Apart from the country’s key workers, most of the nation is now working from home. For many, this is a drastic change to their normal working day. It poses new challenges to teams in areas such as communication, project management and productivity, and security. The call for the UK population to stay at home is imperative to curb the progression of Covid-19, so we all have to adapt to these new environments. This means sourcing new technology to make you and your team’s working days as time-efficient and stable as possible.

As always, the Sussex Innovation team are available to help our members with general advice, as well as supporting with applications that require financial information. Please contact us via the community Slack channel or book a phone consultation using the details here.

For technical advice and support with remote working tools, book an initial phone consultation with Chris O’Hare.

We’ve compiled a list of what we feel are the most cost-efficient, easy and useful software available that will revolutionise your team as you shift to remote working.

Communication

ZOOM

If you usually do big team meetings throughout the day or work on collaborative projects then you need an easy tool to hold conference calls. Zoom is perfect for this. It’s very simple to set up and can easily integrate with numerous third-party vendors including Microsoft Outlook, Gmail and slack. With Zoom, you can seamlessly join meetings, shift between participants to share screens and make notations visible to all. The standard version is free and includes unlimited 1:1 calls, calls of 3 or more people are limited to 40 minutes. The premium version includes unlimited call-time and participants.

SLACK

Keeping communication constant and easy is going to be very important to teams productivity and employee wellbeing. Slack is an easy and free instant-messaging application. It’s a great addition to email because you can ask questions and reply instantly, so while your team is working remotely it’s great for quick-fire conversations. See it as the new virtual office-chat software! You can also share documents through the platform, create private groups for discussions that only involve smaller teams, and host different workspaces on your app. It’s available on mobile and desktop.

Project management and organisation

TRELLO

Trello is an incredibly simple project management tool that’s modelled on classic bulletin boards. You can dedicate each board with a project, then within each board teams can create lists with separate cards to assign to team members. Each card can include a deadline date, space to leave comments, attachments and checklists. What sets Trello apart from other project management tools is its visual quality; you get a quick visual overview of every project on the board without having to open new tabs, as you would on other tools. It supports productivity by helping you visualise goals and co-part mentalise other projects – very useful for remote teams.

ASANA

Asana is another versatile and popular project management tool that helps teams stay focused on goals, projects and daily tasks. Its layout is very similar to Trello. With Asana you can organise projects efficiently by assigning specific tasks to people, set daily and aspirational goals with a clear workflow, report and collaborate, share documents and plan events; it’s a useful tool for any industry. Asana can integrate with other software’s such as Dropbox and can be used as an add-on to google chrome, enabling people to add tasks easily and quickly.

PROOFHUB

ProofHub is another transformative work management software that will help you and your teams stay on top of your projects. ProofHub is a centralised workplace that will enable your teams to deliver projects successfully and on time through easy collaboration, a simple structure and efficient reporting; managers can also have full transparency of their whole team. Teams can all access task lists, workflows, calendars and share documents safely on this cloud-based software, helping your teams not only keep on the same page but also stick to deadlines during these difficult times. ProofHub can also integrate with other Softwares, making it a highly beneficial investment.

XTENSIO

Cloud Storage service

DROPBOX

If you need to share large files over email, Dropbox is a free and efficient workspace with various features perfect for remote workers. On Dropbox, you can sync, share and collaborate on documents. It also syncs your files with every device enabling you to access shared files on the web, your mobile, tablet and computer.

Password Manager

DASHLANE

Dashlane is an easy-to-use password manager that autofill’s all your passwords, payments, and personal details wherever you need them on any device. Having a password manager is very important for remote workers because it not only improves efficiency (you can access different online pages without having to ask someone for a password) but it also improves your security while your team is at home.

Sussex Innovation has a plethora of resources to support you and your business at this time – whether you need technical support or business advice, we can either help directly or point you in the direction of trusted advisors with the skills and backgrounds that you need. We’ll be regularly updating our advice on all things to do with homeworking in the coming weeks, but please get in touch with us if there’s anything you would really like us to cover or any specific challenges you are facing.