Despite its hiding in plain sight, one of life's best-kept secrets is: We are all figuring it out—and sometimes making it up—as we go along.
And when it comes to working from home, in the grand scheme of things, we are just starting to figure out remote work.
Managers are learning how to transition to and manage fully remote or hybrid teams.
Employees are grappling with massive changes to their day-to-day routines.
And everyone is trying to stem the overflow of work into what used to be exclusively personal spaces (both physical and mental).
To that end, we've compiled a segmented list of the best WFH books, resources, courses and tools for remote employees.
Resources to Develop WFH Communication Skills
The rise of remote work changes the nature of communication at work. With less in-office interaction—among other challenges—remote workers may have a harder time getting promoted.
Collaborating effectively while working remotely requires both new skills and a fresh take on old skills.
The following resources cover topics as varied as how to network more effectively to how you can blend synchronous and asynchronous communication.
Books
How to Win Friends and Influence People: A timeless classic and must-read. Author Dale Carnegie teaches you to make people like you, persuade others, and achieve lasting culture change.
The Elements of Style: Written communication takes on renewed importance in a world of remote work. And this manual on clear, concise writing will take your written communication up a notch (or two) in less than 50 pages.
Work Together Anywhere: Author Lisette Sutherland offers a blueprint meant for individual employees, managers, teams, organizations, and execs. Grab this book for a thorough guide to better remote collaboration.
Remote: Office Not Required: Authored by the founders of Basecamp, this book serves as a guide for upgrading your remote work lifestyle while maintaining high performance.
The Ultimate Guide to Remote Work: Having been 100% remote since their founding, Zapier knows a thing or two about remote work. In this post, they share it all.
Resources on Using and Selecting Remote Work Tools
A cursory online search for remote work tools will yank you neck-deep into a sea of “solutions.”
The resources below will help you learn to swim with some of the most popular tools remote workers use to do their work better.
Courses
Learning Zoom: Learn the ins and outs of using Zoom, the popular web conferencing software, in 45 minutes.
Learning BlueJeans: Collaborate more effectively with BlueJeans Meetings by taking this 71-minute course on using BlueJeans for web conferences.
Microsoft Teams Tip & Tricks: If your employer uses Teams, this 65-minute course is for you. Nick Brazzi runs through how you can use Teams to work more efficiently, whether you’re a beginner or a power user.
Blogs
Best WFH Tech for Working Remotely: From meeting software to project management and everything in between, check out this blog for the best WFH productivity tools.
Best Project Management Tools: nTask is a project management work-from-home tool, and they created a list of the best project management tools for you and your team to choose from.
Managing Remote Teams
Managers and executives are the lynchpin for any organization’s transition into a remote or hybrid workforce.
The resources below provide the perspectives and examples that managers need to plan, implement, and oversee the ongoing transformation caused by Covid-19.
Books
Vital: A Better Way to Have Meetings When Everyone is WFH: This free handbook is an investigation into the meeting cultures of Amazon, Atlassian, Zoom, Slack, and Apple. It’s filled with best practices and habits your organization can develop to better run and manage remote meetings.
The Remote Facilitator’s Pocket Guide: Remote management coaches Jay-Allen Morris and Kirsten Clacey wrote this book for anyone seeking to get more value from remote meetings. It’s packed with actionable tactics and principles to improve your organizational approach to remote meetings.
Blogs
What's Your Company's Emergency Remote-Work Plan?: This piece from the Harvard Business Review lays out five steps for business leaders to use the disruption caused by Covid-19 to reimagine the way they work remotely.