Alice Dodd

·

October 17, 2022

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6
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10 Must-Have Tools for Any Hybrid Business

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What is Hybrid Work? How Your Business Can Adopt the Hybrid Work Model

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Collaboration and communication can be difficult when your team is split between the office and home.

At best, you’ll have a few days in the office to check in across teams, but for those using a flexible hybrid work model, there’s even less guarantee that your employees will overlap. 

Whichever hybrid model you use, ensuring your employees have an effective suite of tools to work from is vital for productivity, motivation, and connecting with others. A workplace that relies on in-person meetings and emails will quickly run into issues when it comes to expanding its business.

However, the world of virtual tools can feel overwhelming. There’s so much information and so much choice out there that it’s hard to know where to start.

We’ve broken down our favorite hybrid work tools so you can understand what they do and how to use them. 

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What is Hybrid Work? How Your Business Can Adopt the Hybrid Work Model

As more businesses balance working between the office and home, we explain how and why to build a hybrid work model that suits your organization.

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10 Tools to Strengthen Hybrid Work

As a hybrid business built upon a hybrid product, we like to think we’re pretty clued up on the best tools for all things hybrid.

Here are our top picks: 

Communication Tools

1. Slack

As a communication tool, there’s very little that Slack can’t do. Not only do you have a channel for your whole workplace, but you can create separate channels for departments or projects, send 1-1 messages, and host video and audio calls (known as Huddles).

Another huge feature of Slack is the in-Slack apps. It seems there is a Slack app for every occasion, allowing you to send alerts, manage workspaces and send incentives all without leaving Slack itself.

2. Zoom

Sometimes an email isn’t enough, but an in-person meeting is too much. That’s where virtual meetings come in, and at the top of all the virtual meeting tools, is Zoom. 

Undoubtedly, Zoom is one of the most well known video calling tools on the market. And there’s a reason for its position in top place; with screen sharing, white boards, in-call messaging and a webinar capacity, Zoom makes collaboration as easy as it would be in person.

3. Google Meet

For those who are already using the G-Suite in their workplace, Google Meet is a natural extension of where you’re already working.

The main pull of Google Meet is how easily accessible it is to those who already have a Gmail account. Much like Docs or Calendar, all you need to do to set up a meeting is head to the URL. While it doesn’t have the same breadth of functionality as Zoom, it does have ease of use on its side.

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Project Management Tools

4. Notion

Notion is an all-in-one tool for project and knowledge management. It can act as a database, metrics tracker, calendar, and note-taking app, to name a few of its many capabilities.

Its flexibility and range of features means many small businesses can rely on it without using other tools, particularly in early stages. Users can collaborate on pages and have their own private home too that others in your business don’t have access to. 

It’s no surprise that it’s one of the most popular tools for startups and hybrid businesses, particularly given its very competitive pricing.

5. Asana

Asana’s pièce de résistance is its project management simplicity. Rather than be a bit of everything, it is incredibly good at being a project management tool. For ease of use and optimizing processes it outperforms its competitors, however, it works best in collaboration with other tools to carry out projects or create content on.

Its free plan is extensive, allowing businesses with any (or zero) budget to use it effectively, and it has multiple viewing options depending on how you best take in information. With tasks divided into sub-tasks, it’s easy to collaborate, project manage and hand over tasks upon completion – ideal for hybrid workplaces.

6. ClickUp

One of the challenges of remote work is passing tasks over with enough information. Often, employees don’t want to bother each other with an instant message, but they also want to make sure information doesn’t get lost in the handover. For communication around projects, ClickUp has it all. Emails, editing documents, hand overs, it’s a tool built for streamlining the collaboration process.

As one of the top collaboration tools, ClickUp is particularly popular with agencies that need to send over information and projects to clients. Clients can join Clickup to collaborate on projects without using it in their own business, and updates are sent over via email when changes are made or tasks are signed off. 

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What is Hybrid Work? How Your Business Can Adopt the Hybrid Work Model

As more businesses balance working between the office and home, we explain how and why to build a hybrid work model that suits your organization.

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Hybrid Office Scheduling Tools

7. Officely

Officely is an in-Slack app, built for hybrid businesses to increase their office attendance and have better visibility over who is in the office.

One of the biggest challenges of moving from remote work to a hybrid workplace is how to encourage employees into the office. We get it, the home has your sofa and the office… doesn’t. However, the office is where the best conversations and collaboration happens, and employee productivity improves.

Officely uses the bandwagon approach to incentivize employees into the office. Through the app, you can see who’s in each day, find out what’s going on in the office (team drinks? An office dog?), book your desk and have a private office chat for those who have made it in.

8. Google Calendar

Sorry Outlook and iCal, we’re going with GCal as the best calendar tool when it comes to the hybrid office. 

Not only can you book your meeting rooms, easily view other calendars to schedule meetings and use it in conjunction with Gmail, but it also integrates with other project management tools (yes, yet another in-Slack app).

If you're looking to book last-minute meetings alongside your standard weekly and monthly ones, you can also integrate GCal with Officely's Find a Room feature. Find a Room enables Officely users to find and book meeting rooms within two clicks.

We find GCal the most intuitive calendar app, and with its seamless integration it can be used to optimize processes across businesses, departments and projects with minimal hassle.

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What is Hybrid Work? How Your Business Can Adopt the Hybrid Work Model

As more businesses balance working between the office and home, we explain how and why to build a hybrid work model that suits your organization.

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Visual Collaboration Tools

9. Miro

Anyone who’s been on an ideation video call, is likely to be familiar with Miro. It’s best known as a virtual whiteboard, however, its functionality extends into task management and real-time note taking.

Unlike many of the other tools in the list, it can’t be described as a competitive all-in-one. However, it is a go-to for those virtual brainstorming and ideation. If your workplace is already using tools such as Notion and Officely, Miro would be an excellent addition to increase collaboration.

10. LucidSpark

Another tool for collaboration and ideation, LucidSpark also uses a virtual whiteboard model. The goal is to visually capture your team’s thoughts and ideas with GIFs, sticky notes, emojis and shapes to make learning and creating more interesting.

Its breakout feature is modeled on Zoom’s feature of the same name, enabling teams to split off into smaller groups to discuss and share feedback before returning to the team board. It also offers a range of templates to get you started, if you need a little inspiration before jumping in. 

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What is Hybrid Work? How Your Business Can Adopt the Hybrid Work Model

As more businesses balance working between the office and home, we explain how and why to build a hybrid work model that suits your organization.

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How Do You Introduce New Tools to Your Team? 

Whether you’ve made the decision to introduce a new tool or replace an existing one, you need to give your team notice.

It’s impossible to know how a new tool will best serve a business or department until it’s been rolled out. For this reason, it’s important to give everyone time to get used to it. 

Here are four steps to easing the introduction of a new hybrid work tool:

1. Explain why you’ve decided on this tool

Unless the tool is a solution to a widespread issue, your team will likely want to know why they’re being asked to introduce something new to their work environment. Make these conversations easier by having a decisive answer to ‘Why do we need this?’

Maybe it’s an improvement on a tool they already use, or maybe you’re introducing a new way to optimize a process that hasn’t been working. Whatever the reason, making it clear will not only minimize push back, but it will also help your team understand how they should be using it. 

2. Give your team room to learn

Even the most intuitive tool can take time to get the hang of. You’ll have no way of knowing how well it’s working until you give your team room to experiment with it.

When you’re thinking of introducing a new tool, it may be worthwhile to put a couple of options on the table and ask your team which one they think will work best. Whether you do this or have pre-chosen the tool, make sure you have a realistic timeline for people to get to grips with it. 

3. Set your expectations

What do you expect to see and hear when it comes to this tool? Do you want stronger collaboration? Do you want more active communication? Do you want more optimized project management? 

Setting clear expectations will help both you and your team to understand if the new tool is working, if you need to find an alternative or if you were better off without.

4. Ask for feedback

Give your team an experiment timeframe, and then ask for feedback. It could be a week or two, or a little longer for a more comprehensive suite. 

The main thing is that your team has had a chance to actively use the tool in their day-to-day work life. Only then will you know whether it’s worth investing in long-term.

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What is Hybrid Work? How Your Business Can Adopt the Hybrid Work Model

As more businesses balance working between the office and home, we explain how and why to build a hybrid work model that suits your organization.

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Make it Easy for Your Team to Collaborate Virtually

The key to a successful hybrid workplace is to keep up collaboration and communication between team members. Virtual tools are the best way to do this, whether it’s across teams or top-down management.

Understanding what is and isn’t working for your team will help you decide what you need to implement. However, with so much on the market it’s important to beware of overloading your team with exciting new technologies that over complicate their workplace. 

Aim to introduce a small number of extensive tools, rather than a whole suite of the must-haves for each problem faced. For next steps, we have a full guide on how to successfully introduce your hybrid team to a new tool.

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What is Hybrid Work? How Your Business Can Adopt the Hybrid Work Model

As more businesses balance working between the office and home, we explain how and why to build a hybrid work model that suits your organization.

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Alice Dodd

Alice is Officely's content manager. When not spreading the word of Officely and hybrid work, you can find her feeding family, friends and strangers with her latest baking experiment.

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