6 remote workforce management software (definition +tips + examples)

Every employee working remotely for half the year can save at least $11,000 per year, according to a study conducted by  Global Workplace Analytics.

That emptying figure could be one of the reasons why some businesses have shifted to a remote mode of working.

But here’s a sad truth: Remote teams are hard to get right! 

If you’ve ever worked from home, you must be familiar with issues like extended work hours, fragmented team communications, lack of social interactions, at-home interruptions, and ultimately decreased productivity. 

That explains why employers are so skeptical of remote work. 

However, the general skepticism surrounding work from home is mainly because of the lack of software to measure and track employee productivity.

This article contains: 

(Click on the links to jump to a specific section)

• What is Remote Workforce Management Software?
• Benefits of Using a Remote Workforce Management Software 
• How to Choose the Right Remote Workforce Management Software?
• Top Remote Workforce Management Software
• Remote Workforce Management Best Practices 

What is remote work management software?

Remote workforce management, as the name implies, is the practice of efficiently managing remote employees. This comprises seamless communication, smart technology, and state-of-the-art processes specially designed for a productive and leading remote workforce. 

Remote workforce management software are tools that are specially designed to support a remote workforce. These are the tools that companies use for making remote employee files like they’re working together. Employees implement them to increase productivity and overall efficiency. 

After all, engaged employees are more productive at work than disengaged employees.

Benefits of remote workforce management software 

For employers, the core benefit of using remote workforce management software is gaining the capability to engage everyone remotely, in continuous productivity improvement. But there’s much more that teams can benefit from:

1. Improved workflow 

When working remotely, your teams will have to consistently collaborate with other members across the teams. Effective communication is important for the success of the business. Remote workforce management tools allow team members to collaborate with the necessary people to ensure everyone is on the same page. 

2. Streamline communications 

One of the biggest challenges for remote businesses is maintaining communication. Be it a one-on-one review session or a quick update on a task, poor communication can cause a delay in even minor tasks. Remote workforce management tools have features that bridge communication gaps between the employees by providing options for built-in chat, audio calls, video calls, and group chat. 

3. Track employee productivity 

The general skepticism surrounding work from home is mainly because of the lack of software to measure and track employee productivity. Employers feel that employees aren’t as efficient when they are not at the office. Remote workforce management software can help employers track productivity efficiently. 

4. Effective engagement 

When working from home, employees miss the social interaction they had in the office and the water cooler conversations. Remote workforce management software, apart from boosting work productivity, also encourages non-work-related conversations with the team. 

Your employees might want to use this space to get to know each other, learn something new, and bond. This way, there will be lesser chances of burnout and employees will also be engaged. 

How to choose the right remote management software?

An ideal remote workforce management tool should help you ensure that your workers are on track. It should assist them in reaching their best performance level, without making them feel drained. Although these tools are slightly different and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, the best technology will include: 

• Resource management
• Time Management
• Task management
• Project Management
• Streamlined communication
• File Sharing

So, while you’re choosing the best remote work software, make sure to consider all of these features. 

Top remote workforce management software

Do you want to dominate the work-from-home trend to figure out ways to bring improvements to your system? Are your employees curious to see how well businesses can adapt to the remote working trend? 

If so, here are some interesting work from home tools that can help improve productivity and communication across teams:

1. Troop messenger

Troop Messenger, an office-chat app, is a high-functionality remote work tool for small to large businesses. The low-intrusive design and feature-rich interface helps teams collaborate and communicate across the departments

Teams on Troop can interact via direct messages, audio and video calling, file sharing, location sharing, group, screen sharing, and more. 

Key features

• Internal chat: Teams can communicate via 1:1 messages, unlimited group chats, audio and video calls, and more. 
• External communication: Employees can interact with external vendors, suppliers, freelancers by giving them restricted access to the workforce.
• Screen sharing: Screen sharing enables teams to virtually collaborate by sharing the content of your screen with multiple users. This can include audio, video, images, and any other content that plays on the host screen. 
• Integration: TM can also be integrated with apps like Google Drive and Dropbox. With this app, teams can migrate their documents, files, and do much more than texting. 
• Confidential chat: Worried about confidential chats being read by third parties? Enter Troop Messenger’s burnout window – a feature that allows team members to interact confidentially. The chat history gets deleted after a stipulated time period. 

Pricing

Plan	Premium	Enterprise	Superior
Pricing	$1.34	$3.05	$6.78
Storage	150 GB	1 TB	Unlimited

2. Time Doctor

As a team manager,  are you worried about your employees suffering from work-life balance disorders when working remotely? Are you interested in spotting signs of employee burnout and work-life balance issues sooner? Introducing Time Doctor, which includes a work-life balance widget to help you monitor your employee’s issues faster, thereby maximizing their productivity, satisfaction, and engagement.

This essential remote workforce management solution works best with all company types and sizes to empower remote as well as hybrid staff with its best features and facilities.

Key features

• Time tracking: Time Doctor keeps a tab on the websites and applications that were used by your employees alongside the time spent on working and on breaks. An optional feature of taking screenshots of employees’ computers during their work hours is also available in this remote team’s time tracking software.
• Identify work inefficiencies: Get to know about your teamwork efficiencies! Check on their hours worked and wasted with the help of the detailed worked hours breakdown report by client, project, and tasks.
• Trackable from every device: Whether your workforce uses the Time Doctor application on their desktop or the Android and iOS powered devices, it uses the same work monitoring facilities to keep track of the working hours. 

Pricing

Plan	Free	Basic	Standard	Premium
Pricing	14 days trial	$7 user/per month	$10 user/per month	$20 user/ per month

3. Slack

Known for its remote chat features, Slack is essential to the success of remote workforce management. This instant messaging app offers search features, real-time messages, file-sharing capabilities, and archiving tools/ 

Key features

• Organized conversations: Slack-style conversations mean your team chat history is neatly organized. You can create channels for teams, projects, and anything relevant to your business. 
• Voice or video calls: Through Slack, team members can interact via video or audio calls. They can also share their screen to let other members review host screen content. 
• Integrations: Slack users can also extend its functionalities with 1500+ integrations of apps like Dropbox, Google Drive, ZenDesk, GitHub, and more. 

Pricing:

Plan	Free	Standard	Plus	Enterprise Grid
Pricing	$0	$6.67per active user, per month (billed annually)	$12.50per active user, per month (billed annually)	Custom

4. Monday.com 

Monday.com is one of the most popular remote workforce management apps that work for decentralized teams. This team-first project management solution gives everyone a birds-eye view on individual and team progress. It keeps communication streamlines by allowing team members to interact in a single dashboard. 

Key features

• File sharing: File sharing and collaboration is the strength of Monday. It lets users share and collaborate on files seamlessly and exchange information with ease. 
• Remote work templates: One of the reasons employees love Monday is its ready-made templates that let your team get ready with a task in minutes. These zero-code templates can be customized as needed to fit team requirements.
• Well-organized Interface: Monday.com has an organized, neat, and user-friendly interface that can be enjoyed with end-users in no time. 
• Employee tracking feature: The tool also has a time tracking feature that makes it ideal for both employees and employers to manage time efficiently. 

Pricing

Plan	Basic	Standard	Pro
Pricing	$8.11 per user per month	$10.13 Per user per month	$16.21Per user per month

5. Basecamp 

Known as a popular workforce management app, Basecamp lets employees manage remote teams, agencies, vendors, and freelancers. Its simple functionality, elegant usability, and clean design make it a preferred choice. 

Key features

• Keep everyone on the same page: With Basecamp teams can organize conversions, share ideas, and collaborate on a real-time basis to keep everyone on the same page. 
• Create to-dos: Assign to-dos, comment directly on tasks, add notes, and track work with basecamp. 
• Message boards: customize with your own post types, share with everyone, embed images into your message, and applaud messages you like. 
• Schedule events: With Basecamp, you can add events with dates, times, discuss events, add people to notify, and subscribe with Google Calendar.
• Client-access: Connect with agencies, vendors, and freelancers to enable seamless collaboration with external members as well. 

Pricing

Plan	Basecamp Business	Basecamp Personal
Pricing	$99 per month flat	Free, but limited

6. ProofHub 

ProofHub is trusted by remote businesses to bring everything to one place. As an online project management software, Proofhub allows teams to have seamless interactions with both internal and external members. 

The tool comes with a lot of useful features like discussions, online proofing, built-in chat, and feedback sharing options. 

Key features

• Kanban boards: With Kanban boards, teams can divide tasks in workflow stages and decide who works on what. This way you can empower teams to self-manage themselves with better understanding. 
• Gantt charts: Plan how project pieces fit together in a timeline. This way critical tasks won’t get delayed and teams will be able to meet deadlines. 
• File-sharing: Bring your documents and files to one centralized place to keep them organized whenever required. ProofHub keeps multiple versions of files and lets teams review them as needed. 
• Custom roles: Define custom rules to stay in control of who gets to do what. Custom roles can be aligned according to the organizational workflow.

Pricing

Plan	Ultimate control plan	Essential
Pricing	$89 per month flat  (Unlimited projects, 100 GB storage, and unlimited users)	$45 per month flat  (40 projects, 15 GB storage, and unlimited users)

You can also check this list of innovative workforce software.

Remote workforce management best practices 

One of the main drivers of the eruption of remote work is not just the pandemic, but the continuous rise of technology. Now we’ve tools that make work from home not only possible but also highly effective.

However, for remote setup to work, your organization should adopt one or more remote workforce management software. These tools can solve the most glaring issues of remote employees like progress tracking, productivity, and communication, and etc.

But, these tools should be synced with proper strategies to maximize the remote working benefits.

Having said that, we’ll wrap this article with three effective ideas for handling remote teams:

• Set clear expectations: It’s important to tell your employees what you’re expecting from them. So, make each individual and their teams understand their key responsibility areas. 
• Accommodate flexibility: Having a flexible work schedule is one of the main attractions for remote workers. It’s also said to increase team productivity. 
• Establish processes to manage projects and productivity: The importance of elaborate processes for various projects and tasks in a remote working environment cannot be overstated. Not only will this lead to fewer mistakes and confusion, but it will also result in a more productive team.