Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
The best remote team management tools allow companies to engage employees, collaborate, and grow their business. Remote work has been on the rise for nearly two decades, and even more so since the COVID-19 crisis. In the U.S. alone, a study revealed that remote work has increased by 28% between 2020 and 2022 - a trend that’s highly likely to continue. As such, software solutions and remote team management tools have become increasingly necessary. After all, they help companies maximize productivity, collaboration, and culture — all of which are critical for organizational success.
But as you probably already know, there are seemingly endless options. Some help companies better manage their remote teams, while others help remote workers be more productive. In this guide, we’re going to help you figure out which solutions are right for your organization with a list of top tools, what they cover, and why you might need them; common mistakes and how to fix them; implementation guidelines; and more.
We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose who makes the cut:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
Here are the best remote work tools for companies looking to engage employees, collaborate, and grow. We'll be adding to this list frequently as we discover more awesome tools to include.
Why we love it
:
With local entities in over 180 countries, Oyster can help you compliantly grow a remote workforce with diverse talent. Oyster can also take care of paying your employees in different currencies and setting them up with competitive benefits where they reside.
Oyster
Review:
Oyster offers a myriad of tools for employees aside from payroll and benefits Administration. With tutorials on managing remote work, global hiring guides, global employment reports, and curated employee feedback, the Oyster platform is an excellent tool for managing remote teams. It is particularly helpful for teams in different time zones, and managers can take advantage of the self-paced training or assign them to their team as needed.
Oyster
Customers:
Quora, Wagestream, Impala, and Grover are some of the companies on Oyster’s long list of customers.
Quora, Wagestream, Impala, and Grover are some of the companies on Oyster’s long list of customers.
Oyster
Pricing:
Oyster pricing starts at $29 per month for each contractor, and between $499-$699 per month for each employee (price per employee depends on the selected country). If your business is looking to scale quickly, custom pricing is also available.
Oyster pricing starts at $29 per month for each contractor, and between $499-$699 per month for each employee (price per employee depends on the selected country). If your business is looking to scale quickly, custom pricing is also available.
Best For
Businesses whose employees either reside in or often move to different countries, as well as businesses looking to hire globally would get the most from Oyster.
Why we love it
:
ChartHop is an organizational management platform. They're rapidly evolving into one of the more interesting HR Tech companies in the space.
ChartHop
Review:
ChartHop originally started out as an org chart software vendor. Now, they see their offering as a new category called organizational management. It is for that reason that they've added various new tools to their platform, such as people analytics and headcount planning. These tools can serve you very well when managing a remote team. For example, you can use this tool to facilitate collaboration and communication by getting everyone aligned under the same data. You can also measure the effectiveness of programs like DEI hiring, reduce attrition by identifying risks, and more.
ChartHop
Customers:
better.com, Postman, mongoDB, Remy Cointreu
Remy Cointreau, InVision, Sequoia, BetterCloud, and Postman
ChartHop
Pricing:
ChartHop operates on a per employee per month basis. Their base plan, called ChartHop Build, is $3.50 per employee per month. The next two plans, Grow and Scale, are $7 and $10 per employee per month respectively. They also offer an enterprise level solution with custom pricing.
For an additional $2 per employee per month, customers can get access to ChartHop’s compensation planning system as well.
Charthop has 4 different pricing plans. When billed annually, here’s what they look like:
For an additional $2 per employee per month, billed annually, you also get access to their compensation planning tool. If you want to run your comp cycle on the same platform as your HRIS and performance management software, then this feature is beneficial.
Best For
Remote teams looking for a data-centric solution for team management.
Why we love it
:
Atlas combines industry expertise and technology in their offering, empowering companies to hire and pay employees beyond their borders, while keeping them compliant with local labor laws.
Atlas
Review:
Atlas is a 100% direct employer of record (EOR) and international payroll platform that enables companies to hire and pay talent almost anywhere in the world. They’ll assume the role of legal employer on your behalf; this means once you find employees that you want to hire, they’ll help you manage those employees’ lifecycle, from onboarding to payroll processing - all while keeping you compliant with local labor laws.
Atlas
Customers:
Atlas is used by over a thousand companies, including Toyota, CACI, Bath & Body Works, Coupa, PAE, and Namely.
Atlas is used by over a thousand companies, including Toyota, CACI, Bath & Body Works, Coupa, PAE, and Namely.
Atlas
Pricing:
Add-ons:
Add-ons:
Best For
Companies of all sizes can avail Atlas’ offering. If you’re looking to compliantly hire and pay employees globally, Atlas is worth checking out.
Why we love it
:
Caroo is a versatile employee gifting service. Companies can use it to reward their top-performing employees or to simply cheer all employees with company-wide gifting.
Caroo
Review:
Caroo is a software-enabled employee gifting service. Companies of all sizes can use it to recognize certain employees for their performance or to simply cheer all employees with company-wide gifting. Caroo has different gift boxes to choose from; depending on the box chosen, these boxes can include anything from healthy snacks, premium gifts, and team-building activity items, delivered directly to your employees’ homes.
Caroo
Customers:
Google, Apple, GoodPx, Nike, Hulu, Peloton.
Google, Apple, GoodPx, Nike, Hulu, Peloton.
Caroo
Pricing:
Caroo has 3 packages that are priced as follows:
Caroo also has seasonal boxes that pack season-appropriate snacks. The pricing of seasonal boxes starts at $33.95 plus free shipping.
Caroo has 3 packages that are priced as follows:
Caroo also has seasonal boxes that pack season-appropriate snacks. The pricing of seasonal boxes starts at $33.95 plus free shipping.
Best For
Companies of all sizes looking to reward or simply delight their employees regardless of the occasion.
Why we love it
:
Slack makes it easy for you to stay in touch with coworkers and reports through direct messages, unlimited channels, and video calls. There are more than 2,500 integrations, so you can connect most, if not all, apps you use.
Slack
Review:
When you have a team, or even a whole company, that works from home, having remote team management software like Slack is a must. The benefit of using such a well-known program like Slack is that it has the features and support you need to effectively run a company away from the office.
Connect with coworkers in audio or video calls, private messages, or share insights in specific channels. The built-in tools are centered around communication, but if you need more collaboration, Slack allows you to integrate more than 2,500 other apps to complete your remote work management stack.
Slack
Customers:
Slack is well known among most of the corporate world, so it’s no surprise that it’s used by companies such as Uber, Target, Netflix, Expedia, and the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
Slack is well known among most of the corporate world, so it’s no surprise that it’s used by companies such as Uber, Target, Netflix, Expedia, and the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
Slack
Pricing:
Slack offers four pricing plans:
Slack offers four pricing plans:
Best For
Slack is a great collaboration tool for any size business, and it offers enough plans for scaling up as you need more support, storage, or features.
Why we love it
:
Asana makes it easy for remote teams to stay connected with projects, conversation, and collaboration. Wherever you are, as long as you have an internet connection, you can access projects, assign work, and communicate with your teams.
Asana
Review:
Asana, like most project management software these days, is cloud-based, so you can work from any device, as long as you have an internet connection, which is helpful for remote teams. When you’re managing a team remotely, it can be difficult to find a time slot that works for everyone, but Asana includes status updates, which let you broadcast to the whole team about a project so everyone knows how the work is progressing.
Asana’s built-in communication tools, such as commenting and messaging, also make it easy for everyone to stay in touch without having to wait on email (or remember who to CC).
Asana
Customers:
Amazon, Google, The New Yorker, AT&T, PayPal, Slack, Spotify all use Asana.
Amazon, Google, The New Yorker, AT&T, PayPal, Slack, Spotify all use Asana.
Asana
Pricing:
Asana has four plans:
Asana has four plans:
Best For
In Jan. 2023, Asana made some “quality of life” changes to a few of its features. You can expect the company to update the platform once per month.
Why we love it
:
Papaya combines global workforce and payroll management into a single global platform that's capable of connecting you to a wide network of verified local vendors.
PapayaGlobal
Review:
Remote work means employees all over the world. It probably also means contractors who work for you part time. Whether you are paying construction workers in South Africa or part time software engineers in Australia, PapayaGlobal is a payroll provider who can handle your needs. They'll also serve as the employer of record for your employees so that you can take advantage of group buying power on benefits.
PapayaGlobal
Customers:
Toyota, GDIT, Microsoft, Wix, Teradata, Ncino
Toyota, GDIT, Microsoft, Wix, Teradata, Ncino
PapayaGlobal
Pricing:
Papaya has 3 plans:
Papaya has 3 plans:
Best For
Medium to large-sized companies looking for a method to pay employees and independent contractors in different countries.
Why we love it
:
Trainual goes beyond the typical LMS functionality; it offers tools for employee onboarding, process documentation, company Wiki, and standard operating procedure (SOP) creation.
Trainual
Review:
Trainual helps companies keep track of all the how-to's in their company which means faster onboarding of new employees and less time searching for the best way to do XYZ once they are on the job. This is a great way to document your company's playbooks for everything from customer facings roles to engineering. And, this sort of knowledge documentation becomes all that more important for remote companies.
Trainual
Customers:
IronMan, UPS, Stanford University, Design Pickle, Harmon Brothers.
IronMan, UPS, Stanford University, Design Pickle, Harmon Brothers.
Trainual
Pricing:
Trainual has two plans with fixed pricing:
A custom plan can also be created for larger companies upon request.
Trainual has two plans with fixed pricing:
A custom plan can also be created for larger companies upon request.
Best For
Medium to large-sized companies looking to streamline the way they train their new hires.
Why we love it
:
Not only is Peakon a great employee engagement solution, it has a ton of analytical functionality that makes it great for people planning too.
Peakon
Review:
In a remote environment, employee engagement software is an essential tool to measure your culture, and ensure your employee population stays connected to their work. Workday Peakon’s Employee Voice solution allows companies to get feedback and act to built a better work environment. This is especially powerful for fast changing companies who need to stay on top of how their employees are feeling with new work norms.
Peakon
Customers:
EasyJet, Verizon, Nando's, Pret, Capgemini
Peakon has a large customer base from multiple countries. Some of its noteworthy customers are Netflix, Airbus, and AstraZeneca.
Peakon
Pricing:
Peakon has a three-tiered pricing structure:
The pricing of the above plans isn’t disclosed on Peakon’s website. Contact their sales team for a price quote according to the size and scope of your operation.
Workday Peakon has custom pricing so the best way forward would be to request a demo.
Best For
Large and enterprise-sized organizations who can put all of Peakon's features to good use.
Why we love it
:
Featuring a modern and intuitive interface, Lessonly is versatile training and coaching software that’s loved by nearly 4 million teammates.
Lessonly
Review:
From small companies to the Fortune 500, employee learning and development is incredibly important. Remote work means new challenges for onboarding and upskilling workforces. Lessonly's simple to use learning management system allows you to quickly build and deploy training materials. They also have a host of content around remote work specifically.
Lessonly
Customers:
HelloFresh, Trunk Club, McAfee, Salesloft, Jostens, Lending Home
HelloFresh, Trunk Club, McAfee, Salesloft, Jostens, Lending Home
Lessonly
Pricing:
Lessonly has two plans:
The pricing of the above plans isn’t disclosed on Lessonly’s website. Contact their sales team for a price quote accordingly to the size and scope of your operation.
Lessonly has two plans:
The pricing of the above plans isn't disclosed on Lessonly's website. Contact their sales team for a price quote accordingly to the size and scope of your operation.
Best For
Companies of all sizes wanting to streamline the way to provide training to their employees.
For the uninitiated, remote work means employees are working from outside of the office, typically from their homes. This term is almost exclusively applied to white collar knowledge workers who are doing most of their work via computers or communication that can be accomplished across disparate locations.
From an HR perspective, remote work allows for many benefits including access new talent pools as now you are not limited to your current geography — but it comes with its own set of challenges (more on that below). Simply put, there is something to be said for the collaboration and teamwork among employees that work in the same office, which is difficult to replicate with a remote team. Fortunately, remote team management software helps make it easier to replicate so your employees still feel like they are a valuable part of your organization.
With that, here are common use-cases for top remote work tools:
As great as remote work can be, there are some common challenges that can arise if you’re not properly set up to manage it. Here, we outline a few considerations, mistakes, and recommendations so your remote work efforts are a seamless extension of your workforce.
There are a lot of benefits to having a remote workforce — and typically, you hear about the benefits from the perspective of a remote worker. To really get a sense of the benefits a company reaps from having a remote workforce, we caught up with Chanell Alexander, editor of RemoteHabits. Here’s what she had to say about key remote work benefits:
Before investing in any remote work management solution, you should schedule a demo with your platform(s) of choice. They’ll give you the opportunity to see how everything works and ask questions to make sure it’s the right fit for your organization.
Here are some questions we recommend asking:
How you implement a remote work strategy is so important for the success of your employees — and your company as a whole. Here are a few ways to make remote work a high-functioning component of your business that keeps employees engaged and happy, fosters company culture, and brings in the most productivity for the business. You can also learn from an interview done with a PeopleOps pro who's run a remote team for years now.
Remote work is an arrangement where employees for a company may telecommute and complete their work from anywhere without having to physically be in an office building or on location.
Remote work management tools are software solutions designed to allow companies to engage employees, collaborate, and grow their business without having a physical office presence.
Remote work management tools include employee engagement software, video conferencing software, learning management systems, communication tools, payroll/benefits software, and more.
With remote work, companies have access to larger talent pools, the barrier of entry to business is lower, employees have increased flexibility, and companies can operate at a lower cost.
Be wary of common mistakes when managing remote employees, including miscommunication, poor coordination, time zone mis-management, and burnout.
As we said earlier, remote work is on the rise. Currently, 43% of U.S. employees work remotely to some degree. And it’s becoming a key value proposition for employees and candidates. In fact, some employees will only take a job if it is remote. The global coronavirus pandemic is likely testing your company’s ability to operate remotely, so you’re already learning a lot about what’s working and what isn’t. Listen to the feedback you’re getting and use it to create a more formal strategy to foster and better manage remote workers.
And remember, at the end of the day, remote work success really comes down to two core functions: communicating and sharing. How you do these effectively depends on the tools you choose to invest in. So think about the struggles you’ve been facing now, identify a few tools that could help, and schedule your demos.
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