As the world continues to adjust to the new normal of remote work, it’s important to set up your home office with the right work-from-home equipment. Aside from the basics like a computer, high-quality USB microphone and HD webcam, a few collaborative tools can help you boost productivity and efficiency. Fortunately, there are some great, and often free, solutions available to support your WFH life. Strong communication is key in order to maintain an effective, collaborative environment between remote workers—so here are some of the best work-from-home tools available.
Chat
Slack
Google Hangouts
Conferencing
Zoom
Google Meet
Cloud Storage
Google Drive
Dropbox
Project Management
The old adage goes that you never know how much you need a project management tool until you start using one. While not the most exciting work-from-home software to consider, a good project management tool can arguably have the biggest positive impact on your efficiency out of all the tools on this list.
Trello
Asana
Wrike
Time-Tracking
Harvest
Toggl
Shared Calendars
There are many free shared calendar services to choose from—the most popular are Google Calendar, Apple iCloud Calendar and Microsoft’s Outlook.com. For the purposes of function, accessibility and ease-of-use, there is really only one choice — Google Calendar.
Google Calendar
Note-Taking
Evernote
Grammar Checking
Grammarly
Timezone.io
Acquiring the right work-from-home equipment is only the first step if you want to set yourself up for success. In order to efficiently collaborate with your team, you need a suite of tools designed to support better communication and help you stay organized. From chat and project management to note-taking and time-tracking, these tools will help you be more effective as you continue to grow into your work-from-home lifestyle.