15 Apps For Remote Work Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic (Сoronavirus)

Currently, many businessmen have to shift to remote work quickly because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now remote work is the only way to prevent a company’s collapse and at the same time to protect your team’s health. However, some employers don’t know how to implement remote work quickly and, what is more important, productively.

This article will show you how to shift to the new work format without business losses and what tools will help you to do it.

Provide Your Employees With Access to All Necessary Files and Services

If your company allows access to particular websites, servers, files, and resources only to the IP address of the office, your staff members won’t be able to carry out all work responsibilities successfully. In this case, you’ll definitely need some helpful apps that will let you set up a remote desktop to work from home.

1. Windows Remote Desktop

Remote Desktop on WindowsOS lets your coworkers connect to business computers from Windows, Android and iOS devices. It’s quite easy to turn it on on Windows 10:

Step 1. Turn on the computer you want to connect to, then click Start > Settings > System > Remote Desktop, and switch on Enable Remote Desktop.

Step 2. Remember the name of this device under How to connect to this PC.

Step 3. On your local Windows 10 device, find Remote Desktop Connection (you can do it with the help of the search box on the taskbar), and type the name of the device you want to connect to. Click Connect.

If you want to use Windows, Android or iOS device to connect to your business computer, download the Remote Desktop application from Microsoft Store, Google Play, and App Store, and add the name of the PC that you want to connect to. Select this PC and wait for the connection.

2. Team Viewer

This is another tool to connect to a PC from afar on a 3G or better Internet connection. This is a perfect remote desktop software because it enables you to connect to the target PC from any device. In other words, with this software, your employees will be able to connect to the business desktop from Windows, iOS and Android devices.

Think About Employee Control Strategy

You also need to think about the ways and methods of tracking your employees. If your team members are not used to such work format, you shouldn’t be too trustful and hope that all of them are highly-motivated and organized enough to work from home. It’s pretty easy to control the exact time when colleagues start and stop working and to track their efficiency with the help of an employee monitoring tool.

3. CleverControl

This software lets an employer monitor any kind of team members’ activities remotely from any place and any device. The app offers useful monitoring features:

• remote access to the recorded data via your online account;
• productivity control;
• efficiency statistics in convenient graphs;
• time control system;
• keystroke logging;
• clipboard control;
• webcam and microphone recording;
• URL monitoring;
• printer and removable drives control;
• social networks monitoring;
• website blocking etc.

You understand that not all employees will let you set up such software on their local devices if they didn’t use it previously. But if you have followed my first advice and provided your coworkers with remote access to the office desktops (using TeamViewer or Windows Remote Desktop), you can simply install CleverControl on the office devices. In this case, the software will record only the activities performed on the remote business desktop. You will check if your employees work from home and are productive and at the same time, your team won’t be worried about their personal data.

CleverControl is compatible with macOS and Windows and offers a free 2-week trial during which you can try out all monitoring features.

4. Timely

You can also control your remote team with the help of time and attendance tracking apps (time trackers). Such software helps you check how much time an employee spends on completing this or that task. Timely does it automatically but you need to set up the time tracker and to connect it to the apps that your team members use while working. After integration, Timely will start analyzing the team’s activities and will show you their time and attendance statistics represented in graphs.

Make Sure That The Company’s Data Is Secure

It’s a well-known fact that your corporate data can be easily leaked or lost when your employees work remotely. It’s very difficult for IT-security specialists to control remote teams and to prevent data leakage from afar.

5. Windows Defender

To solve this issue, you can inform your distant employees of various methods of protection business and home devices from cyberattacks and viruses. Windows’ built-in protection for malicious software may help you protect your company and local devices and prevent data leakage absolutely free of charge.

To confirm that your Windows device is being protected by Windows Defender, go to Start and find Windows Defender Security Center. Click Virus and threat protection settings and make sure that both Real-time protection and Cloud-delivered protection are switched on.

6. Norton 360

Although Windows offers a free antivirus feature, some businessmen prefer to install paid IT-security software. One of the industry-leading virus and malware protection is Norton 360. In addition to real-time protection, it offers cloud backup, secure VPN, dark web monitoring, password manager, and many more. The cost of Norton plans varies depending on the number of protected devices and selected extra features.

Organize Remote Team Communication

When your employees work from home, they may need to consult with their managers or colleagues at any time Besides, when more than 2 people work over one project, they’ll need to discuss the details of the project altogether. That’s why, as an employer, you should organize remote team communication so that they could always be in touch with one another.

7. Slack

For this purpose, many remote teams use Slack messenger. It helps employees stay productive wherever they’re located. Slack can be used to discuss and solve some issues or simply to share your experience and give advice. You can create one chat for all your employees or create several chats if your company is big and you have many departments (IT-specialists, PR-managers, technical support managers, etc.)

Slack offers a free messenger for small teams and integrates with 10 third-party apps (Google Drive, Office 365 and more). Additionally, the tool lets staff members share files and create an unlimited number of chats for project discussions.

8. Discord

The app was initially designed for gamers but we know that it’s used not only by gamers. Many companies use this app to organize communication in the office and when working from home. The main pros of the tool include:

• free access to all features;
• group and private chats;
• an option to create chats with different access privileges;
• voice chat with an unlimited number of users.

The app is available for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows users. By the way, for an employer and department managers, it’s very important to stay online, and Discord can be easily installed on a mobile device for this purpose.

Give Your Feedback And Motivate Your Team

Note that not all problems your remote team may face while working from home can be solved via online chat. It’s not easy for employees to estimate their contribution to the project when they work from afar, which can also cause a lack of motivation. Regular feedback from an employer will help your staff members understand if they got the job done successfully and will also increase their motivation.

9. Zoom

Video Conference software Zoom enables you to stay connected with all staff members from home. The main features include online meetings, video webinars, file sharing, business messenger, online meeting recording and playback. Video conferences let businessmen estimate employees’ intermediate results, ask them if they need coworkers’ help, and find out what issues they’ve faced while completing tasks.

10. Bonusly

Implement a new motivation system to make your team members work even more productively from home. Bonusly is an engaging recognition and rewards platform that enriches your company culture. It’s already used by many remote companies.

How it works: every app user gets a fixed number of points at the beginning of the month. A team member shares these points with colleagues who helped him/her solve some work issues him during this month or gave him/her recommendations or some helpful advice. At the end of the month, employees can swap collected points for corporate presents, days off or other bonuses chosen by the company’s leaders.

Create Transparency At Work

Employees’ efficiency decreases if there’s no transparency at work. Such an issue often appears because a team can’t get a vivid picture of the business process. Employees usually use chats, messengers, email to learn about the state of the project they’re working on. It takes too much time and anyway team members may not get a full picture of the business process.

11. Bitrix24

This is where collaboration platforms come into play. Bitrix24 is an app that helps businessmen organize communication within a company and create transparency at work. Using this platform, you may create a list of your expectations from remote workers, discuss their tasks, set the deadline, monitor all steps your employees take to complete their tasks, leave your review and comments. All these features are absolutely free and you can get them after downloading the software from the official Bitrix website.

12. Asana

Asana is another work management platform for remote teams. The app will let you:

• create and distribute tasks;
• group them in collaborative projects;
• get in touch with the team via in-built chat.

Asana enables remote team members to complete tasks before the deadline, attach files from Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive in chat, create a personal to-do list and, in general, get a vivid picture of the business process.

Provide Remote Team With Shared Access to Files And Documents

Many employees can work with the tools that let them edit files and share them with colleagues. Such services are very important for remote teams so befoe you shift to remote work you should ensure that your team knows about all features of such tools.

13. Google Drive

Google Drive is a well known free cloud storage that allows several people to edit one document simultaneously. But many people don’t know about some extra features of this service. It lets you:

• scan documents and bills with the help of Google Drive app for Android;
• set up automatic download of Google Disk files to your desktop and their synchronization;
• comment folders and files (this feature enables you to add a detailed description to files stored in Google Drive);
• create a shortcut on your desktop that will lead you directly to important Google Drive files;
• edit PDF documents;
• copy text from images and many more.

You can find a description of these features on the Google website.

14. Dropbox

This platform can also store all files in one secured cloud. Like Google Drive, this tool offers extra features for effective team management, for instance, notifications about the latest changes in a document, tools for productivity improvement in the workplace, data synchronization feature, and a calendar for work schedules.

15. Box

Box is one of the first cloud storages designed specifically for business This tool lets you use the storage via FTP and offers 10 GB of free cloud space to store corporate data. The platform is perfect for teams who need to share some small files because free account owners can send just 256 MB files. You can sign in and try out this storage hear.

This is my list of the most helpful apps for working from home. And what apps and platforms do you use to switch to remote work?