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As the spread of coronavirus is soaring across the globe, and more recently across the whole of the UK, everyone is preparing for lockdown. Basic amenities like hand sanitiser and toilet roll are almost impossible to get hold of, leaving supermarket shelves bare, and the possibility of everyone having to self-isolate is looming close ahead. Hundreds of British companies are already advising that their staff work from home to prevent the spread of the virus. So what does this mean for your business?

Whilst working from home may sound ideal, especially for an introvert or someone who simply enjoys working from the comfort of their own sofa, it can become lonely and even anxiety-inducing. The luxury of being able to walk up to a colleague to discuss something is simply not there, and it can be hard to keep on top of your tasks. Fortunately, there are some tools that can make your time working from home a lot less complicated. We’d like to share with you those that we recommend to help ensure that your business doesn’t suffer during this worldwide crisis.

Slack

We couldn’t live without Slack. For us, it’s one of the easiest ways to keep in touch with our teammates and to make sure we’re always aware of what’s going on, even when we are working in the office. Slack is a communication platform and project management tool that has a bunch of fantastic features to allow for coherent workflow whilst you are apart from your team. We’ve listed a few of these below:

• It allows you to create individual channels for separate sections of the business so you can have conversations with relevant team members only.

• Alongside channels, you can also direct message a team member so you can discuss important issues in private (or catch up about what Netflix series you’ve been playing in the background while you work).

• You can set reminders for individual team members that will alert them via the platform to ensure that tasks are completed at the right time.

• You can “mention” team members in channels by using the “@” symbol followed by their name, which instantly notifies them so they won’t miss any messages.

• If you have quite a few channels set up and there is a lot of conversation going on within your team, there is the possibility of missing an important message. Not to worry – Slack allows you to search for specific content in any of the channels and makes it easier for you to identify what you’re looking for by sorting the results by date and relevance.

• You can integrate other tools into Slack, such as Google Drive for example, so you can quickly and easily share documents.

Top Tip: use the platform’s “poll” feature to be able to make fair, unanimous decisions with your colleagues.

Try out Slack

Monday.com

Similarly, Monday.com is another essential tool that we rely heavily on for plain sailing within the business so we can work as efficiently as possible. The following features make it great for adapting to working from home:

• You can easily communicate with your team members by using the “@” symbol which will notify them immediately. This means vital information won’t be missed. You can also add a snazzy photo to your account that pops up every time you’re mentioned.

• With the ability to create an unlimited amount of boards, you can track any and all projects using tables, charts and graphs. You can also filter through them so you can find a project quickly and easily – a massive time-saver.

• You can divide workload equally within your team. Team members, or whole teams, can be assigned to specific tasks. Deadline dates can be added to ensure the task is completed on time.

• There is the ability to change the status of a task so everyone is aware of what has been completed and what hasn’t.

Top Tip: Integrate Monday.com with Slack so you can create automated notifications from Monday.com that pop up in a dedicated channel on Slack.

Try out Monday.com

Clarity Stack

With almost all large gatherings being called off, including networking events, you may also be worried about where you can source new leads from. Don’t worry – we’ve got you. Our research team finds and delivers tailored leads to companies from a whole range of industries, from translation agencies to accountants, every week. We want to make sure you’ve got a steady flow of sales coming in throughout the year, no matter what crises we have to face.

• You can receive 6-10 verified leads a week. We provide you with the contact details of the right person you need to speak to, so you can go straight ahead and work on winning the project.

• Find all of your opportunities in a handy list in your Clarity Stack account. You can filter through your opportunities so you can easily access a specific opportunity without spending unnecessary time scrolling through a long list.

• Dedicated account managers are available to call you at a time that best suits you, and a customer service team online is here to help you via our live chat if you have any queries at any point.

Top Tip: Use the recommended outreach templates that we provide to you to make the best first impression on a prospect.

Try out ClarityStack.com