Taskworld allows you to simply assign the tasks to employees and monitor how they are performing.
It offers a wide array of features, including visual task boards, timelines, information filtering, real-time overview, and many more useful features that allow seamless project management across teams of all sizes.
4) DOCUMENT COLLABORATION TOOLS
The value of document collaboration tools is that they simplify and accelerate the document creation process by allowing multiple team members to write and edit drafts in real-time. Besides real-time editing, the best document collaboration tools offer auto-save and version history features.
Google Docs is the most recognized document collaboration software with over 800 million active users worldwide. This comprehensive tool allows you to easily share documents, comment, tag users, track changes, and control file access. Google Docs automatically updates and saves all edits in the cloud and allows you to save files in multiple formats.
When your employees are scattered, such real-time collaboration tools will prove to be vital in achieving outstanding productivity.
5) EMAIL MANAGEMENT TOOLS
If your business deals with large volumes of email, there is help on the way! Rooftop is dedicated email management software designed to help you quickly manage your shared inboxes and allow your employees to collaborate on them.
It supports both internal and external communication, so you never leave an email behind again.
This amazing software provides easy and intuitive features for sorting, searching, merging, and storage.
And as a bonus, you can get a 360° view of messages, group all communications and comments related to a certain subject in one task, snooze conversations that don’t require immediate actions, and much more.
In the end, achieving incredible results is much easier with advanced tech tools on your side, so don’t hesitate to take your business to the next level with these top-notch software solutions!
