The world is dealing with the COVID- 19, which has pushed many countries globally to issue work from home. While everyone, especially in India, was working from home and still continuing to do so, here is an important question, “How can we do it better?”
Understandably so, there are professionals who are up for working from home in Unlock 1.0, but it shouldn’t mean any drop in productivity. In this day and age where technology is at its peak, and there are several free apps and services to help you continue your team collaboration as well as workflow.
Here are some free apps to use during work from home.
- Trello
Trello was initially released in the year 2011 and had been growing in popularity ever since. It is an excellent tool for the systemic To-Do list that one can share for team collaboration. Firstly, you have to create a board and invite team members. Everyone can add in a task and several sub-tasks and even set in a deadline. Trello sends the notification to remind you of an assignment due soon. Further, one can assign the task to other team members to keep the to-do. This way, the team is always on the same page, even while working from home.
- Clockify
Clockify is a time management app that lets you analyze your working hours and, in turn, your productivity. You can also collaborate with your team and generate reports to access the ownership of each team member. Clockify helps to diminish the trust gap in virtual settings. The teams can set their hour-rate that will be billable and breaks like lunch, tea/coffee would fall under non-billable, which will help to generate a report at the end of the day.
- Hangout
Google hangout is one of the best tools for team collaboration, a device that is usually used to have chats in email, but it is great for video and audio calls as well. You can easily turn off the video and audio as per the ease of the communication. It has a separate chat box where one can text, share files, send links, etc. Another significant aspect of its usage is the absence of the need to produce new links each day. You can connect with your team on the same link for several days. There is also no limit to the users connecting on the call as well.
- Krisp
Krisp is a noise-cancelling app that helps you hear and speak clearly with no disturbance caused by background noises. This helps you to focus on the subject of matter and increase your productivity without missing any point. Each week you’ll receive free 120 minutes of Krisp after installation. The app is extremely beneficial when you are with your family, have pets or small kids in your house. Infact when using Krisp, you don’t even have to care about muting and unmuting.
- Zoom
Zoom is the most popular and convenient video and audio calling app. We have seen many webinars and interviews through the platform. The cause of its popularity is indeed the great interface that anyone can get the hang of. The app helps in collaboration with all of your team members for quick updates that bring everyone together on the same page. The recording option of the app helps to produce content like a webinar and interview session, which can be either live-streamed or can be published later post-editing.
- Whatsaap
Whatsapp is one of the best apps that revolutionized the age of chats. With new features added like video calls and audio calls, WhatsApp is proving to be a great asset for professional collaboration as well. Inter-team collaboration has shifted on Whatsapp texts rather than long threads of emails. Teams can create small groups specific to that team or a particular project.
Figure it out
When you collaborate with people across the globe, it can be difficult to keep track of the time-zones. Figure it out helps you and your team members to keep every time zone aligned and converts it in the real-time zone.
The apps mentioned above can help you manage your tasks not just from home but in the office as well.
The world has switched to work from home, but working remotely cannot be the ultimate option as it lacks the set of professionals, which influence productivity as well as team collaboration. Although with the availability of great apps and our reachability to them, there is no reason why one cannot get work done of superior quality.
