The 10 best remote work tools for distributed teams

Remote work has been growing for some time now, and Covid-19 certainly set the pace of change. Employees adapted their schedules and habits quickly to make remote work both manageable and productive.

Some challenges remain, but remote work offers the chance to create positive change and productive collaboration across teams. For the companies that adopted it, here are some of the benefits they have seen:

• Salaries and services are often cheaper in other countries.
• Better talent is often available in other countries too.
• Your company becomes more attractive to a wider range of talent.
• Having team members spread across several time zones can give your company a 24/7 presence.
• You gain cultural knowledge and different perspectives.
• You grow your presence and build contacts in other markets.

The benefits are countless, but there are also challenges in managing a distributed team. In this article we cover ten of the best remote work tools for distributed teams to help you overcome them.

Top 10 remote work tools for distributed teams

We will focus on the best tools for teams distributed across different sites, potentially in different countries and time zones around the world. That situation brings a number of challenges of its own:

• Time zones
• Language barriers
• Cultural differences
• Religious holidays, annual events, and so on
• Varied workplace cultures
• Differences in minimum and acceptable salaries
• Differences in workers' rights
• Technology differences (internet speed, coverage, access to websites, and so on)

On top of those, you also have to overcome all the usual difficulties of remote work:

• Loneliness
• Collaboration and communication
• Distractions at home
• Being in a different time zone from your teammates
• Staying motivated
• Taking time off
• Finding a good internet connection

The recommendations in this article aim to solve both the problems unique to distributed teams and the usual challenges remote employees face.

At Skaalab we have dedicated remote team members in several countries around the world, so we have had to overcome all of these challenges. That is why we are confident we can help.

Here is a short summary of the ten remote work tools and the problems they solve:

• Serene: avoid distractions and stay focused on the task at hand to be more productive.
• Status Hero: let every team member see what everyone is working on in real time, avoiding interruptions and wasted time.
• Toggl: time tracking for each employee and the team they belong to.
• Slack: team communication that supports both individual work and collaboration.
• Monday: project management for team leads and individual members, to get tasks and projects done faster.
• Google Drive: free file creation, collaboration, and sharing for everyday documents.
• InVision: collaborative prototype design, to turn concepts into reality faster.
• Spark: a distraction-free email collaboration experience that keeps teams focused.
• Doodle: hassle-free scheduling of meetings, video calls, and shared team sessions.
• Zoom: video conferencing, the way forward for distributed teams.

With these tools at their disposal, your employees can be more productive both working individually and collaborating with the rest of the team. They also help team and project leads keep everyone on track and make sure goals are met.

1. Serene (Mac)

Serene helps employees maximise their effectiveness by focusing on a single goal per day rather than splitting their attention. Many studies show that multitasking kills productivity, and that is the principle behind Serene. The tagline says it all: "Multitasking is a myth. Single-tasking is a superpower."

Key features

• Website blocker: block distracting websites such as social networks and news sites.
• App blocker: block the applications that pull your attention away from work.
• Distraction-free sessions: work in sessions of 20 to 60 minutes with regular breaks to maximise productivity.
• Session timer: shows how much time you have left to complete a task, giving you a sense of accomplishment at the end of each session.
• To-do list: manage your tasks and make sure everything is done by the right team member.
• Day planner: set your goal for the day, define your tasks, and get everything done.
• Ambient music: play background music to help you stay focused.
• Silent mode: automatically put your phone on silent while you work.

To maximise productivity, Serene asks team members to set a single goal at the start of each day, which can be broken into several tasks and sessions that add up to that goal.

Users work in short sessions of 20 to 60 minutes with breaks in between. This method has proven effective at maximising efficiency and focus. While team members work on a task, Serene blocks distracting sites and applications and tells users how much time they have left.

2. Status Hero (Windows, Mac, web)

If you have ever managed or worked in a remote team, you will understand the importance of statuses. Letting team members set statuses such as available, busy, away, and unavailable is essential. That is the basic but invaluable role of statuses in collaboration software, and Status Hero turns the concept into a serious productivity tool.

Key features

• Availability statuses: users can set their availability so every team member and manager can see it.
• Check-ins: users give a quick description of what they are doing, so nobody has to ask what they are working on.
• Time zones: Status Hero detects users' time zones to help team members collaborate across locations.
• Blockers: team members can flag anything preventing them from completing their tasks.
• Project management: managers and team members can see how many goals are met and how many are pending, in real time.
• Multiple teams: split teams into several groups, assign projects to different teams, and switch between them on the fly.
• Mood tracking: get a better sense of how team members are feeling.
• Observer mode: managers and stakeholders can see progress without interrupting team members' workflows.

The best way to describe Status Hero is that it removes the friction from remote work and collaboration. When everyone knows what everyone else is working on, there are no interruptions while important tasks are being completed. Collaboration is essential to hitting team goals, but sending a message at the wrong moment can hurt productivity.

According to a University of California study, it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to recover from a distraction. Many studies have produced similar figures, which shows how costly it can be to interrupt a remote worker with emails and messages all day. Status Hero removes that problem while letting team and project leads track progress without interrupting anyone.

3. Toggl (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox)

Toggl is a time-tracking application that runs in the background while users work. It is designed to accurately track the time needed to complete tasks. Above all, the data it provides helps you compare profit against time spent and labour costs, so you can see which projects and clients are the most profitable.

Key features

• Time tracking: see how long you, or others, take to get things done.
• Increase your margins: check that you are charging enough for the time projects take.
• Reports: see whether you are productive and whether your time is profitable.
• Cross-platform: Toggl's well-designed apps work with almost every operating system, so you can reach them wherever and whenever you need.

You can also see how much time team members spend on individual tasks, to monitor productivity and see whether anyone is taking on too much or too little work.

At first glance Toggl looks like fairly ordinary productivity software, but it can be invaluable for making sure tasks are completed quickly enough and that projects generate enough revenue for the time and resources spent on them.

4. Slack (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, web)

Slack is the communication tool that brings remote teams together. The platform organises conversations into channels that team members can join and leave as needed, so nobody receives messages or notifications that do not concern them. Conversations can also happen in threads, which keep messages out of the main channel so discussions do not get in the way of the main topics and projects.

Key features

• Instant messaging: live communication between every team member for seamless collaboration.
• Statuses: users can set availability statuses to focus on individual tasks as needed.
• File sharing: share PDFs, images, videos, and other common file types.
• Voice and video calls: make voice and video calls directly from Slack.
• Screen sharing: let team members show their work to others in real time.

There are plenty of productivity tools on the market and many of them offer more ambitious features than Slack. But Slack brings the fundamentals of communication together in a single, easy-to-use platform in a way no other software has really matched since its first release in 2013.

5. Monday (iOS, Android, web)

Many project management tools are built for digital teams these days, but Monday offers a more advanced feature set than some of the better-known alternatives. A lot of project management tools essentially reinvent the to-do list or create Kanban boards, but tools like Monday and Asana have built full management platforms designed for team leads.

Key features

• Project management: an advanced tool that helps team members reach more ambitious goals.
• Task management: treats each task as a building block of the project's goals.
• Views: multiple views let you check project overviews, calendars, individual workflows, checklists, and reports.
• Track progress: follow tasks, update statuses, get notified as deadlines approach, and reassign or reprioritise easily.
• Weekly workload: team members can work across several projects without losing track.
• File sharing: upload and share files so everyone has access to the resources they need from the same dashboard.

Team leads can assign tasks based on workload, location, experience, native language, and an assessment of previously completed work.

6. Google Drive (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, web)

There is probably not much to say about Google Drive: it is the alternative to Microsoft Office that works far better for remote teams than the Microsoft suite does.

Key features

• Documents: text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and all the essentials we take for granted these days, for free.
• Cloud storage: the cloud element is what makes Google Drive so useful for remote teams, letting them create, upload, share, and collaborate on files.
• Collaboration: real-time collaboration on Google Docs files works without any lag, and that is where it really eclipses the alternatives.

Microsoft Office is admittedly a little more capable in terms of raw features, but Google Drive performs far better as a cloud storage and collaboration tool.

7. InVision (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android)

Whether you are redesigning your website, building a mobile app, or developing your own software, InVision is the collaborative tool that helps design teams get out of the design phase faster.

Key features

• Prototyping: create interactive prototypes with animations and effects so developers, clients, and team members can see what the final product will look like.
• Collaboration: from generating ideas to sharing files, InVision provides the collaboration tools remote designers need.
• Messaging: team members can work on projects, exchange ideas, and give feedback on each other's work.
• Design management: team leads can manage ongoing design projects and processes.
• Integrated development: InVision creates an integrated design and development process where both teams can work together as projects move from stage to stage.

InVision is used by some of the largest technology companies, media organisations, and startups. Above all it is a collaborative design tool built by remote designers for remote designers, and that is why it deserves a place on this list.

8. Spark (Mac, iOS, Android)

Spark is a smart email tool that stops inboxes from getting in the way of productivity. Better still, it turns them into an asset for distributed teams. Spark's smart inbox automatically categorises the email from each account and lets you prioritise what matters while filtering out what does not.

Key features

• Smart inbox: clean up your inbox, find any email through smart search, and snooze the messages that do not need your attention right now.
• Smart notifications: only get notified about important email.
• Assign emails: assign email to team members so the right person handles the right task.
• Communication: private team comments, shared drafts, reply templates, and instant chat for collaborative teams.
• Automated sending: schedule email to go out when people are most likely to read it.
• Reminders: get reminders to follow up on important email at the right time.

You can also snooze messages for later, assign email to team members, chat with them, share drafts, set follow-up reminders, and schedule email to send later. Just like Google Drive, text is created and edited in real time, while members can communicate over instant messaging to polish important messages. All the key details can go into an email from the right person without any confusion or inaccuracy.

9. Doodle (web)

Doodle makes it easy to organise meetings without the back and forth over email. However big your team and however many time zones it spans, Doodle organises your meetings, which matters a great deal for teams distributed across time zones.

Key features

• Team calendar: organise meetings, video calls, and collaboration sessions without the email back and forth.
• Availability: team members can set their available hours, which adjust automatically for time zones.
• Reminders: set reminders so team members are always ready for meetings.

In principle, users set their available hours, which other team members can see, and meetings get scheduled around everyone's availability. Users simply confirm they can attend and the meeting goes ahead. Team members also receive automatic reminders before meetings so nothing is forgotten.

10. Zoom (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, web)

Zoom is a suite of video conferencing and communication tools built for remote teams, virtual company conferences, webinars, and other business purposes.

Key features

• Video conferencing: remote teams can hold group or one-to-one video calls.
• Audio calls: hold group or one-to-one audio calls when face-to-face meetings are not necessary.
• Webinars: use Zoom to run webinars.
• Messaging: team members can send messages through Zoom.
• File sharing: share files during and outside video chats and calls as the need arises.

Zoom is a feature-rich communication tool for distributed teams.

How far will your distributed team go?

Productivity tools matter to any business, but they are the only connection distributed teams can rely on, so you have to choose well.

Every tool we looked at in this article serves a different purpose, but each one is crucial to helping your employees reach their goals, however far apart they happen to be.