Employers who are not used to remotely managing their workers have been struggling to develop a program that ensures that employees can be successful from home with little disruption to their company. There is no doubt that the drastic changes we’ve undergone will radically change the way we do business. Employees are likely to pressure employers into allowing them to work from home to boost their work-life balance. Nonetheless, for that to happen, that crisis shows that work has to continue to go forward no matter where everyone is — it depends on the people, their jobs, and their businesses.
In response to the current global crisis, an increasing number of organizations and firms are offering free or heavily discounted services to help businesses — and a new remote workforce — survive next few months.
Top Remote Work Tools
Below is a list of top remote work tools and companies that can be of assistance to you and your company. I personally work with and use each remote work software here and can vouch for how amazing they are!
- PandaDoc, small, and medium-sized enterprise leading document automation software has launched a free e-signature plan. The free plan includes unlimited uploads of documents, boundless signatures, and processing of payments.
- Calendar is a software I personally developed to help people be more productive with their time.
- Google has announced that it offers free access to its advanced Hangout Meets product for all customers of G-Suite and G-Suite for educational clients. Hangout Meets allows for calls of up to 250 people and also allows the recording and saving of meetings on Google Drive.
- Teamwork, a project management program, provides its services to schools free of charge for the remainder of 2020. It includes a homework assignment product, sharing files and resources, and a chat feature.
- Guru is a Knowledge Management solution for all sizes of teams. Small teams will start with instant access to up-to-date information free of charge, and expert-level plans are just $24 per user per month.
- Facebook offers a product called Workplace Advanced, which offers users an internal Facebook version which includes features such as video calling and file sharing. It will provide the service to all new customers for free until 30 June.
- CloudApp is an asynchronous business communication which allows your team to use videos, screenshots, and GIFS that can be shared instantly. CloudApp has a range of plans to meet you and the needs of your team (including free) and provides higher education institutions its premium Pro plan free of charge.
- Support.com is offering free tech support to anyone working or studying remotely right now.
- CloudFlare, a web performance, and security company, is offering CloudFlare for Teams free for businesses of all sizes.
- Atlassian, which offers a platform for team-collaboration, makes its flagship products Jira and Confluence forever free for teams of up to ten. Atlassian also provides free one-year subscriptions to its Trello Business Class program to K-12 schools and higher education institutions which can be used by teachers to plan coursework and other events.
- Box is making its business edition of its software free for 90 days.
- Airtable, which provides online databases and spreadsheets, allows every non-political, humanitarian initiative that tackles COVID-19 to use Airtable Pro for the next three months free of charge. Even the organization plans to make the service free for students as well.
- Dialpad, a cloud-based phone and video conferencing company, provides its Dialpad Talk Pro app to any business in North America and Japan for the first two months free of charge.
- Microsoft is offering Microsoft Teams for free for the next six months.
- Cisco’s Webex is enhancing its free Webex accounts to allow unrestricted usage and up to 100 participants per meeting. Webex is now giving new customers a free 90-day trial.
- Chatfuel, a Facebook Messenger chatbot app, provides free access to all functionality of the Pro program for organizations providing emergency support. The platform also provides free weekly onboarding and live office hours to those seeking help setting up their Messenger bot. Previously this service was only for VIP customers.
- Okta launched Okta for Emergency Remote Work which provides all new customers with core Okta services for six months (with potential extensions depending on the situation) for free.
- Instant Housecall is a remote support app for small IT businesses that provides users with the ability to build sub-accounts that allow the user to take over the Computer of their office.
- MailChimp, used by marketers to deliver email updates, provides free accounts to local governments, colleges, health care professionals, hospitals, and other groups who need to communicate important health information regarding the COVID-19 virus with its more feature-rich app.
- Vidyard has accelerated its research on an already-developing app that lets workers connect with each other and allows employers to exchange video messages with their workforce. Via June 30 this service is free now.
- Meero, a file transfer service, is the storage capacity of files shared via MeeroDrop (10 Gigabytes) and the validity period (3 mos).
- Bill.com is allowing subscription for a free 90-day for new customers impacted by COVID-19.
- Yext: offers the people a span of 90 days for Yext Answers. Eligible businesses should be able to transform their websites into a search engine capable of reacting to unique COVID-19 requests of customers in real-time.
It’s inspiring to see this outpouring of support in the business world, with so much turmoil during this very stressful time. The abrupt change in the workplace has been difficult to manage, but workers and companies are finding ways to make it work with a continuously increasing list of available resources.
Hopefully, these remote work tools will help companies survive this storm with minimal disruption and make recovery easier for others after it’s all over.
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