How to Implement a Flexible Workspace in Your Business
- 11 Min read
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Try it nowOnline workspaces help you stay on the same page as your teammates and clients. Online workspaces are unified digital environments where you can access all the data you need, share insights and even communicate with others. These workspaces offer convenient, time-saving options both for big enterprises and small startups.
However, not every workspace is a perfect fit for your company and its business needs. Some of them lack built-in features or add-ons, have a complicated structure or just aren’t super convenient to use. Picking a random online solution isn’t the best way to solve your problems. You need to consider a lot of factors beforehand.
So how do you pick the top online workspace for your team so that it has everything you need to effectively achieve your goals? We got you covered! In this post, we gathered all the best solutions that would fit companies of any size and niche. Read on and pick your ultimate favorite!
Online workspaces are centralized virtual environments that allow users to get equal and free access to the same type of content. These are pretty popular among teams and departments in a company.
With various integrations and add-ons, virtual workspaces help create a universal space for all your coworkers to communicate, share new ideas and feedback, set up project plans and much more.
Online workspaces are becoming more popular each year. Over 3 billion people are using Google Workspace alone, while others opt for different online collaboration services. But what are the main reasons people stick to digital workspaces? We’ve picked some of the most popular reasons:
Collaboration tools need to be convenient, intuitive and helpful in your team’s daily work routine. For effective project management and communication with your team, the workspace you choose needs basic features that will fit any company and need universally. Let’s see what makes an excellent online working environment.
Once you pick an online workspace, you want it to be as universal as possible and to contain the essential tools. These can be calendar or email integrations, built-in chat boxes, customization features, etc. Make sure the workspace you like has everything you need to avoid switching between other apps and therefore lower distractions.
As a team, you’re working with huge piles of online documents, files and media. Whatever the type and format of the content, it’s always nice to be able to work with it in a single place. That’s why you need to be sure you can easily share, upload and look through video files, text docs and audio recordings in your workspace for maximum convenience.
A wide range of functions facilitates more processes and helps automate them and solve tasks faster. This should not just include service integration notifications but also progress trackers, comments, shared document processing and so on. Plus, online workspaces offer companies a custom range of tools so that they avoid overpaying for unnecessary functions.
Customizable workspaces allow you to use only the tools you need, add necessary integrations and even add your company’s branding to dashboards and task lists you show to your clients. That’s why you should find a solution that has all these capabilities for you and your employees. This will not just add more reliability from clients and partners to your brand but also add more comfort to your team members.
Having a lot of sensitive information, passwords and personal data stored in online workspaces and corporate databases, it’s crucial to ensure everything is safe. That’s why you should use tools that provide security features and have access settings you can manage. This will help avoid sharing information outside the company and unexpected data leaks.
Sure, most of your employees are familiar with technology and know how to use multiple complex tools. However, you might hire interns or have other coworkers who haven’t used any of these at all. Hence, to ensure maximum comfort for everyone, your online workspace needs to be easy to use, and you should provide proper instructions on how to use it. This helps teams work and stay on the same page instead of wasting time trying to learn the system themselves.
This is one of the most secure and reliable data storage options. Clouds are centralized, and you can easily limit or grant access to it, manage its capacity and keep track of all corporate data and sensitive information for years. Nowadays, you can encrypt your storage and protect it from possible hacker attacks. Plus, it’s way more convenient (and eco-friendlier) than storing every document in paper form.
Once you realize you need an online workspace to enhance productivity and improve team collaboration, follow these next steps.
Whether a fully remote, in-house or hybrid group, you’ll need to consider the most convenient means of communication that would fit everyone. This can be a team chat in messengers or social media, a dedicated work network, an online meeting system or a planning dashboard. The best option would be to integrate this tool into your collaboration system so your colleagues won’t get distracted switching between different apps.
Proper collaboration needs to become a habit in your workspace. To foster this, you should work things out with your colleagues. Organize trainings, show everyone how your new cooperation tool works and give your teammates time to get used to it. Make them believe it’s not another app they won’t need but a helping hand in their daily tasks.
It’s essential to organize your workspace and make it comfortable to use for every team member. If you’re working with multiple departments on joint projects, categorize tasks by the area of responsibility, share documents with relevant groups and make sure your duties don’t mix up. Make your online workspace as clear as possible and ensure everyone knows where to search for necessary information.
Keep up with the latest tools and apps that can facilitate your work and collaboration with your team members. Examine your team’s needs and how you can enhance their working routine. Test different tools, integrate the most used apps if possible and analyze their effectiveness afterward to see if they’re worth the money.
Now that we’ve covered what a perfect online workspace needs to increase your team’s productivity and improve internal communication, time to look at the best services to help you. Below, you’ll see the top five contenders that won’t disappoint you!
FuseBase (formerly Nimbus) is a universal online workspace that helps your team communicate and solve issues in one convenient location. The tool offers a lot of built-in tools like chats, comments, video, audio recording and many more to facilitate internal communication and get rid of switching between communication tools forever.
The main perks of the FuseBase include:
FuseBase (formerly Nimbus) is the best fit for remote teams of any size and niche as it encompasses all the essential features for proper communication and task coordination. Find out how to manage your workspaces in our guide.
Slack is a corporate social network for teams of any size and purpose. The tool allows you to quickly communicate with your team, share necessary documents fast and create comfortable conditions for communication between different departments and project groups.
Here are Slack’s main features:
Slack works best for teams who constantly communicate and need to share information quickly.
Jira is a corporate workspace that mostly fits big enterprises with complex projects and management systems. It can be quite complicated to learn how to work with the tool since it has a complicated interface.
However, Jira includes various features and add-ons to handle workflows, create reports and ensure proper task allocation between your coworkers. Plus, it provides custom packages for companies so they can pick the necessary functions for work.
The main features of Jira include the following:
Jira is the best solution for enterprises with complex projects and workflows as it has all the assets for proper structuring and organizing them.
Monday.com isn’t just a practical and well-known work operating system. It allows you to customize workflow and integrate special tools tailored to the purposes of your team or department. This tool offers integrations for marketers, developers and project & sales managers. It’s got a slick, intuitive design, so it won’t be a problem to work with Monday, even if you haven’t used something like this yet.
Monday.com has the following features:
Monday.com will fit middle-sized agile teams that want to ensure smooth collaboration and constantly keep track of the group’s productivity and progress.
Trello is a more accessible version of Jira, so it’s suitable for more companies and people of different levels of experience. It’s an easy, drag-and-drop-based task planning tool with features necessary for prompt and effective communication between small and middle-sized teams. It’s an excellent tool for automating work-related processes and ensuring transparent project completion and sharing feedback.
Here’s what Trello offers:
Trello is your choice if you want your colleagues to easily integrate into a new corporate culture and quickly learn how to use a new online workspace.
As you see, there are numerous options you can choose from to facilitate team collaboration and project management in your company. Online workspaces can provide a variety of opportunities for your colleagues, lower distractions and enhance the efficiency of every team member.
Once you’ve seen the best online workspaces, you can try them out, compare their functionality and eventually start using one of them to meet business goals with complete readiness. However, you may have noticed that some of them fit different types of companies. One of the most universal solutions here is FuseBase (formerly Nimbus). It perfectly fits remote, in-house, and hybrid working teams, and it’s suitable for both huge corporations and startups. Let’s get started with our guide.
Try it out for free to feel the difference and boost your team’s efficiency right away!
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