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Starting a new project with clients, partners or freelancers often requires too many tools that don’t easily connect to each other. This makes work between organizations unnecessarily difficult, time-consuming, and inefficient. To solve this, we built Rock which allows anyone to start collaborating on a project within seconds with messaging, tasks, and everything related to a project in one space.

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Managing relationships with clients is a big part of your job when freelancing. Keeping a close relationship with clients is key for all freelance services including copywriting, design or engineering work.

Efficient and smooth collaboration with clients ensures that you can meet deadlines and build long lasting connections. However, setting up smooth collaboration flows is often easier said than done.

How do you make sure that communicating with clients is effective and tailored to their needs?

Read along to learn more about some best practices. We have gathered workflows and best practices from freelancers all across Rock which you can easily implement in your next freelance project!

What does good client management look like for a freelancer?

You want your clients to be heard and understood, all while meeting their expectations and deadlines. Likely you have more than one client, and all of them require your input on the daily or at least weekly or monthly basis.

This means you need to learn how to balance your time on each client effectively and efficiently. Don’t forget about at the same time providing personalized support, at the end of the day every client wants to feel like you’re prioritizing their project.

To do so, you need to create processes, workflows and systems that support this. Here are 7 habits most of our freelancers mentioned when discussing client management on Rock.

1. Balance personal with scalable

How do you keep your communication with multiple clients personal yet scalable? You need to set up a system which allows you to provide personalized support on your client projects in a scalable way.

Define typical projects you work on and create templates containing specific workflows. The templates might include systems, steps, and playbooks. You can use these templates every time you start a new project and adjust them depending on the needs of your client.

Think of a welcome or project start note that is shared in the beginning of a project. Feedback forms at certain milestones can also be scalable but personalized to your brand and project experience.

A common way to keep track of these activities is by implementing internal task management to set reminders about certain milestones or completed activities.

2. Easy access to information

Think about which information or files have to be shared with a client before starting a project. Making all relevant information such as project details and deliverables easily accessible will save you time. It also gives clients a more professional and well-prepared first impression of you.

Make sure your client knows how to access all information they might need. You should inform them of the documentation and grant access at the beginning of any project.

Neither you nor your client need to waste time searching for files or information across multiple folders, apps or long email threads.

Implementing this open up valuable time as clients don’t have to reach out to find files, reports or workflows. You can use this gained time to focus on nurturing the relationship, accelerate implementation, gather feedback or provide support.

3. Overview of progress

It’s crucial to provide your clients with an overview of your progress regarding projects you work on. This allows you to avoid miscommunication and make sure that the final result aligns with expectations.

You might want to establish a process and use a project management tool to keep your clients in the loop. A defined process and efficient tools work way more effectively than scattered progress pings via, for instance, email.

It also gives room for more asynchronous work. Clients can chime in whenever they have time if you update work through a shared system. No need to wait for a meeting or scroll through a messy email thread.

4. Fast and seamless communication

Communication is key. You should make sure that your clients are able to get in touch with you effortlessly. Make sure to have internal communication strategies that align with your brand voice and business offering.

It’s important to keep conversations flowing. Rock has a mobile app and offers the option to send audio messages. This way you can make sure that communication is fast and seamless anywhere, and can be taken on the go.

5. Make it effortless to enter in contact for first projects

It should be easy to start a conversation with you to discuss a new project or start working together. The Quick Connect feature on Rock comes in handy here.

We built Quick Connect in order to make it easier and quicker for everyone, including freelancers, to open new communication channels.

If you use Quick Connect, your clients can scan your QR code or click on your personal link to open a space with you to communicate. You can share the QR code and/or the link on your website, email, or any other external page.

6. Relationship building

It is cheaper and more efficient to keep existing clients than to search for new ones. Also, satisfied clients who are in touch with you even after a project might spread the word and refer friends or other businesses to you.

It’s very beneficial to stay connected with your clients even after the official project. You never know when a new opportunity arises. Build a long lasting relationship and stay in touch with your clients via, for instance, a newsletter.

Alternatively, you can build a community where your previous clients can connect with each other and keep their relationship with you.

7. Avoid multi-channels

Using several different channels for your communication and collaboration with clients can become confusing for both parties.

Things get messy if you use email, a messaging app, a separate cloud storage and a project management tool simultaneously. It gets quite time-consuming to find relevant information fast and you might not now where you left off in terms of communication.

By using one application for everything you can be sure that the information or files will be found within that one tool. You don’t need to switch your focus between different applications. It saves you time and stress.

How to manage your clients from one place

We’ve talked with freelancers who use Rock to manage UX and low-code development, content writing, design, engineering and other workflows. They share their experiences and suggestions on how to organize spaces, set up workflows and take the best out of Rock as a freelancer.

Here are three spaces we often see freelancers manage on Rock:

• Client spaces
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Communities

Client spaces

You can create dedicated spaces on Rock for each client you work with and invite them for free.

By creating a space per client you will be able to stay highly organized. Each client, their project information and communication will be grouped and easily accessible. Client spaces can be useful for day-to-day communication, project management and documentation.

Day-to-day communication

Use client spaces for seamless day-to-day communication. Discuss daily activities and quickly catch-up with your clients by leveraging full-fledged messaging functionality in every space.

The chat is at the forefront of a space and intuitive to use. This makes it a great solution for direct communication with the client. Leverage reactions, audio messages, polls, threads and so much more to keep the conversation going.

Sometimes you might need to arrange a quick video meeting with your client.  Rock offers the Meetings mini-app in ever space with integration to Zoom, Google Meet and Jitsi and Loom.

This can be beneficial for freelancers as they can connect their video conferencing account to Rock and start a meeting when other channels are not cutting it.

Project management

Besides day-to-day communication, you can use your same client spaces to manage ongoing projects. Project management through tasks mini-app will have you strongly equipped in managing your next project while involving clients..

You can toggle between multiple task views including board, list and calendar. The task board view allows you to visualize projects by dividing tasks in different columns and stages. Categorize tasks and filter them depending on your needs by leveraging labels, priority, assignees and so much more..

The comment section within each task makes it easy to follow up or have a more focused discussion with the client. This way you can make sure that both parties are always on the same page.

Documentation

Rock allows you to document relevant information so it’s easily accessible and safely stored.

The Notes mini-app can be used to store general information that is relevant for your client projects. It might contain some project guidelines, rules or briefings. When you add this information to notes it becomes easily accessible anytime. Otherwise, it might get scattered across different channels and eventually lost.

The Files mini-app is helpful if you often share files with your client. This can come in useful if you’re a copywriter, doing website project management, or graphic designer. Connect cloud storage providers such as Google Drive, Figma, Miro or Notion to Rock and share files with your clients without searching across folders or sharing links across messages, tasks and notes.

You can even attach files from a cloud storage of your choice to any task. It allows you to share task related files with your clients easily.

CRM space

Besides dedicated client spaces on Rock you can also create a space for yourself which serves as a CRM system.

This allows you to keep track of projects and details of current, past or potential clients. You don’t need to invest in any additional tools as spaces can be adjusted to support this use case.

Here’s how freelancers can manage their ongoing projects with a CRM space on Rock:

1. Use the task board as your main CRM view

Use the Tasks mini-app in the board view to arrange your CRM system. You can use lists to define the current status of each client.

For instance, you can organize lists as Leads, Active projects, Closed Projects, Revisit Later and more, depending on your needs.

2. Create a task per client

Create a task per client and add all relevant information to the task description. Easily attach any important documents or files such as contracts or invoices.

You can even set a deadline to prospect tasks in case you need to follow up or reach out before a certain date. Make sure you’re assigned to the task to receive a dedicated notification.

With individual task cards you can make sure all contacts, updates and remarks are stored and well-documented. You can update and adjust this information at any time.

3. Use labels and priority status to categorize

Labels might come in handy as you can categorize your clients by labeling them depending on a project type or size.

Labels will help you to visualize your client management and filter across client cards easier. Also, you can use the priority status feature to categorize your clients depending on their size, number of available projects or income potential.

4. Keep project details close by combining the checklist, @mention feature and attaching could files

Use the checklist to include relevant points about each client to keep your documentation neat.

You can @ mention tasks from different spaces. For example, you want to save a task that you were working on in a space with a client. You can mention that task as a reference in a client task in your CRM space. It allows you to easily connect spaces and find information faster.

Moreover, you might want to connect your cloud storage to the CRM space. You can easily attach cloud files to your client’s CRM tasks which will allow you to quickly check which files are relevant to each client.

Community space

Build a community on Rock! Do you design websites? Or write content? Whatever it is that you do as a freelancer, you can bring your target audience together by creating a themed community space on Rock.

Invite your former, existing or potential clients to the community for free. You can engage your community by asking stimulating questions, sharing industry news and creating polls to gather opinions.

You can use the Topics mini-app to spark more in depth discussion while reducing the noise! This way the discussions will be structured and people will be able to choose which topics they want to follow, similar to a discussion board.

The community space can become a unique tool in your project acquisition funnel. It will help you to nurture connections with your clients, build trust and show that you are knowledgeable in your field. Curious what a community space can look like? Join ours!

Advantages of using Rock for working with clients

Why should you start managing your client relationships on Rock? There are some advantages to using an all-in-one solution to work with clients. Here are two main advantages of centralized client management you should consider.

More functionality

If you manage your client relationships via email you likely know how confusing and long email threads can become.

In addition to that, it’s often difficult to involve new people into email conversations. We all know how easy it is to lose work details or documents between threads that include a different set of participants or revolve around a different discussion topic.

Rock allows you to forget about emails and have all the communication and collaboration in one place. All-in-one messaging combined with tasks, notes and files, provides a seamless experience.

Faster

You will save time as you don’t have to switch between different tools and keep an eye on your emails simultaneously. Using one tool for everything will pay off as you will be able to spend more time getting your work done faster.

Start managing your clients on Rock today

Rock is used by many freelancers around the world to manage and nurture their client relationships everyday.

Having everything in one place will improve your workflows and will get your client relationships to the next level!

‍Sign up today and facilitate your day-to-day client communication, project management, documentation, CRM and community building.

Budget overruns are a manager's nightmare. Even with all the checks and balances in place, you might still exceed the available finances. Underestimated costs can make the best idea turn into a failed project. So budgeting sometimes becomes a test for the success of a project.  

Budgeting is the key skill for ensuring organizations have sufficient financial resources to execute ideas. There are only few skills as critical to running a business as project budget management.

In fact, establishing a budget is the first step you should take to ensure that your plan is reliable and can work out. It also becomes critical if you are looking into how to improve productivity in an organization. 

But what is project budgeting and how can you apply it? In this article you will learn all you need to know to master project management budget planning and take your project to the next level. Let’s get started!

Project Budget Management: What Does it Consist of? 

Project budget management is the process of creating a document to estimate incomes and expenses for a project during a given timing (for instance, the upcoming quarter or year). When you develop your budget, you have to take into account three main aspects: money, people and time.

1. Money. Every project involves costs, regardless of its size and nature. Knowing how much you can spend sets the path for a prosperous launch. And it helps you put some order across the different phases of the project, helping you stay organized at work. Sometimes as the project evolves, the cost forecast changes, so you have to update the project planning budget accordingly.

2. People. Budgeting project management also involves people. When you are managing a project budget, you have to estimate not only financial resources but also human capital.Think on how many people will be involved in the project, what is their required level of expertise and how many hours are they going to work.

3. Time. Time is money, as it translates into productivity. Making sure you're not spending too much time on something unproductive will help you get better results. So having a realistic budget for project management will save you time.

Benefits of Project Budget Management

Why is managing project budgets so relevant? The most obvious reason is that an accurate budget helps you keep costs at bay. It also gives you a clear idea of the project feasibility, so you can see in advance if you can really get started with a certain project.

But there is more to it than that. According to Harvard Business School, these are five main reasons why budgeting is key for running any business:

1. Project budget management helps you achieve company goals and objectives. You can use budgeting to set financial goals. And you can also apply project management budgeting methods to see how those goals evolve.
2. ‍It ensures resource availability. Project management budget planning’s primary function is to ensure you have enough resources to meet your project's goals. By establishing and organizing your finances in advance you can plan task management better and determine which teams require more resources.‍
3. It provides a core plan. A budget is a financial roadmap for the upcoming period. It gives you a plan and shows how much you should earn and spend. The budget is updated as the project gets through that plan.
4. ‍It makes prioritizing projects easier. When you are managing a budget you have to decide which projects and initiatives come first. So having a good understanding of project vs task management is relevant.
5. ‍It can lead you to financing opportunities. Investors highly value documented budgetary information when deciding whether to fund a company or a business project, says the Harvard Business School. Don’t miss out on these opportunities! Master your budgeting skills.

Project Management Budgeting Methods

Now that you know what project budget management is and why it matters, let’s explore how to set up a budget. Here are six different methods:

• Bottom up: individual tasks add up to the overall cost of your project. Each department creates a list of expenses and cost projections, submitted for review. Cross departmental communication is used to keep everyone on the loop. Once agreed, these separate budgets are added to the company’s overall budget. 

• Top down: an overall cost is set and then calculated back. In top down budgeting, the senior management prepares the budget based on objectives, and passes it on to different departments, says the Corporate Financial Institute. The departments create their own budget based on established allocation and goals.

• Parametric estimation: you use industry rates to calculate the budget. Parametric estimating does not focus on every single task, but on the most important ones within the project management framework. An algorithm is used to calculate cost or duration, based on data and parameters.

• Analogous estimation: you compare to similar past projects to calculate the budget. Analogous estimation relies on expert judgment rather than data. It uses experiences from previous or similar projects, comparing its duration, budget, size and complexity, among other characteristics.

• Three point estimate: you calculate the budget based on risk analysis. This technique determines the probable outcomes of future events. It is established through three main points: the best-case estimate, the most likely estimate and the worst-case estimate.

• Earned value analysis: you make a comparison of budget and past projects. “Earned Value Analysis (EVA) allows the project manager to measure the amount of work performed on a project beyond the basic review of cost”, explains senior manager Reichel Chance from the Project Management Institute. 

Common Reasons for Project go Over Budget

How can you fail on your  project management budget planning? When something in the project goes wrong, time and money have to be invested to direct it back on the right track. So execution mistakes - either they are small mistakes or fatal errors - can induce a significant risk of surpassing the estimated budget. These are some of the main mistakes:

• Poor planning. A recent PwC’s Cloud Business Survey showed that just 17% of chief risk officers are brought into projects at the planning stage. Most come to the table much later, which often results in poor planning and bad budgeting.  
  
  ‍Poor organization of a project can make activities take longer than expected. There might be new activities that were not accounted for, or accounted activities that ended up not being relevant. Poor planning can make you waste resources unnecessarily. 

• Lack of coordination. This often happens when people lack professional communication skills, or when cross functional collaboration is not taken into account.
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  For instance, if employees engaged in the project do not fully comprehend its objectives and tasks, they will tend to make mistakes. In turn, managers will demand revisions and corrections, so things have to be remade multiple times. Hence, inadequate stakeholder communication may lead to cost overruns.

• Project changes. Since the business environment is highly dynamic, changes in projects are usually hard to get away from. This happens, for example, when the end deliverable of a project suddenly changes to something else. These changes can affect the whole project budget management plan. 

• Scope changes. The unchecked growth of the project’s scope is a massive problem for project managers. It happens when a project becomes much bigger than expected. Or when some parts that were initially not considered important are added. This occurs if a project’s complexity has been underestimated. 

Best Practices for Managing Project Budget

So how can you prevent going over budget? In the following you can find five project budget management  best practices for maintaining your project budget under control. Try them out:

1. Review frequently. Have an overview of tasks with deadlines to make sure that the work gets completed on time. It will not only help you manage your budget, but also have a better understanding on how to improve work performance.
   ‍
   Use Rock to review and prioritize tasks. Move the project’s tasks to a calendar view to see the starting dates and deadlines more clearly. 

2. Clear overview of progress and costs. In the Tasks mini-app on Rock, use labels, custom fields, lists and statuses to stay up to date on the progress and costs of your project.
   
   The board view in the Tasks mini-app can help by visualizing how the project and its budget are developing. It gives you a clear overview and reduces potential contingencies.‍
3. Implement a Project management framework. You have to choose the right framework to manage a project successfully. Set up a system with rules for everyone in your team to know which tasks they have been assigned. Agile can be good to deal with scope changes. Check out our previous article on Agile vs Waterfall to learn all about this method.‍
4. Enact transparency. Make sure that all team members can clearly see how far the project is getting along, and whether something is taking too long. It will allow you to have more control over your budget. A better transparency will reflect on a more organized project planning budget.
   ‍
   You can use the Notes mini-app on Rock to share relevant information about the budget. This way everyone involved has a quick access to information.‍
5. Communicate clearly. Better communication usually results in more structured budget information. Use clear, well-documented channels to communicate challenges and accomplishments. Also, don’t forget to foster cross departmental communication.
   
   Rock can help to keep your communication structured and in one place. Use chat, polls, or meetings to have quick interactions. You can also use the Topics mini-app for more in-depth and structured discussions.

Software Picks to Make Sure Work Gets Done While Staying in Budget

Which software can you use to avoid last minute surprises on your budgeting? Try out the following remote work tools:

• Rock. We have already given you some tips on how to use Rock for managing project budgets in the best possible way, but there is more to it.
  
  Something to highlight is Rock’s all-in-one project management functionality. Combine messaging with tasks, notes, files, topics and meetings to keep your whole project budget management in one place. Instead of using many different apps, you can use the same platform in a more organized way.Set up your budget and get everyone informed without having to switch between different apps.

• Loom. Loom complements Rock and it can be used to provide feedback in asynchronous work video format. Rock has a Loom integration, so you can share Looms on Rock easily.
  
  Use Looms for different parts of the project budget management process. Share information with your team about the different stages of the project and the budget prospects. Send and record videos at any time, so people can watch them as many times as they want to and leave comments if something is unclear.

• Google Drive. You can connect Google Drive with Rock. Integrate your files to the Files mini-app and have easy access to them. All your project budget related documents will be accessible to everyone in the platform. Learn about what file management is and make your work easier.

• Notion. Just like Google Drive, you can integrate Notion to Rock to work on your budget plan and get everyone on the same page.
  
  ​​Through this integration, teams can connect all necessary documentation from Notion to Rock more efficiently. 

Use Rock to Keep your Project Budget Management in One Place

Rock can help you to plan your budget effectively! Stay on track by sharing information and communicating about the budgeting project management process with your team on Rock.

Integrations such as Loom, Google Drive and Notion will allow you to manage all the budget information in one place. Spend less time switching tools and focus on finishing the project within your budget successfully!

Whatsapp is primarily used for personal communication, however, some companies use it for business. At the first sight this might look as an attractive solution as it's free and easy to use. Nevertheless, switching from WhatsApp to Rock unlocks a new set of functionality that can help your team stay productive.

There are several reasons why you should move your business communication to a more suitable platform. Rock is a great WhatsApp alternative to switch your business messaging. In this article we will highlight some benefits of making this change.

We also lay down the steps to take if you want to seamlessly switch between platforms.

4 reasons to move your business communication away from Whatsapp

There are a few relevant points which you should reconsider if you still use Whatsapp or other messaging-only tools for your business communication. Read on to learn more.

WhatsApp provides only messaging functionality

Even though messaging is an important part of any business’ communication, it’s not everything.

If you rely only on messaging, your team ends up being dependent on synchronous communication. Synchronous communication implies that employees expect others to reply in real time in order to move on with their work. WhatsApp chats get noisy and messy, and it becomes difficult to stay up to date and easily find relevant information.

Rock combines both messaging and tasks. This way communication becomes way more structured and information is easier to find. You can still use chat for general communication but the Tasks mini-app is great for tracking your to-do’s and easily seeing what your colleagues are working on.

On Rock, your team doesn't need to follow long chats to find what’s relevant for them. You can simply create tasks and assign employees, so everyone knows what they need to do.

Each task has its own comments section. Instead of writing everything in one chat, you can discuss each task individually in the dedicated space. This keeps all information easily accessible to the relevant team members.

Communication on Whatsapp is siloed

Often you might need more than one chat to manage your work communication on Whatsapp. This is where it becomes difficult. It can be quite a challenge to communicate across chats as they are not really connected.

For example, if you interact with colleagues on several different projects in multiple chats. It is challenging to manage the work between a number of disconnected streams of communication.

You might need to reference messages or action items which were discussed in a different chat. Whatsapp doesn’t provide a smooth way to interconnect multiple chats and easily reference information across them.

On Rock, you can create Workspaces which enable you to connect your group chats together based on function and focus. Using Workspaces allows you to invite or remove people from multiple spaces at once which saves you time.

Work related communication on Whatsapp is harmful for your work-life balance

It’s likely that you use WhatsApp to communicate with your family and friends. If you also use the same app for work communication, the line between work and personal life is blurred.

That makes it more challenging to disconnect and rest after your working hours.

According to Forbes, a separation between work and private life helps to avoid stress and is critical for your and your colleagues mental health.

Rock allows you to have a dedicated tool only for work communication. It means you won’t see unwanted work related messages coming in during your free time. This will help you to establish a healthy work-life balance.

WhatsApp needs to be combined with another project management tool

WhatsApp is great for chatting but not powerful enough for many teams that want to manage projects. Likely, you need to combine Whatsapp with another project management tool as messaging isn’t enough to establish a sustainable workflow.

Consequently, your team will have to communicate via messages on one tool, and monitor tasks on another one. This type of context switching causes employees to lose focus as their productivity is temporarily reduced every time they have to switch between tools.

Why not keep it all in one place? Rock has a bunch of features beyond the chat that will help you further supercharge your work. Here are a few benefits of Rock which will allow you to do way more than just messaging:

@mention.

You can create and easily mention tasks, notes, topics, files and people in the chat. It provides direct links to the objects you are referring to. As all the objects are on Rock, you don’t need to leave the platform to view them. Everything becomes interconnected and easily accessible!

Tap-to-organize.

Convert a string of messages into a new task, note or topic. No more copy pasting information between platforms so you save time. Also, your chats become clean and organized.

Less context switching.

The fewer platforms in your toolstack, the better the focus. With Rock, everything is integrated so you can stay on one platform and focus on your work with less distractions.

Use import from WhatsApp to quickly migrate conversations and users

Ready to move from WhatsApp to Rock? You don’t need to worry about losing your previous chat history as you can bring it over. You can simply import all your information, users and messages, from Whatsapp to Rock for free.

You can do that in a few easy steps. We’re going to guide you through this simple procedure:

1. Export your chats from WhatsApp

Firstly, export the chats from WhatsApp which you want to bring over to Rock. This is possible on your mobile device only.

2. Import to Rock

You can import a chat directly to Rock when saving from Whatsapp. Whatsapp will show you a selection of different apps to share the exported chat to. Select Rock among these and it will start the importing process.

3. Select the Rock space

Choose a space where you want to import your Whatsapp chat. Alternatively, you can also create a new space to host the messages and invite your WhatsApp contacts to.

4. Map the users you are importing

Invite users that were part of the WhatsApp chat to Rock. This way, the messages are assigned to the correct sender. You can invite people inside and outside your organization to Rock for free.

5. Confirm the import

Your messages and users are now on Rock! You will get notified and will see an ‘imported’ tag to your imported messages.
If you need more detailed information on how to carry on an import, please read this guide to walk you through all the steps in detail.

Switch from WhatsApp to Rock today, it’s free!

Get your team on Rock today to leverage more functionality through tasks, notes, files and meetings. Rock was built with a focus on productivity and collaboration.

Improve your workflow, reduce stress and access a complete overview of what your team is working on from a single app. Pick and choose how to communicate with your team and bring tasks to the finish line.

If you need any support with importing from WhatsApp or have questions to our team, feel free to get in touch with us.

We also encourage you to join the Future of Rock community to learn more about how we organize our work, collaborate with people and stay productive with messaging, tasks and more in one place.

Working remotely can be great. More personal autonomy, less commuting time to the office and a better work-life balance are just some of the pros. But while many people are embracing the flexibility of the virtual work environment, others might feel a loss of connection and structure.

The challenge is to create a solid remote work culture that allows achieving company goals and objectives without making people feel disconnected.

The sense of shared culture that is usually implemented in the office space needs to be effectively translated into the remote work environment.

In this article you will find a guide with some remote work culture ideas to learn how to build a strong culture with a remote team, and how to maintain it through time.

How does remote working impact culture? 

The pandemic has pushed many companies and organizations to become fully remote and try to build an engaging remote work culture.

As a result, the traditional office-centric ways of reinforcing work culture doesn’t work the same way as before.

Adapting to this new working model can be challenging. Especially when it comes to corporate values and interpersonal relationships in the virtual culture.

Zoom happy hours and implementing virtual meeting best practices can help, but they are not enough in the shift to a remote work culture.

Social events are harder to make entertaining without an office environment and it is more difficult staying organized at work with coworkers you can’t casually pass around the office.

That is why interactions in a remote work environment have to be more deliberate and intentional.

In the following, you will learn how to create those interactions through a strong remote work culture. It will also help you to build better connections with your coworkers.

What are the benefits of having a strong remote work culture?

In order to make employees feel more connected and satisfied within their jobs, companies need to reimagine and foster new ways of working remotely.

Creating and implementing a well grounded remote culture lies at the core of a healthy work environment. 

These are some of the benefits of a strong remote work culture.

Lower employee turnover

One of the consequences of caring about how to build a remote team culture is that employees will experience higher levels of satisfaction.

That is why when you implement a healthy remote culture, employees are less likely to leave. People are less stressed and feel better connected to their peers, and the amount of sick days requests also decreases.

Statistics support this claim. According to research by Owl Labs and Global Workplace Analytics, companies that support remote work have 25% lower employee turnover than those that don’t.

And another recent study by PR Newswire concluded that 80% of U.S. workers would turn down a job that wouldn’t offer remote or flexible work.

As a result, if you don’t develop a strong remote culture you will be risking losing actual and potential employees. They might find remote work opportunities elsewhere.

More productive teams

When remote work culture ideas are put into practice, your team becomes more productive.

A strong remote work culture is essential when you look into ways on how to improve work performance.

This way, you can understand better what they are working towards if a work culture is strong and well defined in the virtual environment.

More creativity

Team culture nurtures creativity in the workplace. This happens because employees feel at ease to share their opinions and ideas, and interact with people across  departments.

At the same time, the question of how to build a strong remote team culture leads to exploring new ways to make the work environment more creative.

Increase workplace attractiveness

A strong and positive remote work culture attracts more people.

Employees might leave good reviews and share their experiences of a positive virtual culture with their environment and with potential new colleagues.

It fuels new dynamics and becomes a talent magnet.

How do you maintain company culture while working remotely?

To figure out how to build a strong culture with a remote team, you need to use some communication strategies to introduce changes.

You don’t need to rethink everything – just make the adjustments that better suit the values, nature and size of your company.

There are really not many differences between how small businesses create remote work culture and how it is achieved by big corporations. It all relies on adjusting the mindset and implementing a plan.

Here are some remote work culture ideas to get started with.

Set up a water cooler space

Digital water cooler spaces are essential to engage remote employees because they allow people to chat about more informal topics.

If you’ve ever worked in an office, you probably remember the water cooler as the place you can rest, rehydrate, have a quick chat with a colleague or just take some air. It might as well be the kitchen, the printer or the coffee machine. 

But who says remote employees can’t have those office water cooler spaces too?

In a remote work environment, you can create a virtual water cooler to take a break, relax and connect with others.

Virtual coffee chats

One of the things that is most commonly missed from the traditional office environment are the human interactions.

Set up virtual coffee chats with team members across departments to learn more about each other. This encourages your team to take breaks while meeting others in the company and helps bond teams.

When teams work asynchronously, virtual coffee chats become even more relevant because it allows them to feel more connected with coworkers that don’t usually have much chance to interact with.

Virtual, scheduled coffee chats can foster better relationships in the workplace and increase productivity.

However, it is important to always make these events voluntary. Getting a good remote work culture is also very much adapting to different kinds of people within your team.

Create cross functional and departmental projects

You should have people across functions and departments work and collaborate together. This can strengthen the shared vision and allow everyone to meet each other.

Cross functional teams can spark innovation and grant a more collaborative working environment.

In the remote work culture, these teamwork experiences can really help your team members to expand beyond their area and enhance their productivity, creativity and motivation.

Voluntary virtual office spaces

Create a virtual office space and have it open for those interested in more interaction with the team. Leadership can set up open office hours for the team to come by and chat about anything.

A virtual office gives employees access to a remote working space to interact between each other and organize meetings through virtual rooms and video conferencing.

This way, people can communicate easier with their colleagues and also engage with others that won’t see them in person.

Make use of virtual meeting best practices

A lot of people are burned out from doing constant meetings in their day to day. A lot of them might not be that needed or even useful. In order to avoid this, make use of virtual meeting best practices.

Don’t overuse meetings and make sure that synchronous interactions in remote work environments add value. You don’t want your team to become desensitized to meeting up!

Don’t forget to add check in questions for meetings. It helps ensure high-quality communication and build team relationships.

Also, these meeting agenda examples can bring structure to your meetings and make them more meaningful, practical and valuable.

Celebrate victories and completed tasks

A great way to show appreciation and build a positive culture is to celebrate a job well done. Make sure victories and accomplishments don’t go unnoticed – you have to celebrate them!

In order to create a positive remote work culture, it's always good to find ways to congratulate people on their achievements, such as completing a big task or bringing in that huge client. Sharing success stories and acknowledging victories can hugely improve motivation in the virtual office. 

There are many ways to celebrate achievements in the virtual world. You can send a GIF into a common chat with employers and coworkers to congratulate an employee. Or mention that great success in the monthly meeting.

If you have more time and resources, host a virtual event and make it more fun. Create a memorable experience with the team to celebrate the milestones.

Look into fun voluntary social events

From virtual wine tastings to virtual escape rooms or team member quizzes, social events can enhance teamwork and build a strong remote team culture.

You can set up these and so many more things just so people can interact with each other, learn more about each other, have a less formal interaction and simply have fun.

These events can be fun and entertaining, but remember to make sure they are always voluntary, so no one feels forced to make part of them.

Establish shared goals and objectives

When everyone is working towards the same goals and objectives, people are more likely to be better connected in their interactions. You should make sure teams like Marketing, Sales and Engineering are all aligned on some high level goals and objectives.

This way there will be more understanding and initiative into learning what other people are doing. Make sure that these common goals are highlighted and well shared with the team and that everybody understands them fully.

If everybody is working towards the same target, it is much easier to set everyone up for success, especially in the digital workplace.

Build a strong remote work culture with Rock

Rock allows you to manage your whole team remotely through its multimodal communication.

Combine messaging with tasks, notes and files to communicate and collaborate in your day-to-day. Create unlimited spaces and make sure your team can get work done without switching tools.

All-in-one functionality allows you to keep all communication and projects in one place, which makes it easier for team members to feel more connected as interactions are not scattered across platforms. Anything you need to communicate with your team in a virtual work environment is within one platform! It helps to nurture interactions and empower your remote work culture at the same time.

Healthy remote work culture that lasts

Achieving a healthy remote work culture can be challenging. But it is greatly enriching for both employers and employees in the virtual environment.

It helps you to be more in tune with coworkers, goals and corporate values. And it’s a great way to engage current team members and attract new talent!

No matter your organization’s size or industry. In today’s virtual office, you need to build a remote work culture that lasts. Rock integrates messages, tasks and all-in-one virtual spaces to make it possible. You will find all the tools that you need in just one platform. Get started today!

What is virtual communication?

Before diving into communication strategies for virtual teams, let’s see what we mean by virtual communication. 

In contrast to instantaneous communication, where there’s opportunity for on-the-spot feedback and response, virtual communication tends to lack in those aspects. Gestures, body language, tones and sounds are more easily misinterpreted as there’s no way to immediately clarify the intent behind them. Aspects such as body language and facial expressions may not be present at all in virtual communication, as the two parties may be miles apart.

Virtual communication requires different techniques and tools to achieve the same level of efficiency and effectiveness that is natural in in-person communication. Remote teams must be experts at virtual communication to function well. However, nowadays not only fully remote teams use virtual communication, almost every business also does. 

Some typical virtual team communication tools are:

• Mobile phones 
• Social media platforms
• Email
• Project management tools
• Video conferencing
• Instant messaging apps

So to some extent, most workplaces use virtual communication. But with a few tweaks, strategies, and the right tools, virtual communication can significantly improve business operations. 

Best practices for virtual communication

When a business works remotely, colleagues can’t rely on a ‘natural’ way of communicating. The verbal parts of the conversations don’t easily translate to virtual communication, and there’s an extended reply time as well.

For example, a colleague can’t simply walk past your desk for an immediate answer to a question. High-quality virtual communication is about creating a space where colleagues can communicate just as easily as if they were next to each other. 

The in-person type of office communication is known as synchronous communication. Creating an effective virtual communication strategy is about combining synchronous and asynchronous techniques.

Whether remote or not, there are critical elements to all communication strategies to adhere to:

• Get your message across clearly
• Match communication styles and channels to your team’s needs
• Use a combination of one-on-one and group meetings
• Create space to speak openly
• Document extensively
• Be consistent

With these points always on your mind, it’s time to have a closer look at the strategies you can use to improve virtual communication.

1. Switch to asynchronous work by default 

Asynchronous work isn’t as complicated as it might sound at first. Asynchronous channels, such as virtual assignment of tasks, allow people to focus on their work in their own time. On the other hand, synchronous channels, such as instant messages and meetings, require employees to adapt to each other's timelines.

By applying an asynchronous model of communication, team members can choose their work schedules more freely. Teams don’t need to be always online at the same time to communicate effectively. Organizing around an asynchronous work pattern means a preference towards asynchronous communication while still keeping the space open for discussing urgent matters synchronously. 

 A global, diverse team might experience scheduling issues. There are different time zones to navigate, daily life commitments, school runs, doctor appointments, holidays, or meetings. By leveraging an asynchronous model, these schedule clashes are no longer a problem. Team members become able to easily communicate without immediate timescale pressure.

2. Leverage task management 

Leverage virtual task management to improve communication and information sharing. 

For example, by implementing a project management framework, such as waterfall and agile, you can set rules on how to communicate on tasks. With these rules clearly set, everyone can keep track of progress. When properly managed, structured, and documented, tasks give virtual communication more structure. There is less confusion, the information is readily available and easy to find, allowing for the communication to be more to the point. 

Project management frameworks work by aligning a team. Clear steps, made out of tasks, outline the path to a successful project. For communication, this path is critical because the information is passed between colleagues within a structure. A colleague already knows a lot about a task or a message given to them because the framework provides context.

To fully leverage task management, use the Tasks mini-app in Rock. Import existing tasks from other task management applications and store them in a space next to messages, notes, and files. Communication around tasks and other day-to-day activities is all in one place when using Rock. Rock speeds up communication and efficiency because you don’t have to switch between multiple applications.

3. Reduce the number of meetings

Meetings can be great for nurturing more personal relationships, but make sure to use them when really needed. 1:1 meetings, coffee chats, and creative discussions can add value to remote teams. However, this isn’t always the case.

Many people spend too much time in meetings that end up being useless. It doesn’t always bring teams closer as some online meetings don’t have much engagement. 

Cancel or reduce the number of meetings that are not effective. Instead, concentrate on the meetings that provide value.

To get the most out of your meetings and communication in virtual teams, you can find more insights on virtual meeting best practices on the Rock blog. But two key points in making your virtual meetings more effective are:

• Cancel (or shorten) unnecessary meetings
• Substitute meetings with other tools and resources

Sometimes meetings are essential and can’t be avoided. In these circumstances, the structure is vital. A clear meeting agenda helps you to make the most out of it. You can find more meeting agenda examples on the Rock blog.

Alongside following a meeting agenda, there are some tactics to use during a virtual meeting to improve communication. In the Harvard Business Review, Melody Wilding explains how to tactfully interject during a virtual meeting. Ms Wilding recommends keeping points brief, being assertive, and capitalizing on transition points.

4. Use documentation as much as possible 

Strong documentation practices allow your team to find important information without relying on an immediate response from a coworker.

One of the biggest hurdles remote teams must overcome is asking for help when needed to complete a task. When working remotely, a coworker can’t sit at your desk and run you through a program. So how do remote teams overcome this issue? The answer is documentation.

A team should always have access to all the relevant documents and know how to document their own processes. Members must be able log in at any time or location, and the documentation should be available to access. Information around processes, protocols and day-to-day activities is worth documenting. 

Project documentation keeps teams applying similar strategies, staying up-to-date and reducing un-needed communication. Create documentation in a variety of formats:

• Screen recordings as tutorials
• Standard information documents for procedures
• Templates for communications

There’s so much to keep track of during the workday, it’s vital to categorize and document as much as possible. The more documentation you have, the smoother the work is.

5. Reduce the number of tools you use

There is a lot of context switching when you use different tools for communication and project management. Use all-in-one tools like Rock to combine messages with tasks, notes, files, and meetings in one place.

Condensing the amount of tools is important because it allows for less context switching. When you switch to a new tool, your mind is pulled away from the direct tasks. You’re dealing with a new interface, a new set of functionality, and it’s not connected to your previous thought process.

Alongside the last point, the tools aren’t natively speaking to one another, which costs more time. To integrate the tools, you will likely have to set up non-native integrations with Zapier, for example. However, at the end of the day, the two different tools aren’t designed to completely fuse. 

You can easily reduce the number of tools by changing to an all-in-one solution. Rock provides messaging, tasks, notes, files, and meetings all in one place. Teams don’t have to switch between tools when communicating on different areas of their work in Rock.

Communicate Efficiently, From Anywhere, At Any Time

Combining these best practices for virtual communication with Rock allows teams to supercharge their day-to-day work.

Use asynchronous work as default, leverage task management, reduce meetings, document as much as possible, and reduce the number of tools you use. Bring order to chaos with Rock and allow your team to implement any type of project management framework by signing up for free.

Rock is not only the easiest way to start collaborating, but it’s also the fastest way to start working together. With your own personal Quick Connect anyone can open a space with you on Rock within seconds. 

What you might not know is that you can take Quick Connect anywhere. Instead of sharing an email address or adding a webform to your website, you can instead share your Quick Connect on LinkedIn, a website, email, in person, and more. 

Quick Connect has been around the globe, in over 172 countries to be exact, and there is more to come. It has helped start projects, and begin collaborations, but most importantly Quick Connect has been connecting people on Rock. 

To help you discover just how fast Quick Connect lets you start working together, we are running a contest. All you need to do is share the different places where you added your Quick Connect to enter for a chance to win.

When will the sweepstake take place?

From October 25th till November 8th, we will be powering up your connection with our Quick Connect Anywhere contest.

What are the prizes?

We will select 2 winners at random to receive:

• 1-year subscription to our TEAMS 5 plan, or a 2-year subscription to PRO.
• A personalized onboarding session with one of our Product Specialists

How to enter the take me anywhere sweepstake?

1. Join our space using this link.
2. You will have one entry into the contest for every public place where you share your Quick Connect. To gain an entry simply share a screenshot and the link to where we can locate your Quick Connect link or QR code in our common space.
   Public places include: LinkedIn Bios, Facebook pages, Twitter posts, public blogs, company websites, etc. More examples of where you can include your Quick Connect are provided below.
3. Each entry counts twice if you share it with us on Facebook or Twitter instead.
   For example: if you Tweet a link to where your Quick Connect is located along with the hashtag #quickconnectanywhere @ LetsRockHQ. The entry will count for 2, rather than 1. The same applies to Facebook.
4. Keep in mind that you can only use one channel to share each entry: either in our space, on Twitter, or on Facebook!

Where can I use my Quick Connect?

You can share your Quick Connect in the form of a personalized link or a QR code. Quick Connect can be used anywhere that accepts links or QR codes. Share your link in an email or include the QR code on your website to help anyone quickly get in touch with you. Couple of examples:

1. LinkedIn Bio 

Including an easier way to get in touch with you on LinkedIn can lead to stronger connections. LinkedIn is an important place for you to find clients, partners, and suppliers. By including your Quick Connect in your bio, you can provide them with an easy way to start discussing and collaborating with you. You won’t need to transfer from LinkedIn messages to email to a collaboration tool. With Quick Connect you can directly start working in a space. 

• Head to your profile, make sure your Creator mode is turned On, and click on the Edit symbol.

• Scroll down to the Website section & paste your Quick Connect link in the Link section.

• Then, you will be given the option to create a "Link text" that will show up on your profile such as the one below.

2. Website & Blog

Whether you work in sales or are a marketing agency, the Quick Connect QR code will instantly bring people from your website or blog into a conversation with you. Anyone can follow the Quick Connect link or scan the QR code and open a space with you to chat. You can feature this on your pricing page or customer support page to ensure that current and potential customers have an easy way to get in touch with you. Check out how we do it on our website.

3. Social Media Posts

From Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit to YouTube, you are likely spending many hours engaging with your community. Quick Connect provides you with an easy way to get in touch with your biggest promoters beyond your social media channels. 

You can use Quick Connect to quickly start communities where you foster discussion by providing a direct way for your audience to reach you. Simply add your Quick Connect to a social media post and share it with your audience.

4. Emails & Messages

What if we told you that you can get rid of the pain of losing your conversations and important documents in a sea of emails and messages? You can by using Quick Connect!

Including your Quick Connect link or QR code in your messages to potential partners, customers, and suppliers can help provide you with a place to start collaborating right away. You don’t need to miss out on information that’s shared with you or waste time searching through your inbox to discover all the different messages shared.

Quick Connect is especially useful if you are a freelancer working on websites like Fiverr or Upwork. By sharing your Quick Connect in a message, you can quickly move your collaboration to Rock. Collaborating on Rock gives you access to advanced features such as tasks, reminders, and time-tracking, which enable you to track your feedback, progress and time spent all in one tool.

Now, you should be all set to go. Start connecting, share it with us, and enter our contest to win. For more information on this contest, visit our designated T&C page.

Managing a project is no easy feat. Now imagine doing so without any guidance. No clear outline of the timeline, task distribution, or set budget. Any team would run for the hills and no one could blame them. This is why project scope management matters. Without a thorough project scope, scope creep is likely to arise, reports Forbes. Scope creep in project management refers to uncontrolled changes in a project’s scope, after its initiation. When this happens, a project is likely to derail with overspent budgets, delayed items, and low-quality work. Let’s take a look at how you can avoid this by clearly defining and outlining your project scope.

Project scope definitions

What is the project scope?

What is a scope in project management? The scope is the set of features and functions of a project, one that is usually a written document. The project scope is a framework that will guide your team on how to deliver a big project from initiation to completion. It includes tasks, timelines, budgets, human capital, final deliverables, and the overall goal of the project.

Project scope management definition

And what is scope project management? This is the process of defining these factors, such as tasks and budgets, as an integral part of the planning process.

In scope definition in project management

Within project management, the definition of scope has another subterm called “in scope”. This refers to work that is directly related to the established scope. Project managers want to make sure tasks remain “in scope”.

Why is it important to manage the scope of a project?

Projects will not always go as planned, but with the right project scope management, there is a reduction of risks. Without a clear framework early on, the project could grow beyond your team’s ability, leading to delays or even burnout. Staying organized at work would be near impossible without a plan, particularly in project management.Here are the key reasons why it’s important to manage the scope of a project:

• Stay within budget: A well-planned project scope addresses budget concerns. It makes sure you don’t go over the discussed budget. It’s important to set a realistic budget that takes into account all costs, including human resources and possible delays. Time and costs are usually directly related, so consider this when planning tasks and timeframes.
• Manage human capital: Your project scope will help you manage human capital in a more structured way. How will you use your team as a resource to the best of your ability? Find out which team members are better suited for certain parts of the project. Also, consider whether outsourcing is necessary.
• Coordinate with team members: Team members need to know exactly what to expect. The project scope will help you to break down tasks, assign them to team members, and address deadlines. Without such coordination, a project could go off the rails.
• Align collaboration: The way in which your team will collaborate will be set in the project scope. Who will work together? In some cases, a task can only start after the completion of another. This collaboration could depend on the project management framework, and whether you choose agile vs waterfall.
• Set clear goals and metrics for the project: The main advantage of a project scope is that it clearly sets the goals and metrics. After completion, you can see whether these goals and metrics were achievable. This is a great learning exercise to examine your project’s overall success.

How do you write a project scope?

A project scope statement is a document that details your project scope. The scope is either a separate document or a part of your project plan. We recommend you share it with all stakeholders before initiating the project.

1. Break down goals and objectives

The first step is to determine your goals and objectives. What is this project trying to achieve? How does it help achieve company goals and objectives? Your goals and objectives should also reflect the expectations of stakeholders. Here are some tips for goal-setting:

• Break down goals into smaller parts
• Make goals specific and measurable
• Highlight the relevance of each goal to the team

2. Collect requirements

What are the project's requirements? Collect these from relevant stakeholders, possibly clients. Find out what their expectations and requirements are to complete the project. These could relate to the budget, timeframe, or the look of the final deliverable.Think about how these requirements and expectations intertwine with your project scope. How do they fit with your human capital and overall strategy? Make sure they are realistic in order to avoid delays or disappointment. According to Business Insider, an effective requirements phase is your best chance to ensure scope creep is spotted.

3. Define the final deliverable

After collecting your stakeholders’ requirements for the project, what will the final deliverable look like? More importantly, how will you achieve this final deliverable while addressing these requirements? Define what falls within the scope of this project so that your team knows what work to tackle. Clearly defining the final deliverable will make sure the workflow runs smoothly. With all the correct steps in place to achieve this goal, exceeding budgets and delays are less likely.

4. Create a work breakdown structure (WBS)

Create a work breakdown structure (WBS), one of the most important project management documents. The goal of a WBS is to make a large project more manageable, breaking it up into smaller chunks. Have you ever considered how to improve productivity in an organization?A workflow that organizes large projects into smaller tasks is an effective way of increasing productivity. Structure your WBS in a spreadsheet, with different tasks, phases, and deliverables. Alternatively, create a flowchart that visually represents the WBS. It should encompass all aspects of the project, as well as all team members. You can find an example of a WBS made by Forbes here.Task management is key here. Determine the tasks necessary for your project to build your WBS. Rock’s task management feature allows you to organize tasks in a simple way which could help you to build a strong WBS. You can add further details to tasks such as deadlines, labels, assignees, and documents.

5. Validate with stakeholders

You don’t want to start a project without validating the scope and WBS with your stakeholders. Stakeholders could be your internal team, finance department, leadership, and clients. Make sure everyone agrees that the project is well-defined and sensible. This way, you are less likely to run into issues such as scope creep. This usually happens when the project scope was unclear at the start. By validating your project scope, all stakeholders know what to expect.

6. Ongoing Scope controlling

As a project manager, you need to stay on top of your scope throughout the project. Control scope is the process of monitoring the status of a project and managing changes to its scope.The day-to-day management of the overall project is thus crucial. Make sure to gather regular feedback from your team, using effective communication strategies. If your team works from home, adequate remote work tools for communication will help foster open communication.You might find that the project is going beyond the initial scope or that changes are necessary. It’s important to stay on top of progress to mitigate risk as quickly as possible.

Project scope vs task scope

Don’t make the common mistake of mixing up project and task scopes. While they are both essential, project vs task management have distinct roles. A project includes a wide range of information and deliverables. For example, building a website is a project. On the other hand, tasks are the actions within this project. In this case, starting the HTML code or brainstorming an SEO strategy are tasks. These are what you keep on your weekly to do list, daily tasks that are manageable for that timeframe.Simply, a project is a combination of all tasks, while tasks are individual items that work toward that final deliverable. It's important to understand these differences to avoid an overwhelmed team. Tasks should not be too large to resemble a project.

Stay within project scope with Rock

Rock, an all-in-one messaging and task management tool has full-fledged project management functionality to make sure your project runs smoothly. With the right task management, communication, and documentation features, project managers can engage in control scope.

1. Use the Tasks mini-app to monitor project scope

Task management is highly organized on Rock, allowing managers to monitor the status of a project and its scope. From a structured task board with assignees, labels, and attachments, you can easily access everything you need. You can use it to set up your team’s work breakdown structure (WBS), making the project more manageable.

2. Effective communication on Rock

Rock’s features also leverage effective communication, necessary to stay within the scope of a project. As a team, you can discuss the progress of your project through asynchronous and synchronous communication features. You can access unlimited messages, group chats, audio messages, feedback polls, video conferencing integrations, and more. While you can always set up a video call, Rock allows you to send a quick Loom video to avoid unnecessary meetings.

3. Don’t lose track of your project documentation

The Notes and Files mini-apps are always at your fingertips, so that you never lose track of your project’s objectives. This high documentation allows managers to make sure all documented deliverables are in line with the project’s scope and overall goal. Your project scope documents are always readily available to all for clarification.Staying within the scope of a project is not always easy. Unforeseen changes happen and not all project management runs smoothly 24/7. Nevertheless, Rock allows you to prepare and lessen any potential challenges, while staying true to your project’s scope. Avoid scope creep with Rock!

We know a lot of teams use Rock to manage projects with freelancers, clients, and agencies so we’ve decided to make all of this a little bit easier. With this release we’re introducing a management dashboard for PRO spaces, a brand-new Time Tracker, and custom and active user status in the TEAMS plan.

We’ve also made TEAMS available to every domain, so you can now benefit from all the advanced features that come with this plan. With all these improvements, we are running a special promotion.

Anyone who signs up for an annual TEAMS plan or new Time Tracker in the upcoming week will receive 10% OFF with the promotion code OCTOBER10.

‍Questions about the Time Tracker or the benefits of the TEAMS plan? Reach out to us at space.new/hello

Management dashboard

The Management Dashboard provides a summary of tasks across all your PRO spaces. Paid users get a Board View and Summary View of all tasks across spaces that were changed to PRO under the plan.

The Board View allows you to organize information based on group and filter by user, space, label and so much more. This makes it easier to see what is happening across your spaces and allows you to prioritize new action items.

The Summary View gives insight into tasks that were recently started, completed or stale within your team. This allows you to reprioritize and keep track of items that are being completed in time as well as tasks that are taking longer than expected.

If you add Time Tracker to your paid plan, the dashboard will also display tasks that have been consuming a lot of time allowing you to keep an eye on these. Free users can also access the panel with some limitations on which tasks and spaces you can see. Learn more about the management dashboard here.

Time tracker

Track how much time is spent on individual tasks by adding a time tracker to every PRO space. This makes it easier to keep priorities in check, work with freelancers, supervise team members and improve your overall productivity.

The Time Tracker also comes with a dedicated panel in the management dashboard, so you can get more insight into the hours users spend on tasks in your PRO spaces.

Time Tracker is a paid add-on to the PRO and TEAMS plans, so purchase the add-on on a yearly plan with a 10% discount using the code OCTOBER10 by going here.

User Status and Active Status

Rock now gives you two different ways to share if you’re online and what you’re working on. Active Status is available on the TEAMS plan and highlights when people are online and active on Rock. This feature is available for claimed domains and can also be enabled for workspaces on the TEAMS plan.

If you have a corporate domain that has been claimed you can enable this feature for all users on your domain which allows users to share their active status. For each workspace, you can individually enable this for all spaces in that workspace.

Users can choose to disable sharing their Active Status through Settings. This feature is only available on the TEAMS plan. Learn more about how this feature works by checking out the dedicated product guide.

For a limited time only, upgrade in the upcoming week and receive 10% OFF with the promotion code OCTOBER10. Sign up to TEAMS here!

User status

With User Status, anyone can add a custom status to their profile to let people know that they’re working on something, in a meeting, or out of the office. You can set this for a specific duration and automatically switch off notifications for that period.

This feature adds a custom icon next to your user profile. A custom emoji with highlighted text gives more information about your availability. Learn more about user status in this dedicated help guide.

TEAMS for everyone

Any user can now sign up for the TEAMS plan. Benefit from all the features in the TEAMS plan without needing to have a corporate domain (i.e. @gmail.com or @yahoo.com). We have created a special 10% discount for all teams that want to switch to an annual TEAMS plan in the upcoming week. Switching to TEAMS unlocks the following functionality:

• Managers & admins: Change spaces to PRO, manage users and access new features.
• Management dashboard: Summarize tasks that are being worked on and completed across spaces.
• Active status: Highlight whether users in your team are currently active or not.
• PRO spaces: Leverage advanced task management, scheduled messages, calendar integrations a pinboard and so much more with PRO spaces.
• More & larger workspaces: Create more workspaces with up to 50 group spaces in each.
• Custom Quick Connect, duplicate spaces, and so much more…

Grab your discount for the yearly plan while still available using the code OCTOBER10 and upgrade today!

Forwarding messages (mobile)

Want to share something across spaces? With the forwarding feature, you can share messages between spaces and avoid copy and pasting information.You can forward messages between your different spaces on mobile by following these steps:

1. Select the message you want to forward by pressing on it for a few seconds
2. Choose ‘forward’ from the option menu
3. Search for the space where you want to forward to. Make sure to also select it.
4. Your message is forwarded! Note that @ mentions will not always be recognized when forwarded. Uploaded documents that you forward will also be shared.

Faster object sharing (mobile)

We have now made it easier to move information from Rock to your contacts or other apps by sharing task, note, or topic links with seamless object sharing. You can share any object on mobile by following these steps:

1. Browse to the object (task, note or topic) you’d like to share with anyone and look for the sharing icon in the top of the panel.
2. Select “Share to other apps” in the option menu.
3. Select the application you want to share the object or store it in the files section of your device.

Download the mobile app

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Sometimes all tasks feel like #1 on your list. Deadlines are piling up, and perhaps your productivity is taking a hit from the stress of it all. Now more than ever, in the age of distraction, figuring out how to prioritize tasks is a valuable skill.

Prioritizing work around your schedule and available resources is essential. The key is to spend time on the tasks that matter most. Oftentimes, successful prioritization requires you to pass on workload, say no to meetings or move tasks to future work cycles.

Before we get into our step-by-step task prioritization, let’s focus on: What does it mean to prioritize tasks? Prioritizing consists of accurately ranking items in order of importance. Note that focusing on the correct work is often easier said than done.

Tasks might seem urgent but are not actually important. It is then left to your team to determine which tasks to prioritize to achieve company goals and objectives. This might leave you thinking: how to prioritize tasks in the workplace?

The following article will lay out 9 steps for task prioritization we use on the daily that you can easily incorporate with your team.

How to prioritize tasks: 9 steps for implementing task prioritization within your team

In the upcoming section we will define 9 steps on how to prioritize tasks. We have implemented these into our own workflow to prioritize tasks on the daily. Here’s how we did it:

1. Understand the difference between project and task
2. Revisit your project management framework
3. Learn to say no
4. Work with sprints or cycles
5. Prioritize tasks by defining the urgency
6. Set deadlines based off importance and urgency
7. Delegate or outsource where relevant and possible
8. Leverage the My Tasks panel to view all priorities across projects
9. Set Aside important tasks

Keep reading to learn more about how to prioritize tasks in the workplace.

1. Understand the difference between project and task

The first step to prioritizing work is understanding the difference of project vs task. Many people work on never-ending tasks with no closure on a weekly basis. Knowing the difference keeps work well-defined, measurable and accountable.

If you fail to do so, your team might be faced with never-ending tasks which can hurt morale and even cause a toxic work culture. This occurs because the team becomes unproductive and demotivated by tasks or projects that never seem to end.

Simply put, a project is a group of tasks carried out by a team. A task is a direct action which contributes to the progress of an overall project.

For example, a monthly update for a website is a recurring project. Meanwhile, individual tasks in the website project management system such as a new webpage or SEO reconfigurations build towards the final output.

Lines are often blurred, a project can be summarized in an individual task or require an entire space depending on scope and time commitment. There is no rule of thumb for how long tasks should take, or when something becomes a project.

Discuss with your team to strike a balance on the average time commitment of a task. Here are a few questions you can discuss to do so:

• What is the maximum time length for tasks? If longer, convert into two separate tasks or define as project?
• Is there a limit on task assignees? Will you separate into a project or create multiple tasks if there are too many assignees?
• How many checklist items can there be on a task? How much work can they be?
• How do you combine projects with tasks? Do you highlight projects through spaces, labels or a master task in a strategy space with sub-tasks @mentioned in a bullet list?

2. Revisit your project management framework

The right project management framework can help you prioritize tasks and organize your work in more structured ways. Project management frameworks are the foundation to how to prioritize tasks. It helps you define project stages through rules and definitions. High level examples are Agile vs Waterfall:

• Agile breaks down large projects into smaller cycles through sprints. This can provide value as the team can do virtual retrospectives and focus on a smaller set of tasks.  
• Waterfall defines that tasks build upon each and certain tasks need to be finished before starting new ones. On a high level, this helps you with considering dependencies and how you want to organize the different project stages.

Whatever your project framework preferences are, it’s important to set up a list of rules and conditions to define day-to-day project management workflows. Here are some main questions your team can discuss:

• How often do you want to complete a set of tasks (sprint or cycle) and how do you review past performance and set new goals?
• Do you need to be strict with dependencies or can work be moved forward based on urgency and importance?
• How are different task fields going to be used? Title, descriptions, attachments, assignees, followers, start and due dates, sprints, custom fields, etc.
• Are you prioritizing tasks? How?
• Who is mainly in charge of task management within your team?

3. Learn to say no: projects, meetings, new tasks

Saying no is harder than saying yes. We might feel like we are disappointing our coworkers when we say no. However, it’s an important skill to have, particularly when you need to prioritize tasks. Harvard Business Review suggests that straightforwardness is key.

Be honest about your reason for saying no and give context. Also, learn to say no to excessive meetings; we spend too much time on unnecessary ones.Further develop your internal project management practices by setting rules to take this into consideration.

Who can assign new tasks and how is this combined with current workload? Your team should also decide when to organize meetings, what meeting agendas should look like or how to communicate. Setting up a communication plan can be extremely beneficial to keep this well-defined.

4. How to prioritize work by implemeting sprints or cycles

Sprints are a core practice within Agile methodology. They are set time periods to accomplish a set of tasks. Implementing sprints or cycles helps with prioritizing tasks and keeping the to-do list light. It’s also extremely useful when looking into how to prioritize tasks.

Before starting the sprint, you can look at all individual tasks that need to be completed. You can then pick the most urgent and important ones and add them to the sprint.This removes a lof of noise within a space and allows your team to focus and improve their prioritization skills as they will have to select a certain number of tasks they can take on.

Rock has a dedicated feature for sprints. It allows you to filter the space view only for tasks that need to be completed in a sprint or cycle. The same can also be done with labels although this won’t automatically add a start and due date.

5. Prioritize individual tasks by defining the urgency

Now that you have made your selection of tasks, it’s time to rank them on urgency. This allows your team to focus on the key matters at hand. A dedicated toggle allows us to configure task priority as: urgent, high, medium, low and lowest.

The goal is for the team to focus on everything labeled as urgent, and then move down a category every time. This way you can make it to the end of a sprint or cycle and make sure that team members know how to prioritize tasks correctly.

6. Prioritize work by setting deadlines that align with importance and urgency

Add another level or granularity by adding start and due dates to tasks. Some tasks might be blocked for the time being. It’s also possible that they are dependent on work that is prioritised earlier on.

If you find yourself amid loads of urgent tasks, it’s hard to figure out which one to pick first. Setting deadlines allows you to balance out tasks that are equally urgent, and keep the team in the loop on when different activities need to have been completed.

Rock allows you to visualize your deadlines in a calendar view. This way you do not lose track of task prioritization and when what activities are starting or due.

7. Delegate or outsource where relevant

Think about which work you can delegate to another employee or intern. Perhaps a certain task is better outsourced to a freelancer or contractor. Outsourcing often leads to lower labor costs with access to a larger talent pool, reports Forbes.

Additionally, might want to reprioritize work or outsource work if you notice there are too many urgent tasks or you’re struggling to make deadlines. Rock allows anyone to collaborate together. This means that freelancers can be added into any new or already existing space.

8. Make use of the My Tasks panel to see all tasks you’re assigned to

Task management sounds straightforward, but what about juggling multiple individual tasks across spaces? We organize priorities across sprints and projects with the My Tasks panel.

Chances are work is not organized in a single space. To combine sprints and focus on prioritized items across spaces we work from the My tasks panel. This combines all tasks we are assigned to, have created or are following. Priority and due date filters tell us which action items we should tackle in the short term.

We move these to the Set Aside panel to quickly access action items without searching across spaces or look at hundreds of tasks. This makes the workload manageable and defined.

9. Set Aside important tasks

This is the most granular we are going to go in this article. Do not crowd your to-do list with all the tasks from your sprint. The more items you add, the more context switching and mental space these items will take up.

People often keep work in a spreadsheet or their notes app as task management tools can quickly get congested. Finding tasks back in board that have hundreds of different action items can be detrimental to staying organized at work.

It is often easier to keep priorities in a dedicated panel so you’re not distracted with other tasks. This is exactly why we introduced Set Aside a while back. With internal and external projects in one place, we often have tasks scattered across spaces and boards. To avoid context switching within the app, we access prioritized tasks directly from this panel.

This way, whatever space we’re browsing, our top priorities are just a click away in a dedicated panel (we also add messages, notes and topics besides tasks so we can have other important information and files at hand).

How to prioritize tasks with asynchronous work

Asynchronous work nurtures prioritization skills. With a flexible work schedule, employees can work when they wish and focus on the tasks that matter. Team members do not need to be online simultaneously, allowing them the freedom to work when they wish.

This methodology reduces distractions, particularly in a remote setting. With fewer check-ins, messaging, and meetings, our team is more focused. Implementing asynchronous work gives more time to prioritize the tasks that matter while reducing the noise.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help or advice

The great thing about teamwork is that you are not left to tackle challenges alone. In a healthy team environment, everyone is safe to speak up about their workload. Need a helping hand? Make your voice heard.

There is no point in looking how to prioritize tasks if the team member in charge of them has no way of actually completing them. If you have reached a point where you can no longer handle your tasks, ask someone to help you carry the workload.

However, perhaps with the right advice on how to prioritize work, you will feel supported to tackle challenges. This is where communication strategies become key. Seek advice from your coworkers and managers and set up a system that works for everyone.

Make sure you’re well rested

While prioritization techniques are helpful, you don’t want a heavy workload and lack of rest to lead to a burnout. In fact, it will be hard to prioritize any tasks when you are feeling unmotivated and exhausted. It’s essential that you set regular time off to rest your brain.

Only then can you maintain high concentration levels, as well as care for your mental health. Note that rest looks different for everyone. Taking an occasional vacation might not be enough for you. You can also look into setting up a productive morning routine or define how you want to get work done at night if you’re more of a night owl.

How to prioritize tasks with Rock

We hope you can take value from these 9 steps and maybe even implement when looking at how to prioritize tasks with your own team. Prioritising work is often easier than said, but with this foundation you are well set to get important work done and implementing your organizational strategy.

Rock allows you to tackle every point on our list, from Set Aside to the My Tasks panel and unlimited spaces. Sign up for free and try it out. Join one of our dedicate communities if you’re looking to learn more about work strategies, staying productive and getting work done:

• The Future of Remote Work: This community focuses on staying productive, growing a team and building a culture in remote environments. Meet with other professionals and access new resources on the daily.
• The Future of Project Management: Trying to make sense of tasks, notes and other features for project management frameworks? We discuss different workflows, methodologies and project management applications in this dedicated community.
• The Future of Rock: Join the Rock team as we build the future of collaboration and productivity. Learn more about upcoming features, share product suggestions and access the latest resources and events from the Rock team.

We hope these work strategies will help with working efficiently and effectively with your team. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Youtube and don’t forget to share the article and tag us!

Dylan Cromhout is a lecturer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and a managing director of marketing agency Brand Shepherd. He uses Rock for both: projects at the university as well as marketing agency work.

Throughout this article we share how Dylan coordinates a large student group on Rock. But first, let’s learn more about the university course he runs, named the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’!

What is the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’?

How can we make universities more productive for societies? Can we prepare students for real life work environments instead of focusing only on academic research? These are the questions that inspired Dylan to create the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ program.

The program is part of the course Marketing Diploma that he teaches at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) which was started in 2010.The project connects around 250 students with approximately 400 small businesses.

The aim of the program is to create a mutually beneficial exchange: students help small businesses improve their online presence, and businesses give them a launchpad to obtain real life marketing skills.

For example, students help create social media pages or update business websites. This gives them hands-on experience and marketing skills for their future careers‘.

Small businesses don’t always have resources to pay for expensive marketing. Luckily, there are many talented students who can learn important skills while helping those small companies.’ - Dylan shares the main idea of the project.

How to manage an educational project with 200+ students without breaking the bank?

In 2021, the program was launched for the first time fully online. Dylan shares that in the beginning it was very challenging and stressful to find tools which would allow him to manage such a big project fully remotely. At first, a Whatsapp group with around 200 students was created.

However, it quickly became clear that there were too many variables and people involved to just facilitate the program on Whatsapp. At that time, Dylan started to search for a WhatsApp alternative. He shares that most of the communication and task management tools he encountered were way too expensive as they charge per user.

The list of options narrowed down even further when Dylan realized that they had to look for a free alternative. ‘Firstly, we wanted to combine Discord for chatting, Todoist for task management and Google Drive for file sharing. These were the only free tools that I could find that could manage more than 100 users easily.’ - says Dylan.

However, shortly after starting to combine those different tools, Dylan discovered  Rock! and because of the affordable pricing as well as tasks and chat being in one place, Dylan decided to give it a go.

Learnings from the first edition of the fully online Digital Superstart Challenge

After testing Rock for a while, Dylan was confident enough that Rock would work for them and decided to introduce it to students. The program was successfully managed and completed on Rock.

Running the program for the first time added some learnings for the future. ‘The main learning from last year - use one space for the whole project. It was way too complicated to have a space per student.’ - shares Dylan.

Rock makes the Digital Superstart Challenge program work because it’s mainly dependent on tasks being completed. Combining messaging with a task management system makes it easier for students and Dylan to communicate and collaborate.

How to manage an educational project on Rock: Detailed workflow on the second edition of the fully online Digital Superstart Challenge

This year, Dylan and his colleague May are running the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ on Rock again. Based on learnings from last year they made some workflow changes that make running the course a smoother experience.

Dylan shares the details of his workflow which allows him to manage a project with around 250 students on Rock successfully. Below you can find a detailed step-by-step management flow of the course:

1. One space per project

Dylan and his colleague created a main project space for the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ where participating students are added and all the magic happens.

Dylan’s colleague May is assigned as the space admin. Her job is to monitor the space, update relevant information and assure that everything works smoothly.

‘We recommend having one person as the admin of a space with full editing rights. This person can make sure all tasks are neat and everything is going smoothly. You should add students as guests and not members, so that they have limited rights to change things in a space and can’t create or delete tasks. Otherwise, when hundreds of students have editing rights, it can end up messy.’ - Dylan shares.

2. Students fill out a Google Form

Students who participate in the program are asked to go to the ‘Digital Superstart Challenge’ landing page and fill out a Google Form there. They have one week to register.

Once they complete the form, students get an automated email with a link to join Rock. They create their Rock account and get added as guests in the main project space.

A tip from Dylan: Record a short Loom video to show students how to use Rock and share it in the main project space. It will help students to onboard quicker and start using Rock smoothly from the outset!

3. Everything happens in the Tasks mini-app

Dylan and his colleague add all the tasks that are necessary to be completed by students to the Tasks mini-app. They add due dates and detailed descriptions of what students need to do.

‘I also add links to videos which students need to watch to understand the tasks better. Also, I split tasks into different steps with a Checklist, so it's clear for students what exactly needs to be done to complete each task.’ - says Dylan.

General tasks don’t have assignees as they are the same for all students which are in the space. All students can see these tasks on the Calendar view. This way, they are aware of what needs to be done by when.

4. Automated tasks via Zapier

Students who participate at the program are in charge of finding small businesses to work with. Once they find candidates, they send them to a landing page where businesses can register by filling out a Google Form.

The Google Form is connected to Rock via the Zapier integration. Once a business registers, a task is automatically created in the main Rock project space. It occurs in a specific list dedicated to businesses.

All the business details which they fill out while completing the Google Form appear in the task description, so nothing falls through the cracks.

5. Students take over tasks of businesses

Once a task of a new business registration is automatically created, a notification pops up in the space chat. Students are in charge of finding tasks of companies which they acquired.

They use the tasks comment section to claim their businesses. The space admin confirms and assigns the student as an assignee to the task.

6. Business related details are tracked within a task

From now on, everything that is related to a specific business and the student assigned to that business happens within the comments section of the task. If students have questions or need some help regarding a specific business case, they communicate in the comments.

The space admin, May, helps out by answering questions, editing descriptions of tasks accordingly and adding labels.  Everything is structured and all information about each combination of business and student is easy to find.

7. Task labels help to identify students’ progress

A part of the task for students is to invite businesses to join a Facebook group. When students complete it and business owners join that group, students share this information in the comment section of the business task.

The admin checks the comments and adds a label called ‘FB ’in order to identify that this specific business has joined the relevant Facebook group.

Labels indicate which steps students have completed with a specific company, so it gives a good visual representation of where each business stands and how much work a student still needs to do. It also helps us filter tasks based on what has been completed so that we can track progress.

8. Tasks are finished!

Once all relevant labels are collected as well as most important information is up to date, students’ tasks get moved to the next phase. Different lists are used to denote phases.

When all is done, tasks get moved to the ‘Done’ list. This indicates that students completed all the steps with helping businesses to improve their online presence!

Invite businesses to Rock

Rock is being used by software developers, startups, and freelancers because it’s very flexible and customizable. At the moment, around 250 students are involved in the program and update their work on Rock successfully. That relieves Dylan and May from a lot of stress in terms of managing the program.

Dylan shares that it would be great to involve not only students but also businesses on Rock. If businesses would like to continue to work with Dylan’s team after the program, they will be invited to join Rock.‘For now, we only manage our students on Rock.

However, moving forward we would also like to use Rock to engage the businesses we work with. Most of them still use Whatsapp or Facebook for their communication but we would like to introduce them to Rock and show them how easy and structured communication and collaboration can be.’

Some businesses are reluctant to change because they are used to managing their communications on Whatsapp, Slack or Facebook Messenger. However, as the businesses grow, this will become more difficult and chaotic and that’s where Rock will be useful.

Starting educational projects on Rock

Dylan hopes that his experience can help and inspire other educational projects to be executed on Rock.‘I totally recommend using Rock for educational purposes.

You don’t need a huge budget, it has many great features and excellent customer support. I hope people working in education can learn from my experience and adapt my workflow for themselves. So they don’t have to go through a messy trial phase which I had last year.’ - says Dylan.

If you want to implement an educational project on Rock but still have questions, feel free to get in touch with the Rock team.

Productivity is often associated with speed and efficiency with which you can complete tasks. With Rock, we don’t want you to waste any time, so we have made connecting to others faster than ever. We want to test out just how fast you can master features on Rock and invite new members to the platform. To provide you with extra incentive to help you share the value of Rock with your network, we are kicking off the Race to Rock!

When will the contest take place?

From September 28th till October 12th, we will be testing the speed of collaboration on Rock with the Race to Rock.

What are the prizes?

Each winner will receive:

• 2-year subscription to our TEAMS 5 subscription, or a lifetime subscription to PRO.
• And a $50 Amazon Gift Card each

The top 3 users who acquired the most points by October 12th can win special prizes. We will also award the 2 new users (joined from September 28th onwards) with the most credits with the same prize.

How to earn credits?

You can get started with earning credits in many different ways listed in our Credit Program article.

For example, you can earn 10 credits for inviting additional people from outside your domain to Rock or you can receive 5 credits just for downloading the mobile or desktop version of the app if you haven't done this already.

Trying out features such as creating your first note, task, or topic will also grant you 1 credit each.

1. Invite friends, clients and colleagues to Rock

Connecting with Rock takes seconds: open a space together using Quick Connect or invite new users to a group space by sharing an invite link. By inviting new people to Rock, you can receive:

• 1 credit per new user
• 10 credits for each new domain.
• 50 credits if the invited user upgrades to PRO plan
• 300 credits if invited user upgrades to TEAMS plan

2. Import from Slack or WhatsApp

Migrate all your important chats to Rock to keep the conversation going.

3. Integrate your favorite apps

Not on Rock yet? No problem, sign up quickly and join the fun as we will also be rewarding 2 users who joined Rock from September 28th with the most referral points. That’s right! It also pays to join our platform.

Is it really that easy to collaborate using Rock?

Yes, it is, try it yourself. If you have been holding off on migrating your colleagues or integrating your apps, now is the time! For more information on the Terms & Conditions visit our Rules of the Road page.

Stay tuned to our social media and Rock Support space for tips & updates regarding the contest!