Ostratto - Blog | Ostratto #ringcentral

4 old practices that won’t work after COVID

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 13:15:10 +0000

It’s not news that COVID-19 suddenly, unexpectedly, and dramatically turned the business world on its head. Business-as-usual changed all at once, without the benefit of robust planning we’re (hopefully) accustomed to in business. Those changes happened to keep employees safe while making sure work continued.

What’s also clear is that when the pandemic is under control and we find our “new normal,” it won’t look like what we had before. Businesses have adapted, employees have changed, and attitudes about working are different. We’ve found new ways to do business successfully, and in many areas, there’ll be no turning back.

Here are four old business practices that won’t work anymore post-COVID-19.

1. Employees working onsite only

Before COVID, the vast majority of businesses were uncomfortable with employees working remotely. In fact, 80% of US companies had no remote work program at all.

Employers pretty much suffered from inertia—after all, workers always came into the office to work. Without ever trying remote work, most leaders lacked the imagination to understand the potential of working from home. They worried that employees working away from the office wouldn’t be as productive. They claimed many jobs were “impossible to do remotely.”

Then COVID-19 came around, however, and jobs that were previously “impossible to do remotely” suddenly found their remote possibilities. What’s more, they achieved good results too. A study by Harvard Business School and New York University found that people who work remotely spend 48.5 more minutes per day than they did pre-virus. And this makes sense - when a long commute is off the table employees don't mind staying on to get jobs finished.

Other surveys found that:

44% of executives today feel employees have become more productive working remotely
41% of employees feel the same way

While many jobs require employees to work onsite, many others can support a remote workforce. Businesses will still need those work-from-home employees post-COVID-19, and they will be forced to continue supporting remote work.

2. Micromanaging as a management style

With many employees working remotely, management styles need to adjust. Monitoring employees that work in another location requires shifting your methods as well as your expectations.

It's not realistic to assume an employee is working based on how much time they spend at their desk. Even when you’re at the same location and can see an employee sitting across the room, you don’t know how productive they’re being.

Evaluate their performance, instead, based on the outcome. How is their work? Are they meeting their goals? What’s the quality of their work? These are the real measurements of productivity output that remote working highlights perfectly.

3. Using too many collaboration apps

It’s easy to see how it happened. CV-19 struck and companies quickly sent their employees home to safety. They hurriedly adopted remote work solutions for messaging, video, and calling—all the tools they needed to keep communication open so that work would continue to get done.

In rushing to choose new solutions, many businesses ended up with multiple overlapping apps. Having two or more apps that provide video calling, for instance, is not sustainable long term and can become confusing for the average user. App overload causes employee fatigue and wastes a significant amount of time.

Seventy percent of workers say having disparate work apps makes it challenging to get their work done. More than two-thirds report wasting up to an hour of work time per day just navigating between various apps. Sixty-eight percent of workers find themselves toggling between different apps up to 10 times in a single hour.

Too many apps can also mean running the risk of employees switching to other unauthorized tools that can pose a security risk. We've written about the risks of 'shadow IT' before.

Employees will only willingly utilise technology that’s easy to use, it’s more efficient to provide them with one platform they understand well and are comfortable with.

4. Keeping employees in the dark

It's key to remember that teams appreciate transparency, especially during uncertain times. They want to understand what’s going on with the business, management expectations, and their position. They want to be confident that the strong company culture they know isn’t changing.

No longer are employees in the office to hear news around the water cooler, chat casually with the boss, or celebrate wins in real time. But these are still valid communications needs, and employers must make sure they still happen in some form.

Communication and transparency are critical—even more so now with COVID-19.

Post-COVID tools to support remote work

When we (eventually) shift into a post-pandemic period, businesses will face a new work-life paradigm that looks nothing like before. From remote and hybrid work arrangements to new forms of communication, leaders will need to rethink those practices to stay competitive.

Having the right tools to support remote work will be one of the key differentiators. As work moves beyond the walls of the traditional office, employees everywhere will need technology that facilitates collaboration and drives teamwork. Tools like unified communications make collaboration effortless by combining team messaging, video conferencing, and cloud phone into a single platform, allowing employees to choose how they want to collaborate and when.

By supporting tomorrow’s work-from-anywhere workplace—and shedding old, archaic practices that no longer make business sense—businesses will be ready to drive success far beyond the pandemic.

Chat with us today

Written in collaboration with RingCentral©.

Will we work from home forever?

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 21:09:15 +0000

In early March, Twitter and Facebook were among the first companies to close down offices and send staff to work from home—even before government agencies issued lockdown orders to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Fast-forward two months later, the two social media giants declared that most employees will at some point be able to telecommute permanently.

Large businesses have continued to extend their work-from-home policies. In many cases, they’re even making remote work a permanent fixture. Google, for example, initially told employees to work from home until June. Most recently, the search giant announced that workers could telecommute until July 2021.

It’s not just Silicon Valley tech companies. Most employees for investment banks like Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are still working from home. Entertainment company ViacomCBS and music labels such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, and Warner Music Group have told workers to work remotely through the end of 2020.

Now that we’re about half a year into the remote work experiment, many employers have determined that the advantages of letting employees work from home may outweigh the negatives.

Herein lies the question: is remote work here to stay in the corporate world?

Most employees want to work from home

Studies show that 43% of those who previously commuted to work telecommuted during the height of the pandemic—and they enjoyed it. Remote workers say they are more productive and have better work-life balance since they don’t have a commute and can work flexibly. In fact, workers also report significantly higher levels of engagement when they work from home.

When the global health crisis is over, most employees still want the option to work from home at least part of the time. According to a survey by PwC, nearly three-quarters of employees (72%) said they’d like to telecommute at least twice a week after the pandemic is over, while nearly one-third (32%) want to work from home full time.

In a survey of 9,059 workers, 48% work from home during the pandemic and have a Workforce Happiness Index score of 75 out of 100, which is four points higher than employees who still have to go into their offices, according to a report by CNBC and SurveyMonkey. Remote workers are also more satisfied with their jobs: 57% of telecommuters say they are very satisfied versus 50% of non-remote workers who say they are very satisfied.

Companies want more remote work, too

As COVID-19 still lingers (and spikes), many are planning on making remote work permanent. In the short term, extending work from home keeps both employees and the company safe from safety-related events. In the long term, the flexibility of remote work promotes higher employee satisfaction and engagement, leading to significantly higher performance and retention. It's a win-win.

74% of CFOs surveyed by Gartner said at least some of their employees will be allowed to permanently work from home after the pandemic ends.

Not all workers can work from home

While remote work is something both leaders and employees want, it’s not an option to all workers. Only 37% of jobs can be done from home, according to University of Chicago economists.

For employees who can work remotely, 68% still want at some access to the office. Of those, 8% want to work full time in the office and 60% want to take a hybrid approach and be in the office a few times a week, according to PwC’s remote work survey.

The top reason people say they want to go into the office is to collaborate with other team members. Difficulty collaborating is a major reason people give for being unproductive while working from home (39%). They miss face-to-face interactions.

Others are simply more productive in the office because they have too many distractions at home. PwC found that 38% of remote workers feel balancing work with home duties, such as childcare, made them unproductive while working from home.

Coronavirus reshapes office working

When the health crisis is (finally) over, employees for some companies will return to their offices full time. Some will transition to 100% remote work. But most will likely take a hybrid approach, where employees work at home half the time and in the office half the time.

A permanent, flexible workweek has broad support among both executives and office workers, according to PwC’s latest remote work survey. While 83% of office employees want to work from home at least one day a week, more than half of employers (55%) anticipate that most of their workers will do so post-pandemic, the survey found.

For example, insurance company Nationwide is moving to a hybrid model. When the pandemic began, the company allowed 98% of its 27,000 employees to work from home and discovered that employee performance did not suffer.

As a result, Nationwide executives have announced plans to reduce 20 physical offices down to four main corporate offices, which will help the company save huge costs. Employees in the closed down locations will work from home permanently, while employees at the four remaining offices can split time between home and office, according to a magazine article.

Preparing for the remote future

Telecommuting has earned a permanent spot in the corporate world, and as we recover from the pandemic, more and more people will work from home in some way. That’s because not only is remote work better for safety purposes, but also fosters higher engagement and job satisfaction.

It’s also clear that many workers can’t work remotely. From restaurant staff to hardware engineers, many industries will return to normal after the pandemic. At least for now, most offices won’t go anywhere—but that can change in the near future.

Companies planning to expand remote work opportunities will need the right tools to maximize productivity amongst remote teams. While office workers can simply walk to a colleague’s desk to collaborate, remote teams don’t have the same convenience. It’s up to a company’s tools to facilitate communication and collaboration.

Unified communications solutions like RingCentral bundles team messaging, video conferencing, and cloud phone into a single platform in the cloud, allowing employees to access all of their communications from anywhere, on any device, and at any time. Employees can easily switch from messaging to voice or video calls with a single click, keeping collaboration as effortless as possible to start.

Speak to Ostratto today to find out how we keep businesses connected and productive.

Book a Call Today

Written in collaboration with RingCentral©.

5 Lessons We’ve Learned About Remote Work

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 10:16:21 +0000

If one was to capture 2020 in a single word, “unprecedented” would be a fairly solid pick. The rippling effects of the coronavirus pandemic have transformed all aspects of life, with how we work being one of the most salient.

Case in point: at the start of the year, 4.7 million Americans (3.4% of the working population) worked remotely. Just three months later, at the height of lockdown, 34% of Americans who previously went into the office every day were now working from home.

The Overnight Shift to WFH

This unprecedented shift is remarkable for its incredible pace, not so much the direction. Even before the pandemic accelerated the move from the office, remote work was on an upward trajectory with 159% growth since 2005. It’s estimated that by 2025, the majority of the workforce (at least 70%) will work remotely for at least one full business week each month.

At all levels of the corporate hierarchy, from admins up to CEO's, 2020 has represented a massive work-from-home experiment. As much of a rollercoaster as these last few months have been, the rapid shift to WFH offers a unique glimpse into the future of work, and to better prepare companies and their employees for life after the office.

The overnight shift to WFH marks the first time many employees have had to find ongoing and sustainable ways to work together while apart - and as a whole, teams are not doing too badly: according to a global survey of office employees during the pandemic, 68% said they’ve been “very successful” working from home. Employees are equally satisfied with their work activity performance at home compared to the office, and 70% of leaders say their teams are performing the same or better from home.

The Future of Remote Work

These positive assessments of remote work are quite remarkable given that workplaces were forced to transform themselves overnight and without much warning. Sentiments about working from home have likely improved as teams adapted to working remotely and refined the processes and tools by which they do so.

Given that remote work is here to stay, it’s worth looking at the experiences of the last few months to evaluate what we’ve learned about remote work so far as well as find ways to make remote work even better moving forward.

Without further ado, here are five lessons we’ve learned about remote work in 2020.

1. It can be hard for employees to disconnect

Fear that employees would slack off was once many managers’ primary objection to working from home. As it turns out, the opposite is true. Since the start of lockdowns, employees at home averaged 48.5 more minutes of work every day.

But that may not be the win it appears to be. Nearly half of workers also report feeling more burnt out. To combat this, businesses need to make it a priority to help employees maintain work-life balance, even when the lines between home and office are blurred.

2. Projects can easily get lost or buried

It’s easy to take for granted the built-in ways with which employees share information in office settings. An ability to quickly touch base in-person (on the way back from making a coffee) helped employees prioritise their projects and provided a unified sense of momentum. When everyone works separately, projects can all too easily become lost or buried.

The solution lies in increased visibility. To prevent key projects from falling off, all people involved need ways to easily access and share key documents and information, as well as project management and collaboration tools that make it easy to track progress.

3. Remote employee silos happen without communication

Whether within a team or across departments, silos occur when colleagues don’t communicate with each other about what they’re working on. And when the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing, it can be costly for businesses.

Silos often result in duplicated work, blind spots, and other major business risks - and they’re more likely to occur when visibility is lacking, such as when everyone is working from home. Effective communication and collaboration, however, can help cure employee silos both formal (status meetings, progress reports) and informal (making it easy for workers to discuss work on the fly).

RingCentral offers a constant communication channel(s).

4. WFH improves many aspects of work but makes others harder

WFH does not have a universal effect on work - in fact, it improves some aspects of working while making others more of a challenge.

According to the Global Work from Home Experience Survey, homebound employees have a significantly easier time managing distractions and disruptions, and doing the sort of deep-thinking work that relies on this increased focus. But with fewer opportunities to interact organically, collaboration and a sense of connection drops off.

To get the most out of working from home, businesses need to find ways to continue to protect employees’ ability to work without distraction when it makes sense - but to also better enable seamless connectivity between workers and teams for tasks that require it.

5. It’s difficult (but possible) to recreate the organic collaboration that happens in the office

When it comes to teamwork when working from home, it’s not all bad news. Though remote work has been seen to fare worse than office environments when it comes to needs like getting timely information and collaborating with others, the results aren’t actually bad at all: six in 10 employees, a majority of workers, rate their ability to perform these activities from home positively.

This suggests that organic collaboration is possible when teams work remotely - but workers might need a little more help to do so. Setting up virtual “drop-in” office hours for managers, regular face-to-face team chats, and finding other ways to electronically recreate the easy communication that occurs in the workplace are key to fostering organic collaboration at home.

Communication and collaboration in the WFH era

What these lessons have in common is the theme of communication and collaboration. In a WFH world, the right tech becomes more than a communication tool - it’s the foundation upon which all work happens. This underscores the need for technology that’s accessible, seamless, and doesn’t create new challenges when it comes to helping employees connect with one another to get the job done.

A unified communications solution such as RingCentral helps to relieve many of the pain points employees encounter while they work from home. RingCentral combines team messaging, video conferencing, and cloud phone into a single platform, allowing employees to choose how, where, and when they want to collaborate. By breaking down the barriers to workplace communications, remote teams can master collaboration regardless of where they work and take productivity to new heights.

Combine it with our other favourite product, G Suite, and enjoy your new super powers.

Try Today

Read the eBook

Datasheet

Written in collaboration with RingCentral©.

5 Reasons Everyone Should Have the RingCentral G Suite Add-on

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 11:19:39 +0000

When it comes to tech companies that have had a large impact on how we work smart, it’s hard to dispute that Google has been a strong contender. In the 22 years since the company was founded, Google has changed how people (and businesses) use the Internet in countless ways.

A suite of powerful tools that includes Gmail (email), shared calendars, documents, and other functions, Google’s offerings for business, collectively called G Suite, have had a massive upward trajectory. In the 4.5 years since November 2015 (back when G Suite was still called Google Apps for Work), paid user base has tripled to 6 million paid accounts. There’s a good chance you and other businesses your company does business with are among them.

But as with any tool you’re using to support collaboration and productivity, you may wonder if there are ways you can use it better in order to make communications more efficient.

Installing RingCentral’s G Suite Add-on is one way to accelerate the collaborative benefits you’re already gaining from using G Suite. Here are five ways the RingCentral G Suite Add-on will make your life easier.

The ultimate power couple.

1. Message or call colleagues directly from Gmail

Email has long been a primary communication tool within workplaces for many good reasons. To name a few, email creates a lasting record of what has been said, and can be sent from any connected device at any time. But email is not without limitation. In fact, email can be a source of hassle among businesses.

Emails are easily ignored. O ne survey found 60.8% of workers to be guilty of not responding to emails occasionally, often or always—and they’re rife with the potential for miscommunication due to lack of tone and context.

That’s why it's good practice to switch to a different medium of talking if you're not making progress after a bit of back and forth.

The RingCentral G Suite Add-on allows you to message or call colleagues directly from Gmail, making it easy to hop on a call or video chat without added coordination for those times when email conversation just isn’t cutting it.

2. Schedule meetings directly in Calendar

Scheduling meetings can be an absolute farce over email. First, you have to find an agreeable time, then create a calendar entry, and then figure out how to correctly export your meeting call-in details from your conferencing app to your invite. Get that last part wrong and you’ll also waste a ton of time when the meeting begins and everyone has trouble accessing it.

Installing the RingCentral G Suite Add-on eliminates this complexity altogether by allowing you to create a meeting, and fully populate your invite with details such as meeting ID and password, directly from Google Calendar with just a click. Sweet!

3. See your colleagues’ current status

In an office scenario, it’s easy to swing by someone’s desk for an impromptu chat when the need arises. When everyone’s working from home, it’s harder to gauge availability.

When your collaboration efforts require a deeper conversation—for example, an audio call or face-to-face video chat—you can lose powerful momentum simply trying to coordinate a time for that remote conversation to happen.

Though it may not be possible to use a closed door or other visual cues to determine the right time for on-the-fly chats in remote work scenarios, the RingCentral G Suite Add-on provides the next best thing: it allows you to instantly see when all of your RingCentral contacts are available, away, offline or in 'do not disturb' mode.

4. Start an email from a RingCentral contact card

The seamlessness of RingCentral and G Suite flows in two directions—and connecting the two also helps you to extend the usefulness of RingCentral. For example, sometimes email makes the most sense for communicating, such when you need to follow up with materials after a meeting. RingCentral’s G Suite Add-on simplifies this too by allowing you to send an email directly from a user’s RingCentral contact card.

5. View call history

While the number of options for communicating online is undoubtedly a boon for collaboration, it’s a nightmare for staying organised. Communicating across email, video, phone and SMS makes it difficult to remember what conversation occurred when, which can have impact on accountability (and efficiency!) RingCentral’s G Suite Add-on automatically creates a log of all your calls, making it easy to determine when that important conversation occurred.

Work Efficiently with RingCentral + G Suite

Collaboration tools are essential in the workplace—especially as more people work from home. But they also add complexity, as employees are forced to turn to multiple apps to meet their communication needs. RingCentral helps G Suite users get more out of their existing tools, and do so more efficiently, by connecting key functionalities so that users don’t have to change apps to communicate.

With the RingCentral app, the G Suite add-on creates a single record of information, combining team messaging, video conferencing, and cloud phone into a single platform for all workplace collaboration. As with all RingCentral apps and integrations, the G Suite add-on is free for all users.

You just need RingCentral and Google's G Suite to get started - both of which we can help you get started with today.

Try Today

Read the eBook

Datasheet

Written in collaboration with RingCentral©.

4 Steps to Ensure Company-Wide Adoption of Communications Technology

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 07:00:00 +0000

Considering our infatuation with technology, you’d think that we’d get excited when our organisations introduce new tools into our workflows. In many cases, however, that couldn’t be further from reality. During my time providing technical solutions to businesses I've come across many cases where individuals in the business had their own preferred project management app, often leading to a mismatch of processes and workflows and consequently, confusion. In response, management have migrated users onto a new project management app for the entire business, mandating that the team adopt the new app.

Several months later, users often slowly crawled back to their previous apps. Why? Because the users felt that the new solution didn’t meet their needs and had a convoluted user interface. The result was hundreds of collective hours and valuable budget wasted migrating between apps.

Control =/= Flexibility

Businesses deploy new technologies in response to business needs. However, deployment really is only half the battle. Users often resist technological change, which fragments teamwork as a result. Whether users are too busy to learn new processes or too stubborn to abandon old habits, their resistance can nullify any new technologies a business decides to introduce.

Migrating users to new technologies isn’t as straightforward as it seems too. Many companies demand that teams use certain tools and prohibit them from using alternatives. That creates a major problem if those tools are ineffective. A survey by ZenBusiness shows that 57% of employees feel working with inadequate and obsolete technology negatively affects workplace productivity and morale. Tasks take longer to complete, employees work longer hours, and the quality of work suffers.

And on the contrary, giving users too much freedom poses a challenge as well. Ineffective company-provided solutions often push employees to find and deploy their own solutions without approvals from security teams. A Forbes Insight survey found that one in five businesses experienced a cyber event due to shadow IT, or technologies that fall under the radar. This presents huge security risks for businesses.

When it comes to enterprise control versus business unit flexibility, who wins? The answer is somewhere in the middle. Deployment strategies include several key steps to ensure successful widespread adoption. Let's get going with four essential steps to help businesses get started.

1. Choose a communication solution with a seamless user experience

The most important factor in user adoption is the user experience. Millennials and 'Gen Zers' (who comes up with these?) grew up surrounded by communications technology (MSN, Skype, FaceTime) and expect the same level of simplicity in their professional tools. Without a seamless user experience, users will wander in search of better options.

Many businesses choose a multi-app approach, deploying a communications app for every need (messaging, video calling, phone, fax). The deluge of apps, however, often overwhelms employees. 68% of employees toggle between apps 10 times a single hour, with some toggling up to 15 times, according to a recent study. Toggling between apps destroys concentration, especially when switching apps requires you to enter meeting credentials and wait for long load times.

Communications technology should combine essential tools into a single platform. Unified communications solutions like the RingCentral or G Suite combine many communication methods into a single platform where employees can seamlessly switch between different modes of communication with a single click (or tap for our millennials). When compared to multiple apps, the simplicity of a single platform allows employees to work without being inundated by technology and that makes for a much better user experience.

Credit: RingCentral©

2. Be transparent

The right messaging can make all the difference in user adoption. If employees feel obligated to adopt a new app to justify someone else’s decision, they’ll be much less inclined to make an effort. At the same time, choosing a new solution without consulting employees is a sure way to get mixed responses.

Businesses should start by assessing the team’s business needs. Employee surveys or leadership meetings help IT teams gauge how employees feel about the current ecosystem. With their concerns in mind, introduce the new communication solution explaining how it eases employee workloads and helps streamline workflows. Employees are much more receptive to technologies adopted with intent and will put more effort into making them work.

3. Provide training

Even tech-savvy users won’t entirely understand a new solution’s capabilities at the start. It's similar to how every so often you might discover a new feature on your phone after three years of using it! Without the full scope of what’s available, users might find the new solution lacking of obvious features and give up early.

Deployment plans should include training sessions before finalising any contracts. We would always encourage our partners to utilise our training services as part of any big software migration and generally IT leaders or service providers would offer training sessions using lesson plans customised to every individual department within a business.

Keep sessions bitesize and hands-on so users have a chance to test and ask questions. This keeps employees of all levels of technical expertise on the same page.

Credit: RingCentral©

4. Engage with early adopters and empower ambassadors

Sometimes, employees resist new technologies because the benefits of switching their entire workflow aren’t clear. The same holds true for communications when migrating entire communication histories. Important files can get lost, and users don’t want to risk that.

Businesses should carefully choose their change leaders to educate employees. Leaders can host webinars and office-hour sessions, or simply answer questions from colleagues. By educating employees, businesses won’t leave employees to their own devices. Instead, they’ll take a proactive approach toward ensuring widespread adoption of their new communications solution.

Creating ambassadors of a new solution is absolutely key. By showing change leaders the benefits of a new system they are much more likely to encourage others to use the service too. This cuts down on direct training resources as well as leverages the confidence that teams have in their closest change leader or 'ambassador'.

Credit: RingCentral©

Closing comments

Introducing new communication solutions within your business can certainly present challenges, but with the right approach it will be successful. Todays IT users have high expectations for their workplace technology and so IT leaders ultimately need to keep users interested, invested, and educated in the deployment strategy. With employees fully on board, businesses can successfully deploy the new solution and start streamlining communication and collaboration.

An effective communications solution has to meet the needs of as many users as possible to ensure business-wide adoption. Luckily, unified platforms solutions such as RingCentral and G Suite, check all the boxes. All of the products we provide integrate seamlessly together to provide a one-stop shop for business users, minimising app switch and consequently maximising productivity.

Infographic

Get Started

Written in partnership with RingCentral©.

COVID-19: Our Favourite Remote-working Tools

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 13:02:41 +0000

Whether your business had already implemented remote-working ideologies or it's all very new to your business, it's definitely been a general-culture shock to the working world. Businesses that never thought they could work from home are now embracing wonderful and sometimes whacky ways to get their work done remotely, sometimes whilst even compromising security (yes Zoom we are talking about you).

Our partners are generally well equipped already. More than 80% of what Ostratto helps our partners' businesses with, resides on cloud technology. That's smart business solutions that are accessible from anywhere at anytime.

For the businesses that we don't yet have a relationship with, firstly; welcome(!) and secondly; this article is for you. It's a quick run through of our favourite tools that will help you conduct your business from pretty much anywhere.

We'll firstly break it down a bit into some sub-categories of the products we offer today. Select to jump to the sections:

Communication Collaboration Productivity

Looks uncomfortable. Credit: unsplash

Communication

Communication during these tricky times is absolutely vital. It's the difference between a happy and productive worker and a very unhappy unmotivated one. Here's some of our favourite communication tools.

Google Meet

Video meetings for your business. Meet takes the headaches out of joining a video call at work. Just set up a meeting and share a link. No worrying about whether teammates, clients, or customers have the right accounts or plug-ins. With a fast, lightweight interface and smart participant management, 100 + person video calls are a breeze.

Meet is perfect for keeping connected with your team and your customers from one product, and it comes included in the G Suite package as standard.

Google Chat

A messaging platform built for teams. Hangouts Chat makes it easy for teams to stay in contact with instant messaging. From direct messages to group conversations, Chat helps teams collaborate easily and efficiently. With dedicated, virtual rooms to house projects over time — plus threaded conversations — Chat makes it simple to track progress and follow up tasks. Chat currently supports 28 languages and each room can support up to 8,000 members.

RingCentral

RingCentral is our preferred cloud phone solution. Get an all-inclusive business phone system with online meetings, messaging, and more. Integrated perfectly into your business systems, you can expect big business benefits without the high cost and complexity. Your teams will have all the accessibility they need to seamlessly communicate and collaborate from anywhere, becoming more productive, effective, and efficient as a result. You can host video meetings with up to 1000 participants too - which is pretty cool.

We love it because it's super reliable and it provides a one-stop shop for all business communications.

Zoho Campaigns

Email marketing software that drives sales. Create, send, and track email campaigns that help you build a strong customer base. From beautiful email templates to an easy-to-use editor, and automation tools to real-time analytics, Zoho Campaigns has it covered.

We use this to keep in touch with all of our partners with ease, updating them on the current situation and also providing regular tips on staying productive.

Collaboration

Even the most communicative team still need ways of collaborating effectively. If your team is still saying 'are you done with that spreadsheet as I need to make edits', then this category is for you. It's 2020 and things have changed now, you old-timer you.

Google Docs

Create and edit documents directly in your browser – no dedicated software required. Several people can work at the same time, and every change is saved automatically. Work on a single document with team members or people outside your company. See edits as others type, communicate through built-in chat and ask questions by including comments.

It really is powerful word editing, made simple and accessible with the power of the cloud. It comes with even the most basic version of G Suite.

Google Sheets

Collaborative, smart, secure spreadsheets for fast-moving organisations. Sheets was designed with the needs of agile organisations in mind. As Sheets is cloud-based, it enables you to collaborate with anyone, anytime, anywhere. It's built on top of Google’s infrastructure, which gives you the freedom to create, while helping to keep your information secure.

Again, no software to install and super simple to use.

Google Slides

Slides is Google's offering of a presentation tool. It allows you to create and edit polished presentations in your browser – no software required. Several people can work at the same time so that everyone always has the latest version. It helps you to make your ideas shine with a variety of presentation themes, hundreds of fonts, embedded video, animations, and more. All included in G Suite.

Productivity

Productivity is often the measure of a successful migration to remote-working strategies. With recent developments in the technical industry it's still very possible to maintain a very high level of productivity. We've covered a few excellent communication products and we've also covered a selection of smart collaboration software.

G Suite

G Suite - our bread and butter. It provides all the tools a business needs to do business, in an extremely affordable package. An integrated suite of secure, cloud-native collaboration and productivity apps powered by Google AI. Includes Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Meet and more, all in the same place accessible with the same login.

We use G Suite for our business email, communications and productivity needs. The prices start at £4.60 per user/month and there's no contract, so it's really ideal for new businesses who don't want to commit to anything serious in the early days.

What I think is pretty cool is that the likes of Netflix and Colgate are using exactly the same product as a start-up business of one user. It really is modern-day cloud computing, allowing the little guys play with the big guys with no capital required. Awesome!

Zoho Projects

When we do any commissioning work such as website design or a system setup, one of our most used products is Projects. It lets us track all ongoing tasks so that an overall project progress can be seen - and shared with clients if necessary. It can help you plan your work, track it efficiently, and collaborate with your team wherever they are.

The main features we use are the tasks, the activities, issues (at times a great tool to nudge clients if we're waiting on them) and also the integration with Google Drive so that we can share files securely within the project space without needing to upload anything.

A great tool for teams that still need to be working on projects from different places.

Zoho Bookings

We've noticed a large increase in online classes since the lockdown here in the UK. Classes for exercise and yoga type activities the most prevalent. Should you be needing to host this sort of event, you need a solid way of offering booking for your 'students' - Bookings has you covered. It syncs your calendars while letting students/customers self-schedule and pay for appointments. The user interface is completely customisable to fit your brand and there is an email function that sends emails to your customers automatically reminding them when an appointment is due.

This one is for personal trainers, coaches teachers, trainers and just about anybody else that needs a way to manage classes easily.

So there you have it. They are our favourite tools because they are cost-effective, smart and they are generally awesome. They all also meet our principles.

If you need any help with working remotely during these very difficult times please just reach out. We will be happy to assist and if we can help your business in any way at no cost, we absolutely will.

Stay safe.

Help me work smarter

Three Social Experiments You Can Try Today with Video Meetings

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 18:07:57 +0000

I'm not going to preach. You're no first timer when it comes to video meetings and working remotely. You jump into the advanced settings and customise things based on what you need. You know how to get the lighting just right, how to manage a call and how to read video-only body language. What's left for you to know?

You may be very well acquainted with meetings but in a time when video meetings are the only method of 'face-to-face' communication it's actually super-important to try and keep them fresh, engaging and useful.

If you’re working remotely (or just using video conferencing software to connect with your team) and want to make things a little more interesting, here are three social experiments to try.

1. Easter eggs

You might recognise this idea from movies and video games.

Producers will place an object, cameo, or reference just outside the viewer’s peripheral. Most of the time we're so focused on the core of the scene that we miss these little things.

But if you’re in on the joke, you’ll get a unique—and fun—experience. For example, if you always take calls in your office, you could trade out a picture on the wall behind you each time you take a call with someone. See how long it takes for them to notice. Or move your desk closer and closer to a background object with each call.

Make little changes and you’ll see who is really paying attention. If you have a recurring meeting with a teammate, you could turn this into a game and see who notices the difference first!

2. Always on

A few of our partners in their businesses have started leaving a RingCentral Video screen on all day.

All they do is share the meeting’s ID or link with each other, and use this as a chance to pop in on each other throughout the day.

Essentially, it creates an online version of that random walk-by that you experience in an office environment.

Leave your video on while you work and see if it helps you connect with your team throughout the day, have a casual conversation, or even share lunch together—all while working remotely.

3. Video-only days

If you need a bit of practice getting used to video meetings, this is a great way to start building that up.

Can you survive all day with only video calls? Try it!

Give your thumbs a rest and tap the video icon for your meetings each and every time.

Maybe you start a trend - Video Fridays - and see how it influences your day and productivity. Try to notice things like patterns in your communication and how quickly decisions get made in video calls compared to just messaging or audio calls.

Need help getting online with remote working during these challenging times? Just give us a holla.

Let's Chat

Written in collaboration with RingCentral.

5 Tips to Balance Working From Home and Parenting

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:44:04 +0000

The average office-based worker may find the transition to working from home to be challenging enough. You’re surrounded by potential distractions, tempted by your fridge and comfy bed, and loneliness creeping in. Then you throw children into the mix, and it’s a whole new level of chaos.

Parents, if you find yourself suddenly at home with your laptop, your child(ren), and a calendar full of video meetings, take a deep breath and face the day with gusto. Here's five tips to help you maximise your productivity as a remote worker while also keeping your young ones happy (and quiet) during your workday.

1. Create a separate work space.

If your home is also your workplace, try and keep your work in a separate room. This will allow for a psychological, as well as a physical, division between your personal and work lives. This will also make it much easier for you to leave work “at work” at the end of the day so you can focus on your family.

If you’re not the primary caregiver on any given day and someone else is on hand playing that role, SHUT THE DOOR (if possible)! Retreat to your separate room and set up your remote office. Enjoy the distant hum of someone else attending to your children’s needs, and delight in the fact that you can simply pop in your earphones and get some quality work done!

2. Plan your day carefully.

If you know your children are going to be at home when you’re working, be realistic about what you can get done - and when. Plot each workday out in advance and stick to it. Otherwise, you might start to feel like you’re going to lose it with multiple deadlines looming.

If you share your childcare with a partner or a childcare provider, plan to do your best work when your children are being looked after or entertained out of sight. If you can schedule some downtime throughout the day to spend with your kiddies, all the better. You might just go back to work feeling refreshed, while your children may also feel happy enough to give you some quiet time to get your work done (maybe).

3. Schedule some time for yourself.

Working from home while trying to balance childcare and family time can be exhausting. Make sure you give yourself some time to unwind. Sometimes this may mean scheduling a free block of time on your calendar so you remember to follow through, but that’s ok—this mental break is crucial for your sanity.

Tip: Try to incorporate movement into your break to boost your energy and ward off the dreaded afternoon slump—do some yoga, walk the dog, or, better yet, play with the kids. They’ll love being with you, and you’ll feel better about focusing on work for the rest of the afternoon. As a bonus, perhaps they’ll be ready for a nap afterward!

4. Be upfront about your predicament.

No doubt many of you have been in the cringeworthy position of doing your best to conduct a work call with your little people wreaking havoc in the background. Some of you may have hit the next level of embarrassment—joining a video meeting only to have your children take the stage.

The best thing you can do in these situations is to be upfront and honest about your tricky predicament. You’ll find that most people on your call have also been there or will at least understand it’s not the easiest situation to be in. And as your son's or daughter's starts taking their crayons to your laptop screen while singing their ABCs at the top of their lungs, you might just find your rapport with colleagues or customers gets a little bit stronger. We’re all human, after all!

When all else fails and you feel like you’re really not going to have a constructive call, you can use a team messaging app, such as RingCentral, to let your colleagues know in real time that now is not the best time.

5. Be prepared for anything.

As you’re well aware, anything can happen when children are thrown into what should be a professional and organised setting. Whatever it is that keeps your children distracted, keep it on hand as an emergency back-up: a tablet loaded with your their favourite games (I know the parenting gods will not be happy, but needs must), cartoons paused on your TV, sticker books, and lots of (healthy) snacks. Preparation is key!

Of course, none of the above matters unless you have the right technology. Click here to learn more about how Ostratto makes business collaboration effortless using the fantastic technology available today.

Get Started Now

Written in collaboration with RingCentral.