Hybrid workspaces have become part of our new normal. We see people choosing to work from home or quitting their current jobs to find one that is more open to hybrid work. People are choosing to spend more time with their family, make their own hours, or benefit their mental health.
The tech industry has taken note of these changes to our work environments and has adapted accordingly. The industry is creating new software, platforms, and innovative equipment to help integrate our remote and in-office workers.
Collaboration Tools & Software
The core of any productive workplace is communication. Luckily, online communication tools have evolved and become essential to businesses and companies worldwide.
Communication tools like Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, and Slack have become increasingly popular, especially now that many companies are embracing the concept of hybrid offices. These tools provide a way for employees to chat and support each other. They also offer a way for workers to share files easily, track progress on projects, and even provide online whiteboards. Implementing these new communication tools can help make your hybrid workplace more efficient.
These tools offer clarity that sometimes is lacking when working at home or in a coworking space.
Productivity Trackers
Productivity trackers help managers see where their employees are in their tasks and how they spend their day. These trackers keep a hybrid workspace flourishing and efficient.
Working remotely comes with its own handful of different distractions than a typical workplace environment. For instance, checking social media more often and household pets that need attention can be quite distracting. Productivity trackers help maintain a steady workflow so that projects don't fall behind and productivity decreases.
In a hybrid workspace, it's a good idea to keep an eye on the productivity of your projects to make sure to meet all your deadlines and that workers are doing the work that they clock hours for. Productivity trackers help decrease the number of distractions that come up during the day. They've been proven to help increase productivity!
Communication Platforms
With the steady rise in work-from-home situations, the need for a communication platform between all employees has skyrocketed. Now more than ever, employees, bosses, and managers stay connected and communicate faster and reliably during the day and outside office hours.
These communication platforms help decrease the number of misunderstandings or forgotten tidbits of information that happen in a face-to-face conversation. In addition, employees can go back into the chats to reference a conversation or document dropped in the chat!
Communication platforms like Google Chat, Slack, and more are great for getting information to your colleagues. They're faster and more helpful in sharing information, documents, photos, links, and spreadsheets.
Most of these communication platforms also offer ways to schedule meetings on video chat with your employees instead. This way, you have the option to include many people in them and have team meetings without even being in the same building.
There are also platforms such as Voxer that allow colleagues to communicate through walkie-talkie style communication. This occurs by either sending voice messages back and forth by just holding down a single button or messaging the person directly. It makes it easy to communicate with coworkers without sitting and typing out a message.
Document Management
Document management is vital to a workforce, and even more so when some of your team is working remotely. The ability to share, store, organize and monitor documents helps keep projects on the right path so you never miss a deadline or can't find a file.
Quickly store and organize your documents in folders, tag, and share the file with others so that they can read, edit or download any file. From PDFs to photos and videos, document management software or platforms like Google Drive is an essential aspect of your office.
You can also check who has been on, edited, or deleted the documents themselves. So, if questions arise, just check and see who you need to follow up with, which makes communicating and solving issues faster as well.
This is also a great option to help declutter your email inbox. You free up your inbox for more important emails by sending documents directly instead of emailing them.
With these new ways of working together, the world is warming up to the idea of the hybrid workplace to better their work environment, mental health, and overall company morale.
With the right technology and software, you can create a flexible, supportive hybrid workplace that will help your company thrive, remotely or in person!