35+ Apps to Help Your Employees Work from Home Successfully

If you’re new to managing employees that are working from home, you may not be aware of all of the tools and platforms that successfully distributed and remote teams use to keep their projects flowing smoothly.

This curated list of applications and software services covers these key considerations:

1. Cybersecurity solutions to keep sensitive data and files safe from data breaches caused by malware or negligent/malicious users.
2. Employee productivity programs for monitoring and managing your remote workforce and employees that are at home working.
3. Collaboration tools to keep remote teams communicating, connecting, and working well together.
4. Networking tools to provide employees that are working from home access to your organization’s internal network without compromising security.
5. File sharing platforms to quickly and securely share project assets and related files

Security

Working from home has unique cybersecurity risks that must be mitigated to keep your organization’s data secure from theft or loss. Solutions for securing remote workers include password managers and identity managers to keep credentials safe, threat detection to alert administrators to suspicious activity, and USB restriction software to prevent data loss caused by unauthorized file transfers and potentially dangerous USB devices.

Employee Productivity

Remote workers have been found to be typically more productive than their in-house counterparts, with a  2019 survey from FlexJobs reporting that 65% of respondents were more productive working from home rather than the office. Factors such as lack of distractions from coworkers, increased work-life balance, and lack of commuting stress all contribute to added productivity for employees that work from home.

That said, employees that are not used to remote working may find themselves distracted by their families, personal tasks, and unproductive websites. Productivity in remote workers can also be affected by feeling socially disconnected from their coworkers – fortunately, there are solutions to address these productivity hurdles! 

Collaboration

Employees that are used to collaborating in-person may feel uncertain about how they will continue to collaborate effectively while working from home. Fortunately, collaboration options such as video conferencing, team chat, and project management platforms can help to keep project teams connected by facilitating communication and the tracking of project deliverables.

Networking

If you need your remote employees to have access to the organization’s internal network or you need your IT administrators to remotely access your employee’s machines for troubleshooting, you will need tools to support those functions.

Remote Access Environments and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) provide employees with secured access to the organization’s internal network and Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) providers offer remote access and monitoring options to keep IT support available for employees that are working from home.

File Sharing

Collaborative file sharing platforms allow remote employees to easily share project files with each other, providing a critical resource for working collaboratively. File sharing platforms typically offer options for coworkers and managers to make comments directly on project assets, readily providing options for gathering necessary feedback.

File sharing platforms also often provide granular control over file access permissions, allowing you to host files on the cloud for convenient access without providing enfettered access to every user that is integrated into the platform.