The Best Software for Remote Working

Now more than ever, thousands of people across the country are settling into the new routine for 2020: working remotely from home and socially distancing themselves from their fellow employees. For many, the process of swapping over to this new normal can be quite challenging; especially when the tools and softwares you’re used to using in the workplace are often absent from your home office. In this blog article we’ll take you through some of our favourite softwares for remote working- to make working from home that little bit easier.

Remote Working Communication Tools

Perhaps the biggest miss encountered in working from home is the absence of seeing your team members in person, not just from a working perspective, but a social one too. It can be easy to take for granted how important, and easy, this communication with your team is, when it’s simply a matter of leaning over your desk or walking over to their computer to discuss a new piece of work. With remote working communication tools, software and apps, you can replicate this ease of communication with your colleagues and even retain some of the social aspect to working in the office too.
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Some of our favourite remote working communication tools that we would thoroughly recommend include messaging applications, such as Slack and Mattermost. These tools allow you to easily and efficiently message members of your team to share important documents and reports, catch up before meetings, share any important updates or even just share a quick joke or too. Messenger tools like these serve as a speedy alternative to email as a form of communication, while also allowing you to keep some of the social aspects of chatting with colleagues while at the office.

Video Conferencing Tools

In somewhat of a similar category to the previous paragraph, video conferencing tools are a vital cog to bringing you an improved system of communications while working remotely. More specifically, they are a great way to accurately replicate meetings and conferences in a way that is effective for you while working from home. Many businesses in a wide variety of industries will be used to having weekly or daily team meetings to discuss workloads and any other updates. It can be quite tricky to provide this kind of company-wide meeting to the workforce when everyone is working separately from one another, so the opportunity for video conferencing makes for an important software for remote working.
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There are a variety of video conferencing tools out there that you can use to make company meetings and updates much more efficient and effective. One of those popular and widely-used tools is Zoom; a cloud-based video conferencing tool that allows you to easily set up meetings with the relevant people you need to talk to. Zoom has a wide array of different features to go along with this, such as: 
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• Conference calling, giving you the option to have meetings with multiple users at once (up to 1,000 participants).
• The ability to record all video conferences and meetings to be viewed at a later date.
• Screen sharing, to share important reports, figures and data with all users at once.
• An easy to use meeting scheduling system, allowing you to add zoom meetings into every participants calendar.

Remote Working Management Tools

Another important aspect to your working schedule that may be affected by home working is that way you manage your workload, such as any projects take place across multiple stages and teams in your company. When you don’t have that day-to-day, face-to-face communication with the people you are completing these projects with, it can be quite challenging to properly plan out and manage all the different projects that you’re working on, especially in a way that makes sense to all of the people that are collaborating on specific pieces of work together.
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This is where remote working management tools and softwares can come in handy for you. With workflow softwares and applications like Trello or Asana, you can lay out the pieces of work you have planned over the coming weeks in a way that’s properly organised and easily managed. You can set up notifications, deadlines and checklists, tag any colleagues that are working on the same projects, categorise and view projects in a variety of different ways, and provide task updates as and when they are required. Remote working management tools and softwares for remote working like these are a great way to provide more structure to your working day while away from the wider team.

Time Management Tools

A huge hurdle to any working day, one that is exacerbated when working amongst all of the distractions that working from home can bring, is managing your time. Without the work oriented environment of the office to keep you focused on what you’re doing and what your deadlines are, it can be quite a challenge to stay on task and make sure you’re using your time effectively.
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A lot of effective time management starts with a focus on just how much time you are actually spending on your tasks, which is where time management tools like Harvest come in handy. Harvest is a simple app that allows you to track how much time you’re spending on projects and show you where you’re slipping in the form of reports. Other tools that can help you manage your time better include applications like RescueTime, which provides you with tools and training to help you manage your time more efficiently by showing you how you use your time during the workday and what you can do to stay more focused.

Remote Working Training Tools

Remote working training tools, or learning management systems, are a type of software for remote working that can provide employees with everything they need to learn and adapt new skills while working from home. They are all-in-one applications that provide educational courses, training, learning and development programs to employees who are looking to expand their skills whilst working remotely. Learning management systems like iSpring or WizIQ are a better alternative to simply teaching employees over Zoom or Skype, as they are laid out in a way that facilitates independent learning as well as providing all the resources required in one handy package.

How can UK Postbox help as a Software for Remote Working?

At UK Postbox, we specialise in helping our customers to deal with their mail with our efficient post management software solutions. And with many offices and workplaces across the country being closed for social distancing purposes, this means that many businesses will have physical mail being delivered when no one is available to collect it.
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Using our online mail management platform and virtual address services, individuals and companies can manage all of their inbound and outbound mail items using our platform. Simply use your UK Postbox address in place of your old office address, or set up a redirection or private courier service to redeliver mail to our offices. When we receive mail for you, we’ll scan the outside of the envelope and send a notification to your account. From here, you have many options such as mail forwarding, storage or shredding. Find out what other actions you can take by visiting our platform features page.
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That concludes this guide to some of the many different applications, tools and software for remote working that you can use to make working from home that little bit more bearable; from managing projects more effectively to improving communications with all of your team, there are a wide array of different software solutions out there that can help you to adapt to remote working more easily.