The remote virtual world has taken us from working in a cubicle to working anywhere with access to the internet. Being a great employee no longer means showing up at the office Monday through Friday during office hours. Now anyone can securely work from anywhere in the world, any time of the day or night, and still achieve their project deliverables. We reviewed the top 10 remote working tools, the best communication software, and collaboration tools for remote teams to create a list of the best remote team working platforms.

Why is remote working better if you like to move a lot?

The term ‘settle down’ is antiquated in today’s digital world. There was a time when people followed a pattern, a set ethos that saw them grow up, get a job, get married, buy a house, have children, save for the future and then die. There were even negative terms for a person who didn’t settle down. As we move further and further into the digital age and inclusive society, there is room for everyone to be as they are and do what works best for them. For those who like a change of scenery, exploring and getting to know people from around the world, working for a lifetime in the same office can seem like hell on earth. Now, working remotely can mean living in a quiet, remote area or traveling and exploring – all without sacrificing your career.

Remote culture-building software

Well-designed remote culture-building software will help any business hire and retain employees by providing the company with actionable and engaging tools and templates. These tools can achieve goals specific to any work environment and go beyond tracking time and payroll. We live in an ever-evolving world. Not everyone can know all things all the time. By having access to blogs on current topics like diversity and inclusion, an employer can limit HR complaints that center around discrimination, bullying, and sexism. Tools that acknowledge hard work and goal completion can help employers develop plans that properly gauge how long a project will take and how many staff it will need. In turn, this can prevent burnout. Templates that guide employers through positive ways to improve engagement will help improve employee morale and build company culture and connection. The feeling of belonging, being noticed, and being appreciated is one of humanity’s top motivators for much of what we do.

1) Bonusly

Bonusly is a recognition and rewards program. It can integrate with the tools your company already uses every day, like Microsoft Teams and Google Chat. Employees can recognize colleagues for their hard work by giving them monthly bonuses that appear in a public feed allowing each team member to feel their work is valued. Employees can use the rewards for almost anything by selecting one of the partner gift cards. The partner gift cards come in a diverse collection of categories, including apparel, beauty and spa, cash-out (PayPal), charitable donations, entertainment and electronics, experiences and travel, food and drink, general, gifts and services, grocery, home and garden, prepaid cards, and sports.

Bonusly offers actionable blogs with relevant topics like how to improve morale during times of economic uncertainty and diversity and inclusion stats that will change how you do business. They also provide a comprehensive catalog of tools to help develop employee engagement and morale in their handbook.

Pricing is affordable and offers tiers depending on the size and scale of your business. The Core package starts at $3.51 per month per user. The Pro package is $5.85 per month per user and includes everything in the Core package plus added features like advanced reporting. There is also a customizable tire for larger businesses.

2) GooseChase

GooseChase is a game app employers can use to increase engagement and promote team building. Employers can develop real-world scavenger hunts that immerse employees in the company’s culture.

For new hires, a scavenger hunt can streamline the onboarding process by making learning the systems, protocols, and logins fun and engaging while at the same time ensuring they watched the assigned videos and completed the reading. Missions can include introducing themselves to key management and department heads members so they know who is who when it comes time to work collaboratively on projects. With game code invitations, it is simple to get started. Comprehensive insights give employers real-time data on which missions are effective and which ones need reinventing.

You can use GooseChase with existing employees to build culture. As they complete missions, employees post photographs of themselves completing the missions to receive points. They can work in teams or as individuals. You can create missions for virtual teams who work remotely or gather them in an outdoor environment.

In the free pricing model, you can have up to three teams or three individual players, but you are limited to one live game at a time. For $399 per game, you can have up to eight players or eight teams for a single game license. For $649 per game, you can have up to 20 teams or 20 individual players.

3) Kazoo

Kazoo helps employers create a strong, connected culture that helps them attract and retain staff by focusing on six key areas – conversions, goals and OKRs, incentives, recognition, feedback and employee surveys.
Conversations are more productive with the 1-on-1 or 1-to-many scheduling system. You can add topics like results and feedback to the agenda and record action items and notes to reference for future conversations. The system also allows sync-ups with automated calendar invites.

Everyone can set goals or objectives and key results (OKRs) that align with company-wide initiatives. You can add one or more measurable goals, including a percentage complete, yes/no, or a specific target and due date. Teams can collaborate on shared goals across functional groups and organizational levels with results everyone can see.

The incentives and recognition programs help inspire and motivate employers, as well as help employers celebrate employee successes.

Timely feedback helps keep employees on track, drives growth, and improves collaboration. Employees can provide feedback to each other with standard templates to ensure input is always actionable and meaningful. Employees receive frequent coaching, mentoring support and direct reports that are more valuable.

Employee Surveys support the whole journey and allow employees to provide feedback on the process safely and confidentially. This will enable employers to address challenges and sentiment in real-time before it infects and degrades company morale.

4) Assembly

Assembly is a flexible and secure digital headquarter that brings teams under one centralized system. It integrates with tools like Slack, Google G Suite, Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Paychex, and Paylocity.

Assembly offers workflow management, customizable workflows, and workflow automation, plus powerful admin tools and advanced security.

It offers solutions for employee engagement by fostering an atmosphere where employees feel valued, connected, and able to communicate directly with the people in the organization best suited to provide them with the answers they need in real-time, thereby increasing productivity.

Companies can add structure, transparency, and accountability through manager empowerment and give their managers the tools they need to develop their skills and become the manager their team needs through the manager-report relationship.

They offer affordable pricing at $4.50 per month per member for the Business pricing plan. This plan gives access to unlimited flows and blocks, total members and guests, unlimited storage, unlimited version history, Microsoft Teams bot, Slackbot, and administration and security systems. It also provides custom culture rewards, personalized core values, currency, custom culture rewards, gift cards and fulfilments, and member automation.

Team Communication Software

A team communication tool can help small, and large businesses build collaborative work environments that strengthen employee engagement and productivity and increase profits. For decades communication in a work environment took a face-to-face approach at set times during the day, week and month. This meant waiting until the next meeting to get direction from department heads on a project or feedback on a proposal from the group. In what could be called an overcorrect, with the introduction of email and text going directly to mobile devices, there was a rise in all-hours communication and expectations on staff time beyond the 9-5.
With team communication software, team members can set their meetings, lunch and office hours to show as busy and silent notifications so they can work uninterrupted.
Team communication software can also replace costly landlines and switchboard services through automation and high-definition digital programs.

1) Nextiva Phone System

Nextiva is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) business phone service. It offers team messaging, video conferencing, call center, call pop, phone service, call recording, online fax, auto attendant, business analytics, and a mobile app to provide business communication solutions.

With unlimited calling in the United States and Canada, there are no minutes to track. Their high definition (HD) voice quality is engineered to eliminate annoying static.

The system displays a real-time presence so everyone can see who is available to receive calls or chats. There is also a conference line for meetings of up to 9 people and facilitating team collaboration through video and screen sharing.

Online faxing enables the sending of faxes as though they are email – digital, secure, with no hardware or wires, no paper or spools.

With voicemail to email, team members no longer have to check voicemails and write down names, numbers, and details. Employees can visually reference the client’s exact message when they call them back.

The auto-attendant eliminates the need to give out individual, direct numbers to your customers for every staff member. Use one number online and in marketing materials to easily connect customers through the auto attendant to the best team member for their service.

It is competitively priced from $14.94 to $26.95 per month per user.

2) Shiftnote

Shiftnote is part of the Shiftforce Suite, a work management system that provides an array of solutions for small and large businesses. Shiftnote focuses on team communication and scheduling.

The daily log book gives managers the tools to ensure compliance across multiple locations with safety, food handling, cash handling, and employee management directives. Managers can also consolidate all notes, communications, and essential sales data.

The scheduler allows employers to manage employee scheduling availability, auto-schedule, set holiday pay, set overtime, print schedules, and create and view availability rosters.

The bulletin board is for managing time requests, including approving or denying, limiting, and blocking requests during specific time frames or busy periods. Employees can trade shifts and have direct employee-to-employee messaging.

With Shiftnote’s additional features, employers can tackle problems before they start. The Forecaster feature offers a space to add budgets and sales that will be automatically pushed to all schedules during the corresponding periods, so there are no missed steps in the scheduling process.

It offers a billing portal and integrates with Point Of Sale (POS) systems making managing finances easier.

3) Evernote

Evernote offers online organization and communication tools for remote-access team collaboration. It is more than just a note-taking cloud-based system. Businesses can organize all communication and files related to specific projects and clients in one place – images, to-do lists, contracts, PDFs, and notes. The web clipper allows the user to directly snip relevant data from the web and attach it to specific files. The powerful search and keyword tag system can search in-text emails, PDFs, and even photos. You can sketch and annotate documents and images to clearly express your thoughts and the concepts you want to develop.

The dashboard lets you see your day, week, month, and year at a glance. Evernote also integrates with Google Drive, Slack, MS Teams, and Gmail so you can take project planning to the next level.

A free option offers basic features like a home dashboard with three widgets, the webpage clipper, and up to 60 MB of uploads per month. The personal plan helps keep home and family life on track by offering additional features like 10GB of monthly uploads, a customized home dashboard, access to different widgets, and the ability to create custom templates for $10.99 a month. The professional plan is $13.99 a month and has even more features so you can tackle any project at home or work.

4) Channels

With channels, employees get the tools they need to capture sales and provide top-quality service. They can connect sales calls from any webpage they are on and receive calls from customers straight from your website. You can keep your current number, get a new number generated for you and generate international numbers from over 60 countries. Your employees can send and receive SMS messages directly to the app on their phones, so they don’t need to give out their private numbers.

Channels offers a data-driven helpline that allows customers to contact your company in case of an issue or question. The helpline can be built in less than five minutes, and you are provided with a dedicated help widget.

Channels recognize callers and display the client information, so employees are prepared with all the necessary information to facilitate a short resolution time and an all-around pleasant experience. Every call is recorded and stored so important details aren’t lost.

With their eCommerce widgets, you can capture abandoned carts and increase sales.

They offer tiered pricing. For $0 a month for up to three users and 250 web calls, perfect for a business just getting started. At $24 a month, you can get up to 5000 calls a month for three users and add on additional users for $8 more per user. For $64 per month, you can get unlimited calls for five users and add on additional users for $24 per user.

Remote Collaboration Software

Remote collaboration software allows teams to work on projects together and employers to manage workflow. Good remote collaboration will provide data analytics that enables employers to see how long a project or a deliverable takes and apply that data to future projects to decrease employee burnout.

Not everybody works the same way. Being able to present workflow in multiple formats ensures everyone understands the full scope of the project and their part in it. Work flow charts and deliverables timelines provide crucial aspects of the project that are lagging or missing altogether. The following remote collaboration software offers these features and more.

1) monday.com

Monday is a virtual team office that allows users to manage projects, set goals and collaborate as if they are all in an office together. It provides workflow tools that fit your needs and allow you to boost team alignment, efficiency and productivity.

With the integration features, you can connect with your existing go-to tools like Mailchimp, Office 365, Canva, Twitter, box and Shopify. The embedded Zoom feature allows users to assign tasks and follow up on action items during the meeting.

Assign tasks and manage workloads with transparency in real-time with Kanban, Gantt and timeline views. Project managers can maximize efficiency and continuously improve processes by visualizing work and limiting work in progress.

With features like forms, whiteboard and real-time notifications, team members can collaborate and provide feedback on projects and deliverables as if they were in the same room.

The time tracking features allow managers and employers to monitor projects, collect time data and apply that data to future projects to limit employee burnout from unrealistic deadlines.

2) Favro

Favro sets itself apart in software as a service (SaaS) programs. It provides extensive tools to empower employees through live webinars and re recorded sessions on a variety of topics to offer user-relevant support.

Developed for software companies and live game businesses, it provides real-time, actionable strategies for problem-solving bug fixes and software problems.

It offers docs inside Favro to replace Word or Google Docs and allows the user to write marketing strategies and planning sessions directly in Favro.

Individual teams can work on projects specific to their division with team and planning boards. When it comes time to launch the project, teams from multiple divisions can easily collaborate in real-time, managing client expectations and ensuring transparency throughout the project. Collaboration can occur through task relations on numerous boards to allow for divisional overlap and notify everyone when an issue or task is completed.

Real-time planning and writing are facilitated by using digital name tags that appear within a document or project to show who is working where at any moment.

With automation and notifications, users can limit time spent on repetitive tasks. You can build automation to suit each team and project’s needs.

Favro integrates with most existing tools such as git hub, Slack, Jira, Google Drive, One Drive, Microsoft, Dropbox, and Unito.

3) Teamwork

Teamwork is easy to use, flexible, and feature-rich. Beyond allowing users to create tasks and projects and upload files, it offers advanced features missing in basic systems so your business won’t outgrow as it scales. They provide top-notch customer support that is always there to help.

With their portfolio management, time tracking, and reporting dashboards, you can get project health status updates in real-time. View your Gantt chart or project task list to know what is off track and what is left to do.

Empower your team members with accountability through task assignments and time tracking to plan new projects more efficiently and prevent employee burnout. The data-driven insights let you see deep into your team’s resources and get the whole picture of who is at capacity and has the space to take on more work. You can also integrate with the tools you already use, like Xero, Zapier, and Quickbooks, without missing a beat.

Teamwork offers competitive pricing starting at the Forever Free plan for five users, is suitable for small teams, and offers essential project task management, milestone acknowledgments, and messaging. For $10 per user per month (minimum of three users), you can manage multiple projects, receive 20 project templates, use time tracking and invoicing features, enjoy agile views with workflows, get unlimited free client users, and more. For larger teams, you can scale up to $18 per user per month (minimum of five users), 50 project templates, workload resource management, and more. Teamwork also offers scalability features with additional subscriptions when you need added support.

4) Toggl Plan

Toggl Plan provides simple work management tools for small teams. It offers drag-and-drop plan timelines with color-coded tasks so team members can stay on top of what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. The public holidays feature lets you see when colleagues from overseas are off or likely to have less availability because they are celebrating.

The plan timelines allow employers and project managers to visualize and balance workloads so that no one is overburdened or lacking billable hours giving everyone a clear overview and the ability to stay on top of the project.

You can manage tasks from timelines or boards and include as much or as little detail to the jobs by forming a checklist, feedback, and file uploads. By creating Kanban boards with user-specific workflows, you can easily design project plans that work for your company.

Toggl Plan offers automation for recurring task creation and in-app and email notifications that alert you when a task is complete or overdue.

With My Work Dashboard, team members can create a personal dashboard that suits their needs. Shareable timelines with read-only settings allow you to share project details with external shareholders.

At $8 per user per month, your small business or team can access unlimited team timelines, visual workload management, unlimited plan boards, in-app and email notifications, unlimited plan boards, Toggl Track integrations, and shareable timelines.

For $13.35 per user per month, you can receive all the above features plus invite workspace guest users, project data exports, single sign-on (SSO), and priority support.

What is the benefit of remote work software?

Remote work software can help employers prevent burnout, improve employee morale, improve team member retention, foster diverse and inclusive workplaces, and rebuild company culture and connection.

They can also improve client communication, capture sales, and help your team provide real-time top-notch customer service, regardless of where they live.

Is there free remote work software?

There are free software options like Slack, Trello, and Google Suite. Most of the apps we discussed earlier offer free versions as well. The drawback with free versions is that they often don’t have as many features or branding options to personalize and customize the apps to your needs.

Don’t let distance separate you from curating a great team of employees or keep you from taking the job you want. With this curated collection, you will find the best remote working tools, communication software, and collaboration tools for your remote team or career. Most offer a free trial, so you can start implementing one today.