COVID-19 pandemic caused many businesses to transition to working from home as the new normal. The majority of companies all over the world still work from home due to the current epidemic situation. employees may need apps that will help them work from home efficiently and effectively.
What are the challenges of working from home?
Employees working at home need to have self-motivation and good time management because they don’t have other people consistently looking at their work or managing their work for them. It’s a challenge for remote employees to manage their tasks and time well.
Organizing your tasks is difficult. There are a lot of distractions when working at home that can affect your work productivity. Some temptations may distract you while working at home. These include the loud noise of dogs barking, cars, and other distractions from other people staying with you in your home.
Want to know how you can overcome challenges in working at home and increase work productivity?
Thanks to the innovations in technology. There are a lot of apps or tools that can help employees working at home adapt to the challenges of a work-from-home setup.
In this guide, we’ll cover 21 of the best work-from-home apps to help you become more efficient.
Here are some work-from-home apps to help you become more efficient in working at home:
- Task Management Apps
Simplish
Simplish is a to-do list productivity app using positive psychology. This app helps you manage your tasks. Schedule your to-do list on a built-in calendar. Simplish helps teams collaborate on shared projects.
It has a Daily Planner feature that gives you a to-do list of your daily tasks. This feature will help you focus on your daily priorities.
Share a to-do list and chat with team members while you work together on tasks directly from the app.
It has a feature to organize both the tasks and activities you need to do alone and the tasks you need to do with your team. Manage your tasks in multiple workspaces. It helps in managing your workflows.
This app has a color palette feature for an energy boost and has positive daily affirmations. It will keep you in high energy during work time. It’s one of the best apps for your work-from-home team.
Todoist
Todoist is an application that lets you specify all your tasks in a list, and add deadlines for each activity. Track your progress, and mark them done when complete.
Add tasks and add a description on each to-do list. Convert the emails you get from your teammates or manager the tasks and comment as soon as you get them.
The browser extension of Todoist allows you to convert the great websites you find while browsing the web to tasks.
Set automatic, recurring deadlines for each task. Tasks will automatically activate based on the time it took you to complete the earlier activity of the same category.
- Productivity Apps
Krisp
When working from home, you’re bound to distractions from your pets, children, family members, etc.
Krisp is an app that helps remove background noises for both inbound and outbound voice calls.
Krisp will help you mute any background noise. This tool will enable you to hear and be heard by your caller loud and clear. This tool is useful for remote teams, online teachers, podcasters, and call centers.
StayFocusd
StayFocusd is a tool that blocks websites and reduces the time you spend on time-wasting websites. This tool allows you to set the hours or minutes you set for yourself.
You can add the website URLs that you want to avoid during work hours on a list. Specify the exact time in minutes or hours that you’ll allow yourself to spend on those websites daily.
Once the specified time is up, you won’t be able to enter those websites anymore. You have the option to delete the blacklisted websites from the list you created.
Focus@Will
It’s an app to help you boost productivity through music. Focus@Will is available for: Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Sonos devices.
Focus@Will is a neuroscience-based tool. It offers instrumental music to help increase your work productivity level up to 4 times.
Block distracting noise to help you focus on your tasks better. Instrumental sounds have positive effects on the heart rate and brain.
Focus@Will will help you be in a focused state within 20 minutes and then stay focused for another 200 minutes.
Answer a survey that asks questions to help find what music you must select to maximize focus for your personality.
iDoneThis
iDoneThis lets you check in meetings daily. It’s not easy to check online meetings if you have distributed teams and different time zones. This tool monitors your daily tasks without doing a meeting.
Team members report their results daily. The next day everyone receives the information, and they’ll have the chance to comment on the activities done.
NowDoThis
If you’re searching for an app that’s simple to use, NowDoThis is the right app for you. This tool allows you to list your tasks and check them off when they’re finished.
- Communication Apps
HipChat
HipChat is a popular chatting app. It’s best to use with other Atlassian products like Jira.
Join.me
It allows you to do audio and video calls with your team members. This tool also lets you share your screen with other people. Join.me is a useful tool for quick meetings.
Jing
Jing is an app that allows you to explain a task to a team member who’s not working with you in the same location,
Jing lets you make 5-minute screencasts. It also has a feature that allows you to upload it and receive a shareable link. This app is less time consuming and consuming than screenshots.
- Team Feedback Apps
OfficeVibe
OfficeVibe is an app that tracks the happiness and satisfaction of team members. This app allows team members to receive regular messages with questions about their feelings towards the team. The answers are sent anonymously to the leader or person in charge.
Doodle
This tool allows you to find the right time for the next team meeting or suggestions about decisions. Doodle is a great app to use in sending any short polls or surveys and receiving a fast reply.
Chimp or Champ
Although Chimp or Champ is not exactly an app, it can be super useful to manage remote teams. Imagine an online suggestion box. It allows your team to provide helpful feedback and quickly check on their level of happiness.
- File Management Apps
Quip
Quip has a feature that allows file sharing and solves one of the limitations of the Google Docs tool. This app is useful for teams to collaborate, and discuss spreadsheets, documents, and task lists. It also allows you to type comments as well.
Box
The box is a good substitute for both Dropbox and Google Drive. This tool lets you save and share files securely. It allows you to easily connect it with other tools like Google Apps, Slack, or Office 365,
Dropbox
Dropbox is a cloud storage provider that you can use for free but with limited storage space. This tool allows you to save your files and share them with others so that they can edit or add new items.
- Time Tracking Apps
Teamweek
Teamweek is a time tracking app that allows you to plan your time visually. Your whole team can see the activities in an open calendar. This app also has a great design and is easy to use.
Time Doctor
Time Doctor allows you to monitor the tasks you’re doing and reminds you to stay focused. This app also generates bills automatically for your clients. It also integrates with several famous project management apps.
Toggl
Toggl is one of the most popular time tracking tools. It allows you to create a dashboard to build and review reports. You can connect this tool with other apps like Asana or Todoist.
- Project Management Apps
TaskWorld
TaskWorld is an app similar to other project management tools like Asana or Trello. Unlike Trello and Asana, this app has an added chat function feature. Keep in touch with other team members while managing your tasks.
Basecamp
This tool is a smart project management app best for freelancers. It has a great feature that allows you to share your tasks with clients.
Final Thoughts
Working at home has many benefits despite the challenges above. As long as you focus and use the right tools to help you overcome work-from-home challenges, you’ll be less stressed and have higher work productivity.
You don’t need to use all of these work-from-home apps. It’s best to check them out first before deciding which is the right set of apps that work for you and your team.
If you’re looking to hire more virtual assistants, one of the virtual assistance service providers in California that you can turn to is Virtual Assistant Talent. Call 866-596-9041 to find the right candidate for your team.
