Hybrid Office Software

As companies move to bring employees back to the office, it doesn’t change the fact that there will still be remote work to be done. And how you bridge the new world of blended work across multiple locations – and in the case of some businesses, more than one time zone – it’s important you get the tech side right.

Here is a list of 4 key tools and technologies you need to consider as we approach the new way to work:

1. Communication
Keeping lines of communication open and easy is key to remote/hybrid work. As organizations move to more outcome-oriented models instead of the “punch a time clock” model left over from the industrial age, how people talk to each other, whether synchronously or asynchronously, is critical to get right. Some tools many leaders have chosen to invest in include Gmail, Slack and Microsoft Teams.

2. Meetings
While “Zoom” has gone from the name of a conferencing tool to a verb used in the workplace: “Let’s Zoom about it later,” it is just one form of tech that can be used for meetings. Microsoft has the competing Teams platform that is prevalent mostly in large Enterprise endeavors. Other holdover apps like WebEx, ReadyTalk, and Uberconference failed to leverage their market share while they could.

3. Calendars
While GSuite and MS Office have their standard calendar tools as part of their tool belt of services, they are mostly used for internal meetings. We’d all love to get away from the “What time next week works for you?” emails. There are some very feature-rich tools available that make scheduling with outside collaborators easy. Growing in prevalence is Calendly while Squarespace-owned company, Acuity Scheduling also has a stronghold in many businesses.

4. Culture
It’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of the people in the office and remote. There are plenty of applications that help you survey your staff in either a public or anonymous way to give you the current temperature of cultural issues. The culture is the personality of your organization. So beyond getting feedback, you also want morale high. Here are just some tools to do just that: Office Vibe, Kazoo, and Wellable to name a few.