Top Ten Productivity Tools That Every Home Office Owner Needs In 2021
It is common knowledge that businesses today put a lot of effort towards achieving more productivity. However, the methods that are currently being applied are a stark contrast of what global firms used some years back. For example, the development of productivity tools has helped a lot of firms to meet this objective. There are numerous productivity tools out in the market today. What are the “Top ten productivity tools that every home office owner needs in 2021?”
In order to increase the chances of attaining the set levels of productivity, businesses have shifted from ancient methods to leveraging the power of productivity tools. The features of these tools are what businesses find to be useful. Some of the best productivity tools to try out this year include Zoom, Slack and even Hub spot.
Having been accustomed to the old and normal ways of working, the Covid-19 pandemic has necessitated a lot of adjustments. Global firms and businesses have had to find new ways to boost their levels of productivity. With that said people and businesses have to adopt a new normal and incorporate ways to help improve the working environment while simultaneously adhering to the existing covid-19 protocols and preventive measures. The concept of working from home fits this perfectly.
A home office transition will need one to put a proper communication system in place. This will require conducting very comprehensive and elaborate work research. However, to make all of this possible and avoid miscommunication and human error, we need to incorporate the beneficial features of online productivity tools. Since we live in the digital world and thanks to the internet, all this is feasible.
Statistically working from home helps in:
- Increasing performance up to more than 10%.
- Increasing productivity rate by 70% and above
- Make work more efficient since almost 50% of your works don’t take-offs
- Reduce the stress which comes from work because one is just working from the comfort of their homes.
Through using advanced and easy-to-use productivity tools, your business can effectively optimize your remote workforce, encourage productivity, empower employees and take your business to the next level. These tools will ensure your business will bloom in terms of productivity.
The Top Ten Productivity Tools That Every Home Office Owner Needs Are:
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ZOOM Video Communication Tool
One big impact of Covid-19 led has been people isolating and places put into lockdown. This created the need for video conferencing. Zoom became a very crucial and vital medium in relaying work matters. It also became the best platform for a carrying out meetings in a work from home experience. Zoom is cheaper and has great video quality, it enabled its users to share screens and record calls.
Its features include;
- High- definition videos and audio
- Can hold up to 50 members thus making it ideal for online meetings and gathering. A business or firm can easily hold its board meetings without fear of leaving some members out of the meeting.
- Can share screens, images, and documents- Sharing screens is also known as desktop-sharing helps one share contents of his desktop with multiple devices without having to send any file.
- Live chats – This can help when discussing important business issues. With live chats, you can hold meetings with the participation of all members.
- Recording and available transcripts.
With zoom, one will no longer have to worry about miscommunication or missing out on important meetings with colleagues or clients. It’s the ideal tool for meetings and quick catch-up sessions.
It’s one of the newest ways of communication with your team. It’s faster, well organized, and secure. Slack is a remote team tool that provides streamlined team communications. Also, it offers an always-on digital communal space for your team to chat, discuss ideas, ask questions and share comments instantly for effective teamwork. It is the perfect team collaboration software that unifies your entire team’s communications. It integrates with the apps you use every day such as Google Drive, and Drop box.
Features of Slack include:
- Chatrooms – Here you can be able to engage freely with your workers.
- Private chat- This helps you to chat with individuals without the fear. Here you can correct or give orders
- Workflow builder (it can automate communication)
- Integrates with a variety of apps including Google Drive.
With slack one can create a variety of channels for different themes and subjects, ensuring that all communication is cataloged and easy to find. Slack is also available on all mobile devices.
This is an inbound marketing and sales software designed to assist businesses in attracting clients, closing deals tracking sales, and building clients relationship. It helps keep your sales and marketing team on the same page when it comes to lead generation and client acquisition. It gives a full Customer Relationship Management (CRM) service that is easily customizable and offers a great user experience.
It provides a variety of tools that are exceptionally powerful and designed to help your marketing sales and services team achieve their ultimate goals. It helps to convert your promising leads to successful deals. You can create your customized email templates and use them to measure performance. It integrates well with both Gmail and Outlook.
HubSpot Features include:
- Sales Hub: Here one can automate his emails, tack the emails and also schedule the next meeting.
- Marketing Hub: It generates leads, helps in marketing and analysis.
- Automated Emails: Here, email workflows will enable you to set up “email workflows”. Workflows usually assist marketers and advertisers to automate tasks such as sending emails and establishing the changes in your contact list. These workflows in HubSpot will assist you to send a series of emails based on the content that your contacts normally interact with.
This is a storage unit that gives people the benefit of storing files, images, presentations, documents, and many other different things in a secure location. This platform enables its users to share files and sync accounts across multiple devices as long as there is internet access.
This is what businesses need to manage digital files if members can’t be reached and the files won’t be accessed.
Google Drive features include:
- Up to 100GB file uploads
- Add shared files from groups (teams) or a sharing point to OneDrive
- A cohesive file experience
- Visibility use and security control
This medium goes hand in hand with all available applications of Google like Google sheets, slides, documents, etc. as it is one of Google’s products.
Want to manage personal tasks as well as business projects, Trello is what you need. This is a digital list maker for proper management of projects and tasks and is flexible to use. The application is free, easy to use, and offers a way to manage and organize tasks and projects visually and it is the visibility aspect that sets it apart.
Trello’s features include:
- Rule-Based triggers
- Calendar commands
- Built in workflows
- A due date command
This App consists of lists, boards that allow members-users to prioritize and organize work projects in a rewarding but fun way, kind of like transacting business on social media i.e., Pinterest and Instagram.
Zapier is an online platform that streamlines workers’ processes by creating workflows and automated manual tasks. It also moves information between web apps. The best part is it can be used together with emails and Google calendar which is what every worker needs.
Zapier’s features include:
- Automating repetitive tasks without relying on developers
- Integration with all apps
This App is one to consider using as it doesn’t restrict usage of other Apps which one uses daily
This is an application designed for task management, note-taking, organization, and archiving. It allows its users to create drawings, audio, or saved web content. This app acts like your “secondary” brain that enables you to remember everything that you need to. It’s a reliable note-making app to stay organized and get more done. With Evernote, you can capture, organize, and share notes from anywhere so that your best ideas are always with you and in sync.
Evernote features include:
- Web clipping-the web clipper is a simple browser extension that lets a user capture full-page articles, selected text, important email, and web pages
- Scanable captures paper quickly and transforms it into high-quality scans ready to save and share
- Skitching occurs when user is permitted to add shapes and texts to images then sharing online
This App is one to be considered by small scale business owners but is still applicable to everyone.
Take back control of your time and courses and become more focused, productive, and motivated with this App. It is a time management tool that tracks time and helps one understand and control time spent thus beating distractions
Rescue Time Features include:
- Setting screen time goals and controls phone usage
- Keeping all daily goals front and center, providing important work schedule
- Automatically taking the device into “do not disturb” mode on focus-time sessions
Rescue Time has unlimited data history as it tracks and offline time; time log in meetings, phone calls for a full picture of your day. Rescue Time also classifies each app and website you use into five productivity ratings, which you can change:
1) very productive, 2) productive, 3) neutral, 4) distracting, and 5) very distracting.
It also categorizes them by types, such as communication and scheduling, social networking, entertainment, design, and composition.
Screen recording is one of the most effective ways to quickly share information between teams. Screen recording tools allow you the benefit of speaking in a video call while providing information through screen sharing. With screen recordings, you can send videos to team members that are live or recorded. This helps when team members are unable to meet with you and related team members due to different time zones.
This is one of the most used screen sharing tools as it comes with a variety of features within an easy-to-use interface.
This tool also brings attention and insight to your actual habits. It is essentially a time-tracking tool that records the apps you use, websites you visit, and the breaks you take while working. That way, you can see exactly how you spent your time on the computer.
Loom has amazing features that include:
- Ability to Pause
- Ability to Resume
- Ability to Trim and Edit Recordings
- Video automatically uploaded to Loom’s cloud storage
- Unlimited Video Storage
Users are also able to contribute by commenting and reacting to specific time marks in the videos – making communication that much easier. These features are helpful and save team members time that would otherwise be sent trying to re-record video after video.
This is a powerful project management platform that’s ideal for remote teams. It is feature-rich yet easy to use and boasts an intuitive user interface. It is trusted by over 20,000 businesses worldwide.
Designed to be “Powerful when you need it to be”, it is a great choice for remote teams looking for an all-in-one solution and an ability to grow into the platform, utilizing more and more of its powerful features as you do so.
Remote teams will see the most benefit from Teamwork due to its abundance of friendly features such as time-tracking, multiple view and format live project tracking, and individual team member workload management. For professional service-type businesses like agencies, the client permissions feature is nice. This feature allows you to manage individual permissions and access your clients to areas such as time-tracking and invoicing.
Finally, the way we do business has shifted to the internet due to the new normal caused by pandemic. Those working from home, therefore, need all the tools they can use to achieve the same, if not more, productivity that they were previously accustomed to. This is where these productivity tools come in. In addition, these tools assist the staff that is working from home to maintain communication with their colleagues while also making their work so much easier and thus they can be more productive!
