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Collaboration tips for the remote worker

One of the major outcomes of the 21st century digital age has been the growth of the remote worker. Not too long ago being physically present in the office was the only way to get our work done. Fortunately, today there are alternative ways to communicate and collaborate from long distances. Global communications have advanced to the point that someone living in Boston can easily telecommute to Seattle or someone in London can tie in remotely to an office in New York.

 

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While it’s a big privilege to work from home, remote employees need to make efficient use of the latest mix of social, mobile, and cloud tools to ensure their communications are as optimal as possible. In the following, we’ve identified a blend of cutting-edge “collaboration tips” that can be adopted today in order to make your remote work experience efficient, productive, and even fun!

Mobile telepresence: Turning yourself into a robot through telepresence is becoming a trendy and more cost effective way to connect to your workplace remotely. And because of the decrease in price points there are increasing numbers of options for a market that not too long ago was prohibitive for the average consumer. Some great mobile telepresence devices are available for around the $2000 mark. For those wanting to get onboard the latest telepresence revolution, take a look at Double Robotics, BeamPro, and Beam+.

 

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Leverage cloud storage solutions: Cloud storage is simply a must-have for managing our digital lives. And this especially holds true for the busy remote worker juggling multiple devices, whether a laptop or desktop at home, a tablet on the subway, or a smartphone on the go. The ability to post content into the cloud anytime and anywhere is a necessity. Get setup today on any number of major storage platforms such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, and Dropbox.

Try a no-email approach: Remote workers should have access to the latest cutting technologies. Some are going as far as to proclaim the end of email in favor of crisper, more agile forms of communication. Asana is one such initiative that represents the latest innovations in this direction. Asana is a project-oriented teamwork app that your colleagues can use to assign tasks, follow status updates, set due dates, and visualize goals. It can be used to delegate tasks on-the-go and members are immediately notified via their mobile and desktop apps whenever they are assigned a task.

Keep your notes and artifacts organized: A great way to boost productivity and to keep everyone organized is through the collection of ideas, lists, or notes in general. Evernote is an ideal solution for this. It’s basically a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving. A “note” can be a formatted text, a webpage, a voice memo, or a handwritten “ink” note. All of these notes can be collected, sorted into folders, tagged, annotated, edited, searched, and exported. With apps for all devices, Evernote is a great all-around tool for helping the remote worker stay organized and productive.

 

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Stay connected with Lync: Lync is a fully integrated communications and collaboration client that provides instant messaging (IM), audio and video calls, web conferencing, document sharing, whiteboarding capabilities, and more . . . all from one, easy-to-use location. Many people associate Lync with its earlier life as primarily an instant messaging platform. However, the current version of Lync 2013 has many added features designed to make remote communications more efficient and intuitive.

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About Jeffrey Walker

Jeff is a business development consultant who specializes in helping businesses grow through technology innovations and solutions. He holds multiple master’s degrees from institutions such as Andrews University and Columbia University, and leverages this background towards empowering people in today’s digital world. He currently works as a research specialist for a Fortune 100 firm in Boston. When not writing on the latest technology trends, Jeff runs a robotics startup called virtupresence.com, along with oversight and leadership of startuplabs.co - an emerging market assistance company that helps businesses grow through innovation.