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Remote working is fast taking over the business world with more and more companies ditching the traditional office space. There are so many great benefits to remote working; you’re not limited to people in the local area when you’re hiring, you can hire the best people from literally anywhere in the world which means you don’t have to make any sacrifices on talent. Employees are also generally happier because they’ve got more flexibility and they can set their own hours. If you get it right, it’s a lot more productive than traditional working practices, but if you get it wrong then it can be a lot less productive. Luckily, there are some great new innovations that can help you and your employees find success when working remotely. These are the best pieces of tech for working remotely.

Group Chat Apps

Communication is at the centre of remote working success. If you don’t stay in touch and keep everybody updated on projects etc. you won’t be very efficient. Email is fine but when you’re trying to have a longer discussion about things, it’s a bit of a pain to find the thread and read through it all. Video calling is fine, but it’s prone to problems and it can get a bit messy if there are a lot of you on a single call. The best thing to use is group chat apps. There are plenty of them out there, Whatsapp is the one that you’re probably most familiar with. That’s ok but it’s not optimized for business purposes. You’d be better off with something like Slack. It’s designed for business so you can set up space where you can upload documents etc. and look at them together while you chat. It works across all of your devices so you can keep up with developments on your phone or tablet when you’re out of the house and you can customize the notifications so you’re only getting the messages that are relevant to you.

Remote Tech Support

One of the main things that is missing when you’re working remotely is an in-house tech support team. If anything goes wrong with your computer, you’re on your own. Unless of course, you’ve got a virtual expert to help you out. There are some great companies out there that offer remote tech support so they can fix the problem over video without you having to wait ages for somebody to come out to you and you can get back to work as quick as possible.

VPN’s

When you’re working in an office, you’ll have a cyber security system to protect all of the company data, but at home, you won’t have that. It’s still just as important that you’re protecting that data and ensuring that your remote workers are operating safely. One of the biggest dangers is public wi-fi; if your employees are logging into networks outside the house that aren’t secure, they’re putting the company at risk. You can get around this by using a virtual private network that makes it more difficult for people to get into their computers.

Use these 3 pieces of tech and your remote working operation will run a lot smoother.