Since March 22, Rwanda has been under lockdown in a bid to contain the highly contagious virus. Non-essential service providers were obliged to work from home. Working remotely can be challenging, especially when it is uncalled for and sudden. The challenging part is that issues regarding teamwork, collaboration, and team communication might arise. However, modern-day technology offers a wide range of useful tools to make remote work easier and productive. If you are finding it hard to adjust, here are some of the digital tools that could be helpful. 1. Facebook Workplace Facebook Workplace is like a private Facebook for businesses. You can use if for making company-wide announcements, having casual conversations, etc. The interface is cool and easy to use. This is mostly because Facebook is a bit popular too well and can be dealt with it too easily. 2. Slack Slack is a good communication tool for remote work. It allows making company-wide announcements, notifying everyone about them, create different channels and group chats for different projects. It’s a great way of collaborating in small teams. It gives the essence of a real office. While Facebook Workplace and Slack are communication tools for remote work, they have quite a lot of differences. Workplace is more social-wise and Slack is more project-wise. 3. Google Docs With Google Docs, you can share documents in a word format or excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations. Note that you can manage access to each and every Google document you are creating. You can grant someone access to only view it or offer suggestions. In Google Docs, several people can work on one document in real-time and they all are able to see the changes made by their co-workers. Also, people can chat while working on the same document. 4. Dropbox While Google Docs is good for sharing and collaborating, Dropbox is good for storing files. It is a really good place to keep your stuff like HR and legal paperwork, third-party documents, and any other form of virtual data. You can also share documents on Dropbox. 5. Trello Trello is an online corkboard. You use it to organize “cards” into lists—those cards can be tasks, notes, projects, shared files, or anything else that helps your team work together. It is good for organizing schedules and projects in a team. 6. Zoom Zoom is a video conferencing and a web conferencing tool. It is more like an enterprise tool. You can use it to conduct webinars and online events. You can use Zoom to empower your apps with video, voice and screen sharing. Over 750,000 businesses use Zoom, so can you! 7. WhatsApp Many of you may already have this app on your phone and use it to message friends and family, but it is also an excellent tool for keeping in touch with your team. It facilitates discussions within a team since WhatsApp groups can consist of 256 people.
