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Harbert Magazine
Harbert Magazine

Maintaining connection in the remote/hybrid workplace 

Coworkers' faces shown on various devices during digital meeting floating around a water cooler

If we’ve learned anything in the past couple of years, it’s that tech tools are vital in the remote/hybrid workplace. 

“A specific location is simply no longer a prerequisite to working effectively or building a company culture,” wrote researchers Holger Reisinger and Dana Fetterer.  “What’s more important is getting the right tools and technologies and using them effectively.” Their research found that 85% of the global work population believes  that having constant access to high-quality technology — and developing a strong sense of confidence in their mastery of that technology — allows them to excel at work.  

And what is that technology? Laptops, of course, are powerhouses in the remote toolbox. And workers with employer-provided amenities like headsets and access to professional audio devices — rather than consumer-grade microphones and speakers that were built into their
laptops — felt more included in meetings. 

But the real game-changers are productivity software and apps.  

In 2020, Zoom video conferencing was one of the most downloaded mobile apps worldwide, with more than 500 million downloads.  Strange to think that it has been around since 2011. Microsoft Teams began in 2017; by the start of 2022, it had 270 million users. Cisco WebEx, Google Meet and GoToMeeting are longtime heavy hitters in the cloud collaborative world.  And now there’s a virtual snowstorm of productivity software and
apps — all crafted to meet specific needs — and most are easily integrated to work with the powerful, top-rated systems
mentioned earlier.  

So how do you find your way through?  First, determine your needs. 

How? Identify your organization’s top priority: Is it seamless face-to-face videoconferencing? Real-time collaboration on complex projects? Implementing a solid task schedule with multiple deadlines? A combination of some or all of these?

Then, research, research, research.  

Look to neutral, comprehensive online resources that frequently update databases of systems — what they offer, pros and cons included. Some worth noting are pcmag.com, TechRadar, TechnologyAdvice, Integrated Research (ir.com), BusinessNewsDaily and GetApp.com. That will get you to a short list. Your ultimate choice should be responsive, robust, secure, supported by reliable customer service and cost-effective.  

Most software as a service, or SaaS, systems are subscription-based and provide a range of products based on the number of users and time allotment, and some offer freemium features.  

SaaS can improve productivity through simplification. It removes complexity by giving organizations access
to the most up-to-date, secure versions of critical software — without the need to install, maintain or update it. 

The system should also fill out the work experience. 

The right system can bridge the gaps that remain after switching your team’s work experience from completely in-office to one that’s hybrid or fully remote. This allows your team to mimic the daily flow of a physical office through video conferencing, real-time document editing, screen sharing and file storage.  

Here’s a scattering of collaboration tools that easily integrate with larger platforms. Exploring this array of tools and just what each of them brings to the table can help you navigate the blizzard of possibilities.  

Some of them serve as project management tools, others offer the latest iterations of video conferencing and some are comprehensive file management programs. But most are a hybrid of all of the above — a one-stop shop.

Basecamp: Developed by the authors of the book “Remote: Office Not Required” who designed the project management app so that you can “know where everything is, what everyone is working on and exactly where to put the next thing everyone needs to know about.” Organizations using Basecamp include Shopify, NASA, Quartz, 3M, University of Miami.  

Bluescape: Emerging from the entertainment industry and now widely used outside that sector. CEO Peter Jackson says Bluescape solves the problems of “tossing around files, PDFs and videos that are all on different
pages . . . in meetings with one person talking, a lot of people listening, sharing a document that one person created… We’re letting everybody work at the same time on a project-by-project basis.” A virtual whiteboard emphasizes visual content with built-in voice and video meetings. Bluescape offers video conferencing, project management, file management and file storage all in one. Among its users are the U.S. government, Netflix, J.P. Morgan and Dell.

Crowdcast.io:  The conferencing platform, often presented as a real contender for the Zoom role, facilitates webinars, live courses, online conferences, summits and even festivals that allow group members to join on any device via popular social media sites and are broadcast via YouTube, Twitch and Facebook Live. It focuses on live engagement with attendees via live chat, polls, time-stamped Q&As and face-to-face. A standout feature: advanced data and analytics of the event and its audience. Users include Adobe Creative Jam, IBM Developer and hundreds of startups.  

LifeSize: The first productivity/presentation app to offer 4K capabilities for both 4K video streams and full-motion 4K content. It offers a technological leap to organizations that regularly conduct business meetings via videoconferencing, taking not only client video presentations but also intra-office meetings to a never before seen experience in quality and variation that can serve as a model for future software developers. Among its users: Yale University, Shell Energy and NASA.

Milanote: Targeted toward creative groups, this project management software uses multi-purpose visual boards to represent each stage of each project, with drag-and-drop functions to collect images, text, files, links and more from anywhere on the web — and,  through the mobile app, from smartphone to computer — to add to productivity boards. It also stores files for continuous projects and future reference. Users include Netflix, Nike, Adobe and Dropbox.

Monday.com: This project and file management tool’s strength is its compatibility with leading collaboration software systems. It lets organizations aggregate data with more than 40 integrations including Outlook, Microsoft Teams, GMail and Excel, with features including automations, time-tracking, document sharing and real-time collaboration. Users include the NHL, Coca-Cola, Universal, Hulu and EA Sports.

Slack:(an acronym for “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge”) was introduced nearly a decade ago and has since become an indispensable real-time message board that in many organizations has replaced emails. This year, its number of users reached 12 million, including more than half of the Fortune 500 companies.

What’s missing in remote work

Today, most workers see the physical office space as a social amenity, not a mandatory way of working, Reisinger and Fetter found in their study. It’s the camaraderie, the walls and hallways, and even the casual banter that goes on in packed meeting rooms that employees miss.

Now, those social experiences can be effectively mimicked, even with teams spread across the globe.  To recreate those vital social connections, dozens of virtual tools have popped up with the sole purpose of allowing virtual colleagues to interact, share their interests and find common ground. 

Tied to large platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, these apps offer casual chats — in virtual break rooms and coffee dates — among individuals or small groups
of employees, often selected randomly in a “chat-roulette” style. They focus not on work, but on building deeper personal connections and a sense of belonging in the
remote workplace.

Here’s a look at some of the emerging apps that aim to foster social connection:

Donut: This app is integrated with Slack, which describes it this way: “Donut makes connections across the organization for teams of all sizes in three ways: by encouraging in-person or virtual meetups, asynchronous banter and more festive birthday and work celebrations.”

fikaTime: A Microsoft Teams app that builds socially connected teams by pairing up employees to meet for “virtual coffee.” fikaTime’s goal is to break down geographical silos to encourage new relationships, drive diversity by building empathy through one-on-one and group conversations and combat loneliness and burnout.

Snack: (not to be confused with the dating app of the same name) is a Slack bot that engages employees to have spontaneous, time-restricted video conversations. Snack developer Gajus Kuizinas says the app addresses common hybrid/remote problems: combatting loneliness and keeping sparsely distributed teams engaged. It’s “just the right mix of fun, spontaneous and useful interactions that I wish every remote community had.” 

Shuffl: Developers of this Slack app strive to create “high-trust cultures” that provide 76% more engagement, 106% more energy at work, 40% less burnout and 22% greater profitability (stats from Harvard Business Review and Gallup). They do this through team networking social shuffles, one-on-one new match connections, onboarding activities and more.

LEAD: This app integrates with both Slack and Microsoft Teams. Its mission: “creating an interconnected workforce” through building “intentional bonds between employees by serendipitously connecting employees across teams, departments and locations.” Users can launch in-person or virtual outings, implement peer-to-peer learning opportunities and build internal networks for both existing employees and new hires.

— Teri Greene