Hybrid work has many proven benefits for both workers and their employers, including increased productivity, reduced burnout, and greater flexibility leading to more applications from qualified candidates. Of course, setting up a hybrid workplace requires establishing new policies, adjusting employees’ workflows, and investing in new technology that can facilitate a hybrid experience.
Hybrid work environments also come with challenges, and the right technology can alleviate many of them. Platforms designed for hybrid work have advanced dramatically in the last few years, and employers can find a wide range of tools to cater to needs from project management to improved recognition efforts.
To help your organization understand the wide range of hybrid workplace solutions available, this guide will explore over a dozen of the best platforms designed for hybrid work.
eCardWidget: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Employee Appreciation
Overview
A hybrid work model can result in some employees feeling less connected to their workplace. To keep retention high, explore employee appreciation strategies that both your in-person and remote team members can enjoy. Specifically, leverage an employee appreciation software solution designed for a hybrid environment like eCardWidget.
eCardWidget allows organizations to send eCards, greeting and thank you cards that are sent electronically through email or text. Businesses that invest in eCardWidget to improve employee recognition by encouraging leadership and staff to acknowledge accomplishments easily and meaningfully through fast, professionally designed eCards.
Features
These top features make eCardWidget the best employee appreciation platform for hybrid teams:
- Accessible templates. Upload your own eCard designs in bulk or use eCardWidget’s templates and assets to get started designing your cards. Use eCardWidget’s drag-and-drop design tools to add elements exactly where you want and create professional, memorable designs.
- Flexible delivery options. Determine whether your eCards are sent through email, text messages, or social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Reporting and overview tools. Choose to be BCC’d on all eCards sent through your company’s platform, allowing managers to see which employees are being recognized. This allows leadership to see which employees are standing out among their peers without making appreciation overly formal for the employees who participate.
- Scheduled delivery. Create your eCards ahead of time and then determine when they’ll be sent. This can be especially useful for busy times of the year or if you have plans to send many eCards at once, such as sending everyone at your business a card to celebrate a successful financial year.
- Numerous integrations. eCardWidget is built to work with a variety of other platforms your business already uses, including WordPress, Shopify, Google Sites, and more.
Trello: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Project Management
Overview
Trello’s motto is that their platform helps “keep everything in the same place—even if your team isn’t.” As a tool designed specifically for hybrid and remote teams, Trello is built to maximize productivity and organization with accessible project management boards that allow team members to see who is responsible for what.
Features
Use Trello boards to improve your hybrid team’s workflow with these features:
- Boards and cards. Trello allows teams to visualize their workflows by creating boards, which are several columns you can label and move tasks between. For example, you might label your board’s columns based on the project’s team, client, or completion status. Users can then generate cards, which contain information about the various tasks team members need to complete. Cards can be assigned to multiple individuals and easily moved between columns with drag and drop to visually show your projects’ status.
- Board templates. Trello is a flexible tool that can serve many organizations’ purposes. To get started, select a template that fits your needs, such as a board designed to facilitate weekly meeting planning, merger and acquisition due diligence, pitch decks, and project management.
- Automation. Speed up your workflow with Butler, Trello’s automation tool. Set triggers for Butler to prompt it to perform actions automatically. For example, you might instruct Butler to auto-fill all newly created cards with a set of actions that need to be checked off, or direct Butler to move cards around your board based on their name, due date, or completion status.
ClickUp: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution CRM
Overview
Keep communication with your customer relationships streamlined, even when you have team members working remotely. ClickUp’s CRM allows team members to collaborate on client accounts, track data, and advance relationships from one centralized platform.
Features
ClickUp is a comprehensive project management platform and provides these CRM features:
- Dashboards. ClickUp provides users with over 50 dashboard widgets, allowing you to customize your dashboard and views to your exact needs. Get the information you need about your customers at just a glance as soon as you log in.
- Customer database. Customize your customer database to store the information you need, document relationships, link documents, and plan next actions. Add tags and filters to find customers and identify connections.
- Sales pipeline management. ClickUp is designed to help organizations move customers through the sales pipeline. Build custom status workflows to document where you are in each customer relationship.
Zoom: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Conferencing
Overview
Zoom is one of the most well-known and widely used hybrid work tools (and for good reason)! Zoom’s conferencing software allows teams to meet face-to-face even while working remotely, improving communication and collaboration while building connections between team members to create a more positive work environment.
Features
Zoom’s core features are well known, and you can unlock the platform’s full potential with its:
- Team chat. Instantly message team members during meetings to ask questions, share resources, provide updates, or simply congratulate other team members on a job well done. Send messages to the entire team to generate discussions or private messages to specific individuals to share notes without disrupting the rest of your team.
- Calendar integrations. Add Zoom links to your meeting platforms and calendars to make scheduling easy. Zoom integrations for tools like Google Calendar allow you to automatically generate Zoom links that meeting guests can access at any time.
- Screen share. Meeting hosts and guests can share their screens to display presentations, work through technical issues, and collaborate on projects. Users can even allow others to take control of their screen to assist with programs and documents while working remotely.
Slack: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Communication
Overview
Like Zoom, Slack is one of the top workplace communications solutions for hybrid teams, allowing workers to get in touch quickly and easily through an organized group chat. Whether team members need to message someone working in a different state or across the office, Slack provides a convenient method for sharing team-wide communications.
Features
Slack lets hybrid teams communicate easily with these features:
- Channels. Even enterprise-sized businesses can stay organized with Slack’s channel system. Create communication channels for specific topics and teams and set permissions to direct users to the right channels. Public channels are visible to all users and anyone from your organization is free to send messages in them, while private channels are only available to invited users and can be a helpful way to keep information secure or just ensure teams stay organized..
- Huddles. Along with text communication, Slack users can join audio and video huddles to share information face-to-face. Slack records huddles and creates a log of any messages and links that were shared during the meeting for future reference.
- Slack Connect. Slack isn’t only for internal communication. Slack Connect allows organizations to create secure channels for communicating with external partners to strengthen client relationships and reduce data silos.
Miro: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Collaborative Work
Overview
To overcome collaboration obstacles from a hybrid workplace model, Miro provides your team with a virtual whiteboard they can draw on, upload files to, and create digital sticky notes to. With a visual aid, your staff can work together and problem-solve as a team even while physically apart.
Features
Miro embraces hybrid work with the following features:
- Hundreds of templates. To guide your collaboration, Miro provides 1,300+ templates. These templates include everything from visual aids for brainstorming, like mind maps and flowcharts, to boards designed to facilitate meetings, such as a daily stand-up template.
- Hybrid events. Connect with employees while they’re working remotely by using Miro to host your events. During a Miro event, rather than staring at a static screen, team members can participate and interact with one another by drawing on your Miro board, increasing engagement.
- Integrations. Miro integrates with over 100 popular apps, allowing businesses to add Miro boards to their other platforms with ease. Using Miro’s bidirectional synchronization, you can work on a board in one platform, then ensure it’s saved in Miro to come back to later.
Boardable: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Board Meetings
Overview
Your board determines the direction of your organization, and Boardable makes hybrid board meetings easy. Boardable serves a variety of industries, including nonprofits and associations, as well as real estate businesses, technology companies, and educational institutions. No matter your organization’s field, Boardable’s flexible tools can facilitate efficient hybrid board meetings.
Features
Boardable allows your board members to host effective meetings with these tools:
- Agenda builder. Plan your meetings and keep them on track with the agenda builder. Use Boardable’s templates to design your agendas, quickly fill in the details, and create interactive PDFs that can be shared with the rest of your board.
- Document center. Keep all important board documents centralized in one secure location. With Boardable’s document center, board members can quickly find and review necessary documents before meetings, upload and share files, and annotate documents during meetings.
- Task manager. After your board meetings, ensure all follow-up tasks are completed using Boardable’s task manager. Create a to-do list, set deadlines, and assign tasks to specific board members to increase accountability and transparency.
Box: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for File Sharing
Overview
Ensure employees can access the files they need when working at home with Box. Box is a file management platform that allows users to upload large files and share them with others securely.
Features
With Box, your organization will have access to the following features:
- Box drive. Share your files and work with them offline using Box drive. Box drive allows users to work on files from their desktops without needing to download them, saving hard drive space and making sharing easy.
- E-signature. Box is useful for sharing documents that need to be signed, like business agreements and contracts. With e-signature, you can integrate your email and Box to send e-signature requests quickly or embed e-signature into your website to capture signatures on forms from team members, customers, and partners.
- AI. Box AI is an add-on that scans the content you’ve already uploaded into Box and uses it to answer your questions. Ask the AI to summarize documents, identify key findings, or even create new content.
Figma: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Creative Collaboration
Overview
Help your design teams collaborate while working remotely with Figma. Figma is an intuitive design platform that allows your team to work together to design presentations, interfaces, and prototypes on a virtual whiteboard.
Features
Hybrid teams that use Figma will have access to the following features:
- User-friendly design tools. Figma’s pen tool allows users to draw in any direction, while instant design tools let users create specific shapes like circles with just a few clicks.
- Responsive design. Figma’s auto layout tools adjust elements to automatically stretch, add padding, and resize to reduce time spent making fine adjustments.
- Centralized asset library. Ensure your team has access to the same design assets with Figma’s searchable asset library.
Okta: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Data Security
Overview
Hybrid work creates more points of access to your company’s data, and employees who encounter a data security issue while working from home may not be able to receive immediate help. Okta’s Workforce Identity Cloud allows businesses to improve security, streamline workflows, and provide quick solutions to potential data risks.
Features
Okta’s Workforce Identity Cloud for businesses comes with the following features:
- Single sign-on. Get hybrid team members up and running quickly while keeping your data secure with Okta’s single sign-on. Single sign-on provides your IT team with one central place of control to manage your user permissions and identify suspicious activity to limit users’ access.
- Adaptive multi-factor authentication. Protect your business from fraud with multi-factor authentication with Okta’s mobile app. Plus, Okta provides IP addresses of users who have launched attempted identity attacks on other customers, giving your organization the information it needs to block suspicious users.
- Lifecycle management. When hybrid workers join or leave your organization, on- and off-board them with automatic lifecycle management. Rather than submitting manual requests to your IT team, Okta can automatically grant and remove permissions to provide access to new team members quickly without sacrificing security.
Double the Donation: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Corporate Philanthropy
Overview
Whether they’re working in-office or remotely, employees feel more motivated when they know they’re part of a business that gives back to their community. You can demonstrate your commitment to social good and improve your organization’s reputation among customers by launching a matching gift program all of your employees can participate in with Double the Donation.
Features
Double the Donation makes starting a matching gift program easy with the following features:
- Comprehensive matching gift database. Make it easy for your employees to submit a matching gift request by adding your organization’s workplace giving data to Double the Donation’s comprehensive matching gift database. Then, whenever an employee donates, they’ll be able to find your matching gift information easily.
- Autosubmission. Normally when your employees submit a matching gift request, they will need to complete a form after making their donation. By signing up for Double the Donation’s autosubmission, this feature will automatically pull data from your company to complete the matching gift form for employees, speeding up the application process and encouraging greater participation.
- Integrations with CSR platforms. If your company currently uses another CSR platform, you likely add Double the Donation to it with ease. Double the Donation integrates with the following workplace giving platforms: POINT, Millie, Givinga, and Selflessly.
Loom: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Video Creation
Overview
With multiple employees working from home, you may not have time to schedule meetings with every team. Loom allows users to record videos and share them quickly, giving businesses the benefits of both face-to-face and asynchronous communication.
Features
Loom can help organizations facilitate a successful hybrid work model with these features:
- Interactivity. Viewers can interact with your videos with time-stamped comments and emoji reactions, enabling employees to collaborate even while communicating asynchronously.
- Easy screen recording. Loom has a screen and webcam recorder that works on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. After recording, use Loom’s video editing tools to trim content and add in other Loom recordings to ensure your best take is featured in the final video.
- Enterprise-grade security protection. For businesses interested in using asynchronous video to communicate internally, Loom protects content with data encryption industry-standard security frameworks.
Calendly: Best Hybrid Workplace Solution for Calendar Management
Overview
Organizations that conduct meetings at scale, such as educational institutions, marketing organizations, and consulting groups, Calendly can simplify scheduling. Hybrid teams that need to meet regularly can streamline planning and holding meetings with Calendly.
Features
Explore how Calendly can benefit hybrid workplaces with the following features:
- Availability preferences. Direct your team to set their availability preferences, ensuring everyone at your organization knows when and how to get in touch.
- Team scheduling. To coordinate several employees, Calendly allows users to create meeting polls where team members can share their availability. Then, the meeting host can use this information to see when everyone is available to choose the most convenient meeting time.
- Embedded meeting invitations. Calendly integrates with popular emailing platforms and allows users to add clickable buttons to their meeting invitations, allowing recipients to easily choose their meeting time and book their appointment automatically.
Wrapping Up
A hybrid workplace backed with the right tools can lead to improved employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention. To find the solutions your business needs, consider your daily internal processes from how you run meetings to your employee appreciation practices. Then, consider how these processes are impacted by a hybrid environment and if a software solution could streamline, elevate, or facilitate them.
Of course, creating a positive hybrid environment requires more than just technology. Help your business build a work culture that can help your hybrid workforce thrive with these resources:
- A Guide to Building a Strong Workplace Culture Remotely. Businesses can still have a strong work culture even with their employees working remotely. Learn the challenges that hybrid work can create and how your business can overcome them to build a positive work environment.
- A Complete Guide to Employee Engagement + Top 10 Ideas. Whether they’re in the office or at home, engaged employees are more productive, loyal, and positive. Understand what matters to your employees and engage them with these ideas.
- Hybrid Employee Recognition: 6 Best Practices for Success. Employees should be recognized for their hard work, no matter where they’re working from. Improve your ability to recognize employees in a hybrid work model with these best practices.
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