Throughout 2020 and 2021, many office workers successfully pivoted to a work-from-home routine. Now, as many companies are welcoming employees back to the office, hybrid work arrangements are quickly becoming the key to productivity. According to this recent Gartner article, 45% of the workforce will leverage hybrid setups to work from home 2 to 3 days per week by 2022.
What is powering the successful move to permanent hybrid work? A wealth of software tools specifically designed to ensure knowledge workers can maintain focus, collaborate, and meet the highest standards of work – regardless of location.
The 5 types of software tools that have the biggest impact on hybrid work success include the following:
Project Management
Real-Time Communication
Collaboration
Team Monitoring & Management
Remote Access
All 5 of these software tools support the most successful hybrid workers. You will quickly understand why when you read our brief synopsis of each below.
Critical Software Tools for Hybrid Workers
Project Management
Often, hybrid workers participate in multiple projects that involve different stakeholders who are responsible for separate tasks, challenging anyone to keep track of it all. Staying organized becomes even more difficult when some team members are remote.
Project management tools track project road maps in real-time through online dashboards. For those workers not in the office, they gain the certainty of knowing which tasks are assigned to them, when tasks must be completed, by whom, and the status of all other tasks in the project.
Top project management tools include ProofHub, Trello, monday.com, and Workfront.
Real-Time Communication
To keep the members of all your teams informed, you must ensure that all lines of communication are open and easily accessible. Accessibility is key to preventing people from falling behind, because it prevents them from missing a conversation when they are at home or in another remote location.
Real-time communication tools allow entire teams to post messages within relevant groups, enabling hybrid workers to contribute to a conversation, or catch up on past messages – even if they were unavailable in real time. Many tools in this category rapidly gained popularity by allowing hybrid workers to engage in face-to-face discussions via internet-hosted phone calls or video chats.
Top real-time communication tools include Slack, Teams, and Zoom.
Collaboration
When team members are working in different locations, collaboration via email fails to meet real-time needs. Collaboration software lets hybrid workers contribute to shared files, come to agreement on critical issues, and continually progress in real time.
Popular collaboration tools include Asana, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and Confluence.
Team Monitoring & Management
This capability has proven to be vital for team leaders throughout 2020 and 2021. If you are a team leader who needs to work remotely, or members of your team are working from both the office and at home, then you must have the ability to ensure everyone on your team is engaged and contributing.
These tools let you survey your team on their engagement and gain rapid feedback around how they feel about their work. Some tools even tell you how active your team is by tracking keyboard, mouse, app, and other usage metrics. Such tools help you to keep your team motivated, while also alerting you when a team member is falling behind. Software tools for team monitoring and management include Hubstaff, Officevibe, and JotForm.
Remote Access Software
Few things are more frustrating to hybrid workers than needing to access an important file or application on their work computer, only to be denied access because they are not in the office.
Remote access software makes work computers accessible to hybrid workers anywhere, any time. You and your team can securely access office computers from home and other locations (I.e., cafes, hotels, airports) and use them as if you were sitting right in front of them. You can open any file and use any application like you would in the office, while remoting-in from any other device.
The best remote access tool for hybrid work is Splashtop Enterprise.
Splashtop Business Access is the best remote access software for hybrid work. More than 200,000 businesses and 30 million people around the world already use Splashtop to drive their hybrid work success, enjoying multiple benefits that include:
Secure anytime remote access to work computers, even after normal work hours.
Access to Windows, Mac, and Linux computers from any other Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, or Chromebook device.
Productivity enhancing tools that allow you to transfer files between computers, remote print documents, share your screen, and more.
Remote work productively as if you were in the office using your computer in person.
Management of multiple users and computers under your Splashtop account.
“Splashtop is very affordable, simple, quick to install on your computer, and so easy to remotely & securely access your business desktop from wherever you are. I am so thankful for Splashtop’s remote service, makes my life easier!” – Christine Gray, Grayd-A Metal Fabricators
To learn more about how Splashtop remote access solutions can enable your hybrid work use cases, visit our Splashtop for Remote & Hybrid Work page - or start a free trial now!
