Long gone are the days of huge corporations dominating the top of industries in every field. Thanks to tech, companies with small teams in charge of the whole operation are quickly surpassing larger, slower moving, more traditional companies. Small teams, even within larger companies, are now more vital than ever for their agility and ability to react to change quickly. SaaS giant Buffer started as an entirely remote team of less than 20 and another Hubstaff is currently still just 25 team members.
Any small team can now be a fast growing global operation thanks to the tools available. Utilizing the right tools can make your small team capable of taking big projects and bringing to life big ideas.
Try out the top 10 tools for managing your small team in 2018
Calendly:
Scheduling calls between team members and outside your team for outside parties is difficult over email or messaging. Information can go lost and communicating about picking a time back and forth is time consuming. Have your team use Calendly links to send to each other and outside parties to give them the option to look at your availability and schedule a time to call when you are free. Calendly automatically syncs to your calendar and notifies you.
Clockify:
Time tracking is important, especially if you run an hours-based pay company or your team works on flex schedules. Clockify is an easy tracker and timesheet tool that team members can use to keep track of hourly work. This way you can easily bill clients or optimize managing payroll and scheduling. The best part? It’s free and allows unlimited users, unlike other team tracking apps!
Hibox:
Hibox is the ultimate digital workspace for help teams to boost productivity and stay organized. Hibox gives teams company chat, task management, file sharing, and video conferencing in one platform with just one login. Other team tools require that you integrated and pay several tools together to get the same functionality. In Hibox, you can create organized streams for different business activities and projects, chat together, share files using Drive or Dropbox, and create tasks within them to stay organized. When your team is apart, video calls make it easy to stay connected. Everything your team needs to excel is in one place.
Google Docs:
It’s difficult to collaborate as a team and truly work together, even if you’re in the same office. Google Docs allows your whole team to collaborate, edit, change, and contribute to the same documents so everyone has the latest version in front of them. It streamlines your whole teamwork process in one place. You can invite all users to a shared folder of work they can access anytime.
Dropbox:
Dropbox is the perfect solution for sharing confidential team information everyone needs access to. Sharing important files via email is not safe, confusing, and difficult to keep organized. Always, different versions of files end up floating around which can cause big problems. Dropbox is the perfect way to store a ton of files in an organized and central way for your team. Business plans are fairly cheap and you can invite everyone you need to the necessary files so they can access them at any time.
Zapier:
It can be hard as a team to make sure that little tasks get taken care of to make sure everything runs smoothly. Use Zapier to create “zaps” that get tasks across all of your platforms done. For example, when someone schedules a call with your team through your website, have Zapier send out an email to your whole team to let them know. Little things like that are easy to let slip through the cracks unless you have a tool like Zapier.
RealtimeBoard:
There is no more inspiring brainstorming place than a whiteboard. Unfortunately, time at a whiteboard, even for small teams, rarely happens. RealtimeBoard is a digital whiteboard everyone on your team can contribute to. It looks like a real white board you can draw on and add notes to as a team to brainstorm and develop new ideas. Your boards can be saved and synced with your Google Drive accounts and email accounts and any other apps you use to easily share and access.
Timezone.io:
Many small teams now work at least remotely part time. If your team is across some borders and oceans, it can be difficult to know what time it is for everyone to plan around, especially if your team members travel frequently. Timezone is a simple tool that tells you what time it is for all of your team members in a quick, visual way so you can keep track. You can save the link as a bookmark and refer to it when you need to.
When I Work:
Again, most small teams are not in the office or working at the exact same times or places anymore. Though flexibility is awesome, it can make scheduling a pain. When I Work is a way to manage team work schedules so that everyone is clear on each other’s hours. This is a great tool for teams that do allow flex time and are in different timezones. It makes scheduling and planning ahead much easier, helps manage labor budgets, and increases accountability. Anyone can check their schedules, “clock in” and out, and let you know their availability.
1Password for Teams:
Teams rely on a multitude of tools to work throughout the day. Managing passwords and sharing them for all of the accounts needs to be organized and, most importantly, safe. 1Password for Teams generates one master password to connect all accounts only the team members you invite have access to. You can restrict, add, and revoke access to different team members at anytime. It’s much safer than having the same password for every platform or sharing in emails or files that you can lose control of.
Any small team can build a “Buffer” or “Hubstaff” and go global right from your desks. You just need to work smarter, not harder. Try these tools to turn your team into a productive, agile force. For the ultimate digital workspace and crazy productivity, try Hibox for free with your team today.
