The massive spread of the hybrid work model has given experts all over the world a chance to finally balance their personal and professional lives in a way that boosts productivity and prevents burnout. Many companies already use the remote work model or allow their in-house staff to work from home part-time—and most are quite satisfied with the result.
The shift toward remote hours will certainly continue, so businesses that have not yet embraced this model will eventually have to. While remote work is not without its risks, most challenges can be solved with the right software. Below, we list some of the best tools for effective remote collaboration to help teams stay efficient, no matter their industry.
Trello
Trello claims itself to be the 'productivity powerhouse' for seamless remote collaboration. The service is essentially a task tracker, but instead of a boring, uninspiring design, it features a game-like interface that makes work just a tad more fun! With this tool, you get a chance to create cards, visualize and assign tasks to different team members, and monitor progress. Trello also supports integration with a few other tools, including more Atlassian products like BitBucket, Jira, and Confluence. This makes Trello a good choice for technical and non-technical teams.
SignalHire
SignalHire is a database of verified professional contacts that can be searched individually (by name) or in bulk—using multiple customizable parameters, like location, current job title, industry, company name, and many others. The service is primarily used by recruiters, but it has plenty of other useful applications for marketers, business developers, or anyone else interested in growing their team. With SignalHire's help, you can reach out to practically any professional who could become a valuable asset for your business—over email, phone number, or social media because this service stores all publicly available contact data in one place.
Flock
Flock's slogan, 'When teams align, work flows,' is a very good hint at what this tool can do. This is a nicely designed, versatile collaboration platform that has instant messaging for select teams, file sharing, fine-tuned video conferencing, task management, and plenty of other features essential for remote collaboration. Flock also supports integration with third-party tools, can share polls and questionnaires to ensure everyone on the team gets to voice their suggestions or share feedback, and has very advanced privacy features, along with personalized onboarding tutorials for new team members.
Another great feature worth mentioning is the built-in productivity tools that help people focus on pressing tasks without distractions from other online sources—a very thoughtful idea because even though remote work can be a real productivity booster, online distractions are a nuisance even for the most efficient and focused workers.
Todoist
Todoist is a simple but very effective task management tool that helps users create tasks, assign them to different team members, set due dates, watch progress, leave notes and comments under each task, etc. The features aren't exactly revolutionary, but they cover the basics of what an average remote team needs. Besides, it has a 100% free plan and two paid subscription types that cost only a few bucks a month and provide perfect value for their money.
Todoist supports multiple integrations with other software, including tools designed by other Doist employees. A good example here is Twist—a great tool for remote communication, file sharing, and multiple threads for keeping even the most diverse teams on the same track. Both tools come from the same developer and work great together.
Zapier
Zapier is a very versatile SaaS tool designed specifically for streamlined team collaboration. For remote teams, it can become a true miracle worker because it offers pretty much everything one could need—from file sharing and task management to progress tracking and automation. One of Zapier's truly cool features is its instant conversion of currencies, dates, and text into a single preferred format, which makes it an excellent addition for international teams.
It also has other advanced features, like suggesting improvements in already established workflows and pulling data from online sources. So far, the biggest drawback of Zapier is its rather steep learning curve, but considering the number of features it offers, this could be expected. Besides, once you master Zapier, you will not want to use less sophisticated software.
Monday.com
Monday.com CRM is another advanced tool that offers many customizable features to boost team efficiency. Similar to Zapier, Monday focuses on automating any processes that can be automated, assigning tasks, following their progress, optimizing workflows, making communication transparent, etc. It can integrate with other professional software, including Google Drive, Slack, and Dropbox, and has built-in hour trackers, handy dashboards, and lots of other useful features.
Besides, Monday was one of the first companies to share tips on effective remote work strategies at the peak of the Covid lockdown. For this alone, the tool is worth a try—the company did try to help teams when they were confused by the rapid and forceful shift to home work.
Figma
Figma is a remote collaboration tool made specifically for designers. So, unlike most other examples on our list, it will not be suitable for any team, but if you are in the design business, you should definitely give it a try. It has plenty of useful features, including cloud backup for near real-time collaboration, built-in tools for vector editing, prototyping features, and much more.
Miro
Miro is another popular service used by hundreds of remote teams. Basically, it's a whiteboard that enables teams to create and visualize tasks, use built-in templates for mapping their projects, pick different widgets for diagrams, and so on. Unlike most other tools on this list, it can also be a very useful platform for brainstorming. It will not offer the same advanced automation as some other examples on our list, but it accomplishes a series of easier, equally important tasks.
Bonus Tip: Cyber Security Tools to Consider
Most people disregard cybersecurity tools when looking for team collaboration software, but this is a huge mistake. Based on the 2023 analysis, cybersecurity is still the chief vulnerability of all digital work. The cost of an average data breach is estimated to be millions, and the total number of daily cyberattacks exceeds two thousand a day. With this in mind, pay some extra attention to:
- VPN software: Ideally, all sensitive information should only be accessed with a VPN. Plenty of reliable providers, such as NordVPN, Surfshark, and CyberGhost, offer more or less the same functionality and pricing.
- Data encryption software: Another precaution for sensitive data and pretty much all other important files. VeraCrypt, for example, is good for encrypting data on hard discs, and KeePass is a solid choice for password protection. Plus, there are plenty of other affordable and versatile services that can encrypt pretty much anything you need, i.e., GPG, OpenSSL, BitLocker, FileVault, and many others.
Choosing the right combination of tools that streamline communication and protect sensitive data can help any team on its way to success. Besides, with today's collaboration platforms, you can choose any number of features that work for your team. Considering the ever-growing tendency to remote work, we may have even more versatile team-working software soon enough. But right now, any of the SaaS tools described above can prove to be a great help in boosting your remote team's efficiency and productivity.
