It has been proven time and again that communication is key to a successful business and culture. According to Six Sigma Online, “good communication skills enhance the business process as a whole.” When a company has various departments that need to come together with a common goal, communication is the only way to bring the process together… especially when your team may be working virtually or from different offices! Luckily, technology is making this easier than ever. With the new year comes more communication tools than ever to allow everybody to stay on the same page! We’ve listed some of the best here… let us know if you know of others that should be on our radar!:
– Yammer: Used by over 200,000 companies worldwide Yammer is a private social network that helps companies to share information across teams and organize projects. It has a variety of features including allowing employees to upload their pictures and areas of expertise. Employees can share documents, create notes and make social content.
Find out more: https://about.yammer.com/product/features/
– HipChat: This is a great team chatting tool that allows employees to chat with groups or privately while also sharing documents and photos. It even has video calling and screen sharing. It can be used on any device as well. It allows employees to essentially work next to each other, no matter where they are located.
Find out more: https://www.hipchat.com/
– Asana: Asana is a project management tool that allows communication and collaboration without email. It puts conversations and tasks in one place and it is all actionable and tied to the next task. It has roadmap planning to categorize goals, sprint planning to keep everybody on the same page and then detailed project planning.
Find out more: https://asana.com/
– Trello: Similar to Asana, this is a great project management tool allowing employees to see every aspect of a project all in one place at one time. Best part – it’s free! It uses virtual cards that you can drag and drop to show progress. You can also drag the cards to employee’s profiles to assign them the task. Trello will adapt to your project, team, and workflow.
Find out more: https://trello.com/
– Spark: A simple tool that allows employees to communicate each other via instant message. It is faster and more secure than big IM programs like Yahoo! Messenger. It has a great interface which emoticons and color coding to distinguish between statuses. Plus, it encourages comradery among employees allowing them to be connected and converse no matter where they are in the office.
Find out more: http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/spark/
What program does your company use and do you think it contributes to your success? Here at Treehouse, we keep it old school with good old Google Chat. However, as we grow we look forward to incorporating one of these great programs into our daily routine!