As COVID-19 came out of the blue, there is more need for employees to work remotely. As easy as it may seem, lots of companies are still facing challenges with setting up their team of workers to work remotely. At GrowSyn,  we’re a team of over 50 remote employees, and we’ve experimented various applications and strategies to work remotely and were able to figure out what works best when working remotely.

We will walk you through seven (7) most important the you should have to get your team workers started remotely.

• Portable Internet
• Remote Desktop Software
• Video Conferencing App
• Team Chat and Communication
• Screen sharing software
• Project Management Tools
• VPN

Portable Internet

To be able to work remotely, the first consideration should be a reliable internet service. There are alot of Internet Service Providers offering good internet speed in the country including GLO, MTN, Etisalat, Spectranet, Smile, Tizeti and so on.

Hardware internet devices, such as the MTN HyNetFlex, are portable Wi-­Fi devices you can wirelessly connect to. The devices usually cost between N25,000 and about N15,000 or more on monthly subscription. They have no activation fee and gives upto 120GB free data upon purchase.

You may also use your mobile phone as an internet source. i.e. hotspot. This feature is available on iOS and Mobile Hotspot on Android and allow you to tether your phone as an hotspot while other devices can connect to it for internet.

Remote desktop software

Remote desktop software allows you to connect securely  to another computer at another location, and you can control it  as if you’re sitting in front of that computer’s keyboard. It’s a handy way for remote workers to access computers that live at Head Office, Servers at the data center or at another remote co-worker’s home.

With Microsoft’s Remote Desktop client which is built into Windows and also available on MacOS you can connect easily to another computer remotely to work. Apple’s version of remote desktop client called Apple Remote Desktop, costs about $79.99.

Video conferencing

Video meeting is not only used for communicating with customers, it is also needed within the team of staff. It can make employees have the office feelings especially with the side-side view.

At Growsyn, we use Cisco WebEx and Zoom for video conferencing. These softwares are really very reliable and can accomodate hundreds of attendees at once.

Team chat and communication

There is need an outmost for the team members to be abe to communicate with one another effectively especially while working remotely. This saves time and increases productivity instead of having to setup calls or send emails to discuss on work related tasks or ask questions.

We found slack to be very quick and responsive and our team at Growsyn also use slack chat with their various app integrations such as zapier for better team collaboration and work productivity.

Screen sharing apps

Screen sharing applications makes it easy to show others your computer screen. Nowadays,  screen sharing applications are very effecient way of deliverying online teaching or coaching of emoloyees.

Zoom has an in-built screen sharing features that allows both the host and the attendees to share their screens. Only one person can share their screen at a time. The host has the authority to disable screen sharing to the meeting or for a particular attendee. Teamviewer is also a good screensharing app we’ve experimented with at Growsyn, even though you will need premium license to have more that one attendant one the teamviewer bridge.

Project management tools

For projects like application development which consists of a vast number of tasks, the various tasks in the pipeline needs to be executive accordingly in a specific order or development lifecycle. Most project management softwares also have in-built time management for each task assigned to a team member to be completed

At Growsyn, we use the Trello project management suite to collaborate on most of our projects. Trello is fun and flexible to use and allows you to organize your projects well.

Virtual Private Network (VPN) software

It is highly recommended to activate a VPN anything you are browsing on a public network such as free WiFi at colleges, supermarkets. A VPN will hide your original public address by creating encrypted tunnels for sending and receiving data. If you send any sensitive official files to your co-worker they won’t get hijacked and decoded by attackers.

There are so many other tools that can be added to your suite of remote application tools. Popular ones include password manager apps, note-taking apps, cloud storage apps, onine-office suites and many more!

Happy remote working!