Table of Contents
How has the Coronavirus crisis-affected companies?
The Coronavirus all over the world has caused a great impact on the social, economic, and even, we could say, culturally level, since the way we relate socially has changed and it seems that it will be something we must assume. Without going any further, labor relations have evolved towards teleworking and it is expected that more and more companies will take this type of measure.
We have all the tools and resources necessary to continue our work both in the office and at home, sharing company chats, group video calls and documents in the cloud.
Pre and post telework COVID-19
All over the world, teleworking was not common before the COVID-19 crisis. In fact, according to data, in 2019, only 4.8% of workers worked from home. Far from countries such as Finland or the Netherlands, which in that same year had already implemented remote work from home as a habitual way of working, with figures of 13.3% and 14% respectively.
With the decree of the State of Alarm all over the world, which meant the closure of all non-essential activity, many companies were forced to implement telework during quarantine. This has pleased both workers and companies, which is why many do not consider returning to face-to-face activity in the workplace.
Many people argue that it is a more productive way of working since it allows greater flexibility in terms of hours and gives the worker more freedom to organize hours. This, in turn, allows the reconciliation of family and work life, which usually causes a more positive attitude in the worker and reduces stress. In addition, companies that are capable of fully implementing teleworking will have no problem hiring workers from any city, even if they are far from the headquarters. In this way, the companies’ chances of finding talent, and the employee’s job opportunities will increase.
One of the main complaints of workers has been that companies must bear the costs of the internet and daylight hours they work at home since it is not personal consumption, but rather labor consumption. Unions and the Ministry of Labor have already set to work to regularize all these issues that were not considered before the pandemic, since, as we have said, telework was a very rare option before Covid19.
Also Read: How To Manage Your Office Work From Home
Essential tools for teleworking
In the digital marketing sector, it seems that it is somewhat easier to adapt to this new way of working since most of our functions are done online. In order to optimize the time in the best possible way and to carry out a planning of controlled actions, we must look for tools that allow us a fluid communication between the workers of the same company, be able to hold regular meetings and have access to all the documents that may be of interest for members of the same department or workgroup.
There are many tools that offer us all this but do not think that we can tell you which is the best. Each one will be better adapted to some companies or others. The best thing is to know them all, investigate them, and decide which tool to implement according to the needs that we have in our company.
Here are some of them:
Google Suite
Google has created this tool to offer a specific service for companies. It allows you to use Gmail, with controls for administrators, without ads and personalized with your company’s domain ( example@yourcompany.com ).
In addition, it offers a platform for online meetings with good audio and video quality, collaborative files, shared calendars, and data protection. This is a good option since normally everyone works with Google applications, which makes it easy to adapt to this tool.
Microsoft Teams
During this quarantine, Microsoft has also joined the proposals for tools that facilitate teleworking for companies. They have created Microsoft Teams, which brings all applications together in Microsoft 365.
This tool allows all workers to chat, call, meet, and collaborate from the same space. In addition, it allows giving web conferences for users outside the company.
Trello
Trello is another of the tools, perhaps the best known.
With this tool, you can create boards to organize the information you need, add expiration dates, comments, or attachments. It offers a very visual, effective, and easy to use way of organization since you only have to create the boards with the information of your clients, your work, or what you want to organize in each section. Its free version allows you to create up to 10 different boards.
The fact of implementing telework must mean an improvement in productivity and a step forward in our sector, and that is why each of these tools and applications can be adapted to your company so that this happens. We should not be afraid to analyze each one of them, try them, and implement them. It is something that we have had to live in an accelerated way due to the circumstances caused by the pandemic, but that surely brings us positive results and allows us to know a new (for some) way of doing our work in the best and most comfortable way possible.
