Improve your Productivity [v2]

Lex Sánchez Torres
7 min readMar 10, 2022

Slack Tools

We continue our series with productive tools for Slack.
This week I found some very promising and interesting tools for teams working remotely.

As always, to the point:

Team Culture

HeyTaco

Morale might decline when employees are cut off from one another. HeyTaco addresses this issue by fostering active communication and rewarding team members for their efforts. It allows your workers a fun opportunity to support one another and reinforce their work community remotely as one of the highest-rated HR and Team Culture Apps. The best thing of this app connection is that the tacos you add to the message may mount up, and colleagues can climb the leaderboard by recognizing their accomplishments at work. Users may exchange their tacos for a variety of incentives or prizes that you’ve included in your site.

Donut

Donut allows you to spend some time each week getting to know the other team members, so everyone does not feel so isolated. Allows your team members to have one-on-one video chats while enjoying a virtual donut or cup of coffee. It’s the ideal icebreaker app since it pairs up two users on the site at random to meet and converse in order to improve business culture and cement working ties.

Bonusly

Recognizing hard work from your staff might be tough when your organization is spread out over several locations. Remote employees frequently feel cut off and out of the loop. Encourage your staff by using Bonusly to recognize and reward their efforts throughout the platform.
Appreciation from colleagues and managers is an excellent method to inspire your team, keep them focused on the company’s strategic goals, and boost morale. Additionally, everyone can see these compliments, which helps with staff retention and general job happiness.

Assembly

If you have remote workers, maintaining a good work environment can be difficult. Assembly promotes excellent business morale in the virtual workplace by allowing employees to recognize and appreciate their coworkers. With powered reports, you could see how each department collaborates and which areas require greater attention in order to achieve common objectives. Incentives and awards are an excellent approach for your staff to engage positively with one another. By leveraging Assembly to develop close connections with birthday or milestone messages, you can reinforce your business culture and deepen those professional ties.

Polly

Polly can assist your business in gathering information on how everyone on your remote team is performing, or if you require rapid input on processes or procedures from your team. Allow Polly to save you time and energy so you may put it to better use elsewhere.
With this tool, you can create a simple poll to determine the ideal day and time for your next Zoom employee meeting. When your workers need time off or need to postpone a key meeting, check in with them to see how they feel about the processes.

Team Updates & Management

Range

It takes time to check in with your remote staff, especially if you have a large company. This operation is made easier by the use of range. Rather of having your team members communicate nonstop throughout the day, Range streamlines the check-in process so that everyone gets the most out of their workday.
Range allows you to keep your team in sync without having to communicate with them on a daily basis. Your staff will be able to spend more time working instead of constantly updating other departments on their progress if this information is collected properly.

Ally OKRs

It might be difficult to set the correct goals for your team. With their simple Slack app, Ally OKRs may assist in this process. Employees stay engaged when they have access to shared goals and project management tools.
With every process, Ally assists your business in focusing on the essential objectives so you may spend less time managing and more time achieving. It’s critical to keep all of your staff focused on the same goal if you want to see excellent outcomes. OKRs keep team members engaged and on track by allowing them to see how their actions affect the project.

Friday

Friday is a team communication tool that serves as both a daily schedule and a means to remain in touch with your remote team. While lowering the amount of meetings, you may complete check-ins for team updates, offer praises to team members, and participate in engaging icebreakers to get to know coworkers.
The option to arrange check-ins and updates, such as with a daily standup meeting, is the most helpful aspect of Friday in Slack. It’s simple to set your daily standup questions on Friday and have a Slack notification alert your team when it’s time to input the answers. Responses will be re-posted in Slack, and you can also request a roll-up report to check how many individuals took part.

StatusHero

StatusHero is the solution for your team’s productivity if you’re looking for an effective strategy to prevent ineffective meetings or emails. This team communication tool allows businesses to gather important data and offer it to their employees in a less disruptive manner. StatusHero is an excellent tool to streamline project management by removing the need for time-consuming meetings and bringing pertinent information to light when meetings are required.
A simple check-in regarding daily progress and goals might elicit responses from your team members. This data is combined with your project management systems to provide a clearer view of where everyone stands on their assignments. StatusHero generates a progress report that everyone can see to stay up to date on current tasks or projects.

Hrvey

Keeping track of vacation or time off when you manage a big remote staff may be difficult. Hrvey assists you in properly managing staff absences so that your company does not find itself short on labor.
Employees may request time off using the built-in chatbot, which will then be sent to the appropriate persons for approval. It’s easy to arrange and accept because it’s built directly within the Slack platform. Hrvey will even give you notifications regarding employees who have scheduled time off so you don’t forget.

Games & Fun

Wordsgame

All of the spelling bees are being summoned! Wordsgame is a fascinating vocabulary game that tests your ability to form words. Within 60 seconds, players must respond in the thread with all the words they can think of that can be formed with the given letters. At the end of the timer, the results are presented and the person with the most words wins.

Icebreaker

This is a fun way to connect with your colleagues while taking a 5-minute break from work. Icebreaker games, such as This or That, are a great way to break the ice. Icebreaker questions, Two Truths and a Lie, and How Well Do You Know Your Colleagues are great fun!

Trivia

This is a lot of fun! Ricotta Activities & Trivia allows you and your team to play asynchronous trivia, icebreakers, and fun social games. Compete with your team in trivia contests of your choice, such as Marvel, Friends, or Star Wars. With a real-time leaderboard, you can set your start and end times and play whenever you want.

Codenames

Do you’ve any idea what Code Names is? In a nutshell, Codenames is a guessing game in which players try to figure out which words in a sentence are associated with another player’s one-word clues. Players are divided into two groups: red and blue. One person from each team is appointed spymaster, while the others act as field agents (operatives).

So far, some wonderful tools developed for Slack. I am sure some of them can help (us) at some point in (y)our daily work.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. And I hope to see you soon.

--

--

Lex Sánchez Torres

Let’s grow together, learning and sharing about digital products! 💻