Remote work tools to boost productivity.

Maximizing productivity with remote teams is essential, and using the right tools can help. Here are some of the most common remote work productivity tools used by businesses of all sizes.

You don’t have to be in the office to be productive. For those working remotely, here are a few productivity tools to help you work from home — or anywhere the road takes you.

What are remote work productivity tools?

With the increasing popularity of remote work, productivity tools are becoming more important. Remote work has many advantages but can make it more challenging to stay on task or connect and collaborate with a team. Remote work tools aim to solve those pain points. They can facilitate anything from casual conversations between co-workers to elaborate project schedules.

Importance of remote work productivity tools.

Many organizations have learned that while it can be convenient, remote work presents unique challenges. If you want to be successful in your remote work, productivity tools can be critically important.

These tools set up remote workers for success. They can help you:

• Connect with your team despite physical distance
• Maintain focus in an often distracting environment
• Prioritize and organize deliverables
• Keep up with schedules and deadlines

5 must-have remote work productivity tools.

These productivity tools are extremely popular. While you’ve probably heard of them before, you may not have considered using them for your remote business needs. Fortunately, their popularity speaks to their ability to improve your remote work. We’ll explore the basics and list the benefits of each.

Work productivity tool for communication: Slack.

There are perks to working in the office, like the ability to easily communicate with your co-workers. With Slack, you can bring the water cooler and conference room right to your computer.

Slack is one of the most popular communication and collaboration tools and is used by major brands around the world. It’s an instant messaging platform that allows you to talk to your co-workers individually or create groups.

It also features video calling and integration with other productivity tools to make remote collaboration a breeze.

The benefits of using Slack include:

• Easy, quick communication for collaboration
• Group or individual messaging
• Secure messaging and video calling
• Integration with other productivity tools and versatility
• Automation options

Work productivity tool for project management: Asana.

It’s not always easy to stay on task (or remember your tasks) when working remotely. Luckily, Asana is here to help.

Asana is a project management platform that’s designed to keep your entire team on track. You can create tasks, assign them to co-workers (or yourself), leave comments, and set project statuses. It’s everything teams of any size need to manage projects on the go.

The benefits of using Asana include:

• More efficient project management, especially for remote management
• Excellent team collaboration functions
• Document-sharing capabilities
• Functionality for Agile or Scrum
• Third-party integrations and versatility

Work productivity tool for collaboration: Google Drive.

When it comes to submitting and collaborating on documents, it’s hard to beat Google Drive. This productivity tool lets you share folders, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with your entire team and collaborate in real time. Best of all, it’s free with a Google account.

The benefits of using Google Drive include:

• Real-time collaboration, including edits or comments
• Quick syncing of documents
• Many document formats supported
• Easy sharing and cloud options

Work productivity tool for calls: Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams brings together document sharing and collaboration with communication of all kinds. It’s advertised as a one-stop shop for productivity tools. Using Teams might help you cut down on the number of apps you’re using daily and help you streamline your work. The Teams app is integrated with the Microsoft Office Suite and helps you make the most of your Microsoft tools.

The benefits of using Teams include:

• Efficient communication and document collaboration
• Messages, comments, and calls, including video
• Integration with Microsoft Office Suite and connection to cloud storage
• Planning capabilities

Work productivity tool for sharing files: Adobe Acrobat.

Google Docs and Microsoft Word might be great for creating documents, but when it comes time for sharing, you’ll want to work with PDFs. When you absolutely need to maintain formatting — like sending a proposal to a big client — Adobe Acrobat can help.

Acrobat is a downloadable software that brings all the PDF productivity tools you could ever need right to your computer. You can also use Adobe Acrobat online services to convert documents and fill, sign, and edit PDFs online right from your web browser.

The benefits of using Adobe Acrobat include:

• Professional sharing of PDF documents with stable formatting
• Powerful PDF editing
• Password protection for PDF documents
• Easy PDF form creation
• Document conversion and compression
• Online sharing and syncing for collaboration

General tips for staying productive while working remotely.

While tools can help you with your productivity in remote work, they are just that — tools. You’ll probably need to do more than simply use Slack and Google Docs if you want to be efficient in your remote work.

Here are some general tips to make sure you’re doing your best work, even remotely:

• Establish boundaries in your environment. This could look like talking to family members or roommates about your availability, creating a space conducive to work, or setting aside specific times for work. Digital distractions are especially important to manage.
• Communicate clearly with your team. Miscommunication is easier when you’re physically apart from your team. Try to communicate in a way that can’t be misunderstood, and don’t hesitate to ask for clarification from your teammates on important points.
• Prioritize your tasks to meet deadlines. When you don’t have people around you working on the same project, it can be easy to forget about your priorities. If you’re feeling overwhelmed about deadlines, try breaking up your tasks into small, manageable chunks.

More resources for teams.

Remote work productivity tools can make a huge difference in your workflows at home. Now that you have recommendations to get started with five remote work productivity tools, here are more resources for teams and collaboration:

• Discover remote collaboration tools.
• Learn how to manage remote teams.
• Work with digitization software remotely.
• Find a definition for remote collaboration.
• Learn what virtual assistants do.

Discover what more you can do with Acrobat productivity tools to help with your remote work.