The overnight change to distributed and digital workplaces came as a shock for people who had never worked from home. Although we had to learn to manage our work-life balance, reconsider how teams work together, and understand that wear-and-tear still takes its toll on our bodies from home, remote work has been a success.

Finding the right tools for your home office (whether it is a dedicated room, your living room sofa, or wherever you find yourself throughout the course of the day) greatly improves your quality of life. We know that cutting commuting times to zero has positively affected people’s mental health, but do we truly understand the risks that working from home brings?

To create the most productive environment possible, utilizing important tools is the number one priority. Looking to improve your communication skills? Or to stop repetitive strain injuries? Here are our favorite work-from-home tools to help you improve your work-from-home life.

Why Should I Use Work From Home Tools?

Humans aren’t built to work in offices. But that doesn’t mean they’re built to work in home offices either.

A multitude of common problems cropped up for first-time work-from-home-ers - difficulty in using digital tools for remote work, a breakdown in the team collaboration workflow, and learning to manage work hours.

Just like we needed support dealing with the mental toll of the pandemic, we need support when potentially working alone for long periods. Although that’s a dream situation for some people (especially the introverts who have enjoyed distributed workplaces the most), humans are social creatures and need to interact.

What Problems Do Remote Workers Face?

Working from home isn’t a cure-all to all the evils in the world. Recognizing the challenges you face throughout the day is key to making your home office a place of success. As reported by Buffer in its State of Remote Work 2020, the top problems that a remote team faces are:

• Poor quality collaboration and communication
• Loneliness compared to a busy office environment
• Overworking or "being unable to unplug"
• Home-life distractions from family or neighbors
• Timezone issues
• Struggling to find long-term motivation
• Finding time for vacations
• Wi-Fi reliability (especially for digital nomads!)

Broadly speaking, remote team members struggle in three ways: collaborating, communicating, and time management. The better you manage these three factors, the more successful your work-from-home experience will be.

Remote Work Tools To Solve Your Problems

Tools, gadgets, and gizmos aren’t going to fix all of your issues with the remote working lifestyle. But we’ve found that implementing some of these techniques and tools go a long way to enjoying your time at home.

Time And Project Management Tools

When there's no manager around to share priorities with their teams, staying on top of the important stuff can be difficult. Not having someone (hopefully metaphorically) breathing down your neck really takes the bite out of a deadline for some people.

But the best project management tools can change the way you organize your team and keep productivity levels up.

In finding the best project management tool, think about how your team works. Agile approaches need agile tools, so streamlined tools like Trello, Asana, and ClickUp help create smooth workflow pipelines.

Asana

Asana is perfect for a team that needs to set up tasks, assign them to team members, and then chat about the project right there on the platform. The interface is sleek and easy for a first-time user to get the hang of, meaning it is perfect for a new remote team.

Projects can easily be changed and adapted to create new cards, meaning that projects are easy to manage and your remote team can all convene in one place.

ClickUp

Due to an integrated pipeline for managing a project from start to finish, ClickUp is a great tool that allows you to create a project and all its relevant milestones in one easy place.

This is an easy way to integrate accountability into your hierarchy as far as remote work tools go. Every step of the process is implemented into the pipeline and the accountable workers can tick off on their section when they’re done.

It even has a team chat to discuss objectives as well as cloud-based storage for shared documents.

Trello

As both a calendar and an organizer, Trello has made its mark over the Covid-19 pandemic for its ease of use and intuitive interface. Becoming one of the most popular organizational tools, Trello is a big name to bring on board in your organization and integrate with your existing toolkit.

Small teams can make the most of Trello's free tier, but the premium plan is chocked full of Power-Up integrations that improve your project management setup.

Communication Tools

We’re social beings - we need to communicate! Not only is it important to our mental health, but working together also helps us achieve our goals, discover what we’re doing wrong, and learn new things.

Tools for effective communication were among the biggest names that emerged over the course of the pandemic. Because they’re useful for our personal and professional needs, they’re relevant to everyone.

FreeConference

Unlike the remote work tools that you can get from industry giants, FreeConference is a simpler tool that is for remote teams of a smaller size. With built-in video conferencing functionality and breakout rooms, video calls and screen sharing are easy with FreeConference.

Capable of a video call that holds up to 100 people, a lot of people have been able to share and discuss projects with distributed team members. But the real beauty is that FreeConference is 100% free unless you are expecting more than 100 visitors.

If you have your organization's security team on your tail, point out that FreeConference is fully encrypted with WebRTC - this video conferencing tool isn't just useful, but secure.

Microsoft Teams

With such a large share of the business software market, Microsoft was always going to capitalize on the demand for a communication tool. Microsoft’s e-conferencing tool has gained popularity thanks to its functional interface through the app as well as the browser support.

Best of all, instant messaging can make Microsoft Teams into a piece of project management software if used correctly. It really is what you make of it.

Slack

Like Discord for grown-ups, Slack has become a necessary tool in the post-Covid world. Despite being around since 2009 (as Tiny Speck), it's possible that you hadn't heard of this remote working tool until fairly recently.

Exploding in popularity (including with 43% of Fortune 100 businesses) with remote work, distributed workforces today would struggle to collaborate without Slack.

The wide range of apps that you can add include time tracking tools, social media feeds, and other popular apps from this list like Google Drive, Zapier, and Zoom!

Zoom

Benefiting from a 200% increase in their user base over the course of the pandemic, Zoom has had to quickly expand on functionality and security to meet the demands of an increasingly distributed workforce.

As one of the most famous remote work tools, you're probably well acquainted with Zoom and its benefits for bringing remote teams together.

Zoom has both free and subscription-based plans. Depending on the size of your organization and its needs, you might even be able to get all the functionality without paying a penny.

Collaboration Tools

When you can communicate, you know what you’re doing. But without a collaboration tool, it can be hard to see exactly where you’ve been and where you’re going. That’s why these tools are excellent for building, streamlining, and implementing workflows into your day-to-day life.

Google Drive

For anyone who needs instant, directed feedback on documents, Google Drive is a lifesaver. Create a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, send it to your collaborators, and receive feedback through the commenting feature.

Integrated with free cloud storage for all Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and all other Google software, you have everything your team needs to work remotely in one easy-to-access site.

Your employees are probably already well acquainted with Drive thanks to its massive scale adoption, so why not make all the apps accessible on a professional level too?

Zapier

One of the most popular no-code solutions, Zapier isn't just for collaborating. It's for automatic file-sharing, instant messaging, email-sending, and any other tasks that you want to automate.

Perfect for remote work, creating Zaps allows you to cut out the boring middle-men in your workflow and do what you do best.

You can automatically load video calls for a stand-up meeting, speed up task management through automatic scans and alerts, and even end your workday on time thanks to the push notifications.

Tools For You

Not every tool needs to be software that improves your remote working productivity and inspires remote teams to work together better than ever.

Sometimes, we just need tools that look after us. As we've all gained a few pounds over the pandemic, consider getting these tools to improve your posture, joint health, and general way of life. Here are some of our favorite tools that are just for us - not software, not productivity, but making your life better.

Ergonomic Keyboards

Our hands don't naturally point in the direction that makes using a keyboard easy. We turn them inwards and have to make claw shapes with our fingers. Do you do that in any other area of your day-to-day life? I'm guessing that you don't.

Ergonomic keyboards are designed to fit with the natural shape of our hands and wrists, meaning that there is less stress on them. This allows you to type for longer without feeling that pulling strain in your upper arm or on the backs of your fingers. If you want to keep working remotely, you better maintain your hand health - there's nothing worse than typing with a carpal tunnel.

Say goodbye to the artificial limb, the salaryman keyboard. Get an ergonomic keyboard and preserve the health of your wrists and hands.

Standing Desk

We're also not designed to sit in a chair for over 10 hours a day (or lie in bed, for those lazy remote workers!), so investing in a standing desk can help you to maintain a healthy posture.

Slumping in your chair is not impossible thanks to the raised deck - you stand in front of it and can walk around while you work, think, and talk to your remote colleagues. Of course, we all need a sit-down now and again. That's why the best models come with adjustable desks, allowing you to decide whether you're stood up or having a relax.

Self-Help Apps

Because life has become more stressful for everyone, there has been a growing push to maintain our mental health. Using applications is an easy way to get into self-help services like mindfulness and meditation, so why not download a free app which gives you a crash course in mental health?

All around the world, people are now understanding how important it is to look after ourselves. Learning to integrate mindfulness, gratitude, and periods of calm into your day with help you manage all the task lists from the management team, your personal hang-ups, and repeated distractions from the family.

How Do Work From Home Tools Improve Our Lives?

The Covid-19 pandemic changed the way that we understood work almost overnight. Remote work became a part of the new normal, but many of us are still learning how to adapt.

Where people have struggled to deal with loneliness, felt disconnected from their team, or experienced the culture shock of remote working, the digital transformation has completely changed the workplace for us.

Thankfully, we can turn to several tools that help us improve our quality of work and our quality of life. Whether you need software to help you share your idea, a mobile app to improve your mental health, or a new chair to improve your posture, taking care of yourself throughout your working from home journey needs to be the number one concern.

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