How do you organise remote work? The rules of the game plus useful tools

Because of the global changes the world is going through, remote work has turned from a fashionable trend into a necessity. The need to adopt tools for remote work has faced most companies, and not only in IT. 

The approach to building a company's IT infrastructure is changing too. Demand for rented virtual servers (VDS) keeps growing. 

How do you keep the work effective and all the company's systems stable? We will go through the rules and the tools that will help you and your business through a difficult situation. 

Remote work. Where is the difficulty? 

The problem we are talking about is not only a technical one. The answer to the question of how to organise an employee's remote work over the internet has two parts. The first is the rules and the organisation of the process. The second is the technical solutions themselves. Moving to a new model requires not only retraining staff quickly, but also following new rules of work. 

We will touch on both parts. 

Advice for remote work: how to manage, what to do and what not to do  

To begin with, let us say goodbye to two myths that get in the way of solving the problem: 

• The first myth is that outside the office staff are bound to slack off. What actually happens? If you set goals and explain how remote work is organised under the new conditions, employees will be far more effective. Proved by thousands of companies that moved to this arrangement in 2019 and earlier. 

• The second myth is that organising remote processes without losing effectiveness is impossible. What is the reality? It all depends on the manager. Even the work of manufacturing and trading companies can largely be moved to a remote footing. 

So how do you manage a remote team that may be scattered across different districts, cities and sometimes countries? 

Set clear rules of work and follow them

Remote work is not chaos. It demands self-discipline and conscientiousness from employees. But self-discipline only appears when there is a clear routine and clear rules. Think through the working routine and the rules of etiquette. Make sure your employees know: 

• What are the time limits of their working day? 

• Which means of communication does the team use? 

• How do you keep an online meeting a genuine dialogue? Which rules should be followed? 

• At what times may colleagues be messaged and called? 

The whole team also has to use a shared service for setting and tracking tasks, or a CRM. Communicating only through private messages and relying on memory is the road to chaos and falling productivity. Always make sure employees know which tasks each of them is personally responsible for. 

Create a strategy for communicating with employees 

Tell your staff in what form and how often they should report, how often general meetings and one-to-one online meetings will take place. Establish the principles for handling everyday tasks. Employees have to understand which matters take priority. That will raise productivity. 

Give the team the tools to work with 

Make sure every member of the team has access to all the work services they need. The list can be quite long: 

• corporate e-mail;

• a document management system;

• cloud file storage;

• a video conferencing service;

• a work chat;

• a task planner;

• a CRM account and so on. 

Do not forget about integrations. Most of these services can be linked into one system. Many operations can be automated as well. That saves a great deal of time. 

Focus on goals 

In remote work it is critically important to keep the goals in mind. They have to be clear, measurable and time-bound. It does not matter what an employee does or at what rhythm. If they and the whole team reach the goals set for them, you are doing fine. 

Set up informal communication 

Give your staff the chance to talk about something other than work. In an office people often gather by the water cooler or in the smoking area. Do not try to get rid of such places when working online. It is better to create a controlled "off-topic" channel for non-work subjects and plain jokes. 

That will help bring the team together despite the distances. And when the quarantine and the period of forced isolation are over, you will be able to arrange an informal team get-together. 

Set tasks concisely and clearly 

There is always a risk that doing the tasks will turn into discussing the tasks. So do not let correspondence and calls drag on, and prepare for conferences and online meetings in advance. Send all e-mails in the morning and put all the necessary information into a single message. 

Keep track of effectiveness

Follow how each member of the team is working. Collect feedback on why particular tasks were not done on time. And be sure to establish responsibility for work that is not done. 

From the rules let us move on to the technical solutions.

Tools for remote work  

What goes into the list of tools and services for effective remote work? The list can vary depending on the nature of the business. Most often it includes: 

• a messaging service (Telegram, Slack, Viber and so on);

• tools for video calls with screen sharing (Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype and others);

• remote screen use and remote desktop access (still TeamViewer here);

• a system for setting tasks and managing projects remotely (Jira, Asana, Trello, Basecamp, YouTrack);

• cloud services for storing documents and working on them;

• a CRM and so on. 

Now let us talk about specific tools: 

A work messenger — Telegram 

Alternatives: Skype, Slack, Discord

One of the most popular messengers; it works with every operating system, in mobile and desktop versions. Its only drawback is that Telegram does not support video calls — an important part of remote work. 

That is offset by an advantage: Telegram is completely free for any number of participants. 

The Slack messenger 

An alternative to Telegram 

Available in several versions (a web version and a client program for installing on a phone or a computer). Slack has three plans. A team of up to 20 people will find the free one enough. If you need advanced access settings for each user, more integrations with third-party services and a larger archive, we recommend moving to a paid version (paying for a year at once works out cheaper). 

Google services — one of the best options for working on documents 

Alternatives: DropBox (partly), Office 365, Apple iWork. 

Works on Windows and Android 

Google offers a free and very convenient set of web services for working on presentations, text documents and spreadsheets. All of it is complemented by Google Drive file storage. 

Depending on the level of access to your files, users can view, comment on or edit them. 

15 GB of disk space is available free. The paid G Suite version offers extra disk space, corporate mail and other additional functions. 

OneNote — storing notes 

Alternatives: Evernote, Google Keep and Notion 

Works on mobile devices (iOS, Android), as a web service and as an application in Windows and macOS. 

Using Google Docs to store small notes is inconvenient. That is why you will need OneNote or something like it. This is a cloud service that lets you store and organise important work information — links, reminders, phone numbers and so on. There is also the option of working on files together. The intuitive interface makes the work simpler. 

An important advantage of OneNote is support for collaborative work; attachments in various formats can be added to documents, including video and audio comments. 

In the free version each user gets 5 GB for storing notes. Take out a corporate Office 365 Business subscription and you get 1 TB of disk space for the whole team. 

Evernote — another convenient note store 

Available as a web service, a client for Windows and an application for iOS and Android. 

The main competitor to OneNote. It lets you save text files, web pages, audio files, photographs and other kinds of files. The service has backup and synchronisation functions for working from different devices. 

There is also a Chrome extension — Evernote Web Clipper. 

Asana — a project management system 

Compatible with: web, Android, iOS. 

Alternative options: Podio, Basecamp.

The service makes strategic planning and long-distance project management possible. You gain the ability to structure the flow of tasks in different ways. 

In Asana all tasks are divided into large groups — projects. There are various templates for projects. It might be a content publication calendar, a plan of work on a site or a schedule for submitting various reports. 

The free version of Asana suits teams of up to 15 people. 

Trello — a simple, convenient service built on the kanban method 

Works on all the main platforms and operating systems. 

The service is built on the kanban methodology, a popular approach to project management. Under this method every task passes through several stages. For example: planned, in progress, awaiting approval, done. The idea makes the work process easier to see. Elements of kanban are used in several similar services. 

In Trello all tasks are divided into boards. On each board you can build chains of assignments. When a task is done, it is moved to the next list. For example: once the text is written, the author attaches a link to a Google document to the card and moves it from the In progress column to the Done column. 

Trello's creators have taken the principle of simplicity almost to the limit. For that reason the system may not suit some projects and businesses. 

The paid version of Trello offers: 

• automation of work with tasks;

• more than 10 boards per team;

• extended options for laying out tasks. 

MindMeister — a tool for building mind maps 

Compatible with iOS, Android and the web. 

Equivalents: Mindomo, MindMup. 

A mind map is a way of recording plans and data that makes it possible to present complex projects and ideas as a diagram. Mind maps are used more and more often in modern business.

MindMeister offers many templates for mind maps. You do not have to spend a long time thinking about how to visualise information and present it in a form everyone understands. 

A free account can store a maximum of 3 mind maps. Users with a paid subscription have no limit on the number of maps. 

Zoom — scheduled video conferences and screen sharing

Compatible with the web, iOS and Android 

Equivalents: Skype for Business, Slack, Hangouts Meet.

Video calls and group meetings are an important part of business communication at a distance. In many cases you need to see the person you are talking to and show them your computer screen with diagrams and documents. 

Zoom solves those tasks. It lets you: 

• hold group video conferences (up to 40 minutes in the free version, unlimited in the paid one);

• exchange text messages during a conference;

• save a video recording of the conversation to watch later;

• create conferences with protected entry. 

Zoom can be used for conferences, presentations, online consultations and webinars. 

LightShot — a program for screenshots 

When working remotely, a shot of the screen is often better than long explanations in words. LightShot is a fast and simple way to take screenshots, save them and send them. 

Screenshots can be sent through a messenger, by mail or as links (the images are saved to the program's server). 

Timely — a time tracker 

Compatible with every platform and operating system. 

Equivalents: Harvest, Toggl 

To judge productivity, you need to know how much time each member of the team spends on one task. That is why time trackers appeared. Timely integrates with Asana, Trello and other similar services. After that the service produces analytics on what employees do with their tasks. 

The service is entirely paid. 

A dedicated virtual server from Host4Biz 

A dedicated virtual server (VDS, VPS) is an important tool for companies with a complex IT infrastructure. You can install software on it and store sites and backups of your working information. The owner of a virtual server is given full administrative rights. 

Such a solution provides greater security than ordinary hosting. Dedicated servers run Windows or Linux, depending on the user's needs. 

Host4Biz will provide you with a VPS in European data centres. 

Conclusions 

Moving to remote work is a difficult task for a business, but an entirely solvable one. Choose the right tools and get the process running, and you may even save on many kinds of expenses. 

We hope this article has been as useful as possible. We wish all our readers and customers success and stability.