You have finally decided to pay attention to the requests of your potential hires; a lot of them want the ability to work remotely, let’s say from their expensive apartment in bustling Chicago, and after careful consideration, you’ve decided that you would like to give the process a try. You are aware, however, that even while some remote employees may respond to calls on their mobile phones, many want an alternative communication method, and we’ve found four great software tools that will help you to efficiently manage your remote staff.

Email

Yes, we understand that you know how to use email, but, frankly, if you try to run your business with your ancient Yahoo mail account, you may find some bumpy roads ahead. Of course, many businesses are locked into Outlook, and we feel there’s a good reason for that.

For organization, accountability, storage, and ease of use, Outlook is great -- some think it’s the best. Even some lawyers use the Outlook calendar function so they won’t miss deadlines. While we know that Gmail has some great attributes, we just don’t feel it is a clean as Outlook but feel free to decide for yourself.

Asana

When you are deep into a project and working with your team, you need a way to tell everyone what they need to do. Again, multiple calls or conference calls can be clunky and tedious. If you use a task management system like Asana, for example, you can assign work to every member of your team and track individual and group progress.

Take this a step further and consider Basecamp, a platform that not only allows you to communicate and send tasks to others, you can also trace documents and have them labeled so that there are not eight circulating versions of the same original document. Instead of using multiple systems and patching them all together to get what you need, Basecamp provides a load of functionality.

Slack

Again, texts are great, but finding the right group on your phone can be treacherous because sending sensitive information to the wrong person or group can be a fatal error. With a program like Slack, you can communicate directly and easily with individuals or a group. Think about Slack like a grown-up AOL Instant Messenger. Need your SEO expert quickly? Just type in a message and your expert will see your message on his or her screen or on their mobile device instantly.

Specialized Systems

If you have a catering business, for example, there is catering software available to help make your business run more smoothly. Many lawyers are turning to Clio, a comprehensive legal office backend system that does everything from task management to timekeeping, and document storage to billing. Someone undoubtedly has developed software for your business, and if you don’t see it yet, you can be assured that it is coming soon.

Remote employees expect that you will already have these systems in place to do your diligence now and get those powerful platforms integrated so that you can be ready to fully communicate with your new remote staff.