Editor’s note: We are not doctors. Consult your physician or the CDC for best practices. Medical information on quarantine and isolation in a pandemic is available here. Here’s more information on how to help those hit hardest by COVID-19.

We are in uncertain and unprecedented times. As we try to fervently reduce cases and diminish the potential harm to the groups most vulnerable to COVID-19, it’s been mandated that many people in the United States shelter-in-place and self-quarantine in an effort to “flatten the curve.” 

At Hive, we’ve been working from home for about three weeks now, and over these few weeks, people are starting to realize how much of an impact global work from home mandates will affect emotional, mental and financial wellbeing. We want to provide as much support to people as possible in this new normal. If you have the privilege of continuing to work from the safety of your home, there are components of your day-to-day work that can be easily done in Hive to improve productivity, limit stress, and reduce duplicative work. 

Hive’s Remote Work Guide

Streamline Emails with Hive Mail

The first is the omnipotent email inbox. There are roughly 2.9 billion email users around the world, which is a huge chunk of the population, and there are projected to be 306.4 billion emails sent per day in 2020. This number will likely increase in the wake of COVID-19. But how can you bridge the gap between your to-dos and emails? Enter Hive Mail. With Hive Mail, you can pull your GMail or Outlook Inbox into the Hive app itself, read, receive and send emails from Hive, assign next steps directly from an email, and add an email chain to an action card. 

Run Efficient Remote Meetings with Meeting Notes

In this new era of remote work, it’s becoming all the more clear which meetings could have actually been emails this whole time. But, for those meetings that you still need to hold from home, we’ve got the most powerful combination: Hive’s Zoom integration + meeting notes. With Hive’s Zoom integration, once you’ve enabled it in Hive Apps, simply type “/zoom” into any Hive chat and you’ll be automatically pulled into a Zoom meeting.

With Hive’s meeting notes feature, you’ve got a digital notepad to jot down meeting contents and next steps in the Hive app itself. Once you’ve written the notes, you can easily assign a task to a specific user and set a due date with a few clicks. This will ensure that meeting follow-ups never go untouched again — we promise to make your meetings worthwhile.

Understand Your Team’s Availability with Resourcing

Ever wonder what projects your teammates are working on? Want to know how you could help them or when to start taking things off of their plate? 

It’s tricky to stay on top of what coworkers or teammates are tackling daily, even when you work closely with them, and it’s even more so the case when we’re working remotely — you aren’t able to walk a few steps or swivel your chair over a few desks to chat with a teammate. Enter Resourcing. With Hive’s Resourcing feature, you can see exactly what someone on your team is working on, how long they’re slated to work on it, and what percentage of their time is already allocated to tasks. Understanding others capacity helps foster positive working relationships and enable successful collaboration.

Communicate with Hive Chat

It’s easy to lose touch with coworkers throughout the day, but when you do, projects often fail. Why? Because regular communication does a few important things. First, it bolsters team morale and helps cultivate good working relationships. Second, it helps people avoid duplicative work or project confusion — it’s harder to fumble on a project when you’re constantly talking to your manager or team member about it. Finally, it creates accountability with your team. If you’re not checking in, people could start to think that the quality or volume of their work doesn’t matter. However, if you’re regularly checking in, providing feedback and offering guidance, they will hold themselves accountable for the project’s success.

Hive Chat is a native part of the Hive app and a great way to foster a team bond and communication to enable project success. If you want to talk specifically about an action in Hive, you can even drag and drop an action into the chat window to discuss. If you’re into Slack and don’t want to convert to Hive Chat completely, you can also integrate your Slack account into Hive itself. 

Apps for Mental Health While Working Remote

While these working tips are helpful, we also wanted to provide some valuable resources for those struggling mentally with the recent work-from-home shift. We’ve got a full article about apps to remedy mental health at work, but here are some of our favorites.

• Simple Habit is one of our favorite meditation apps and provides a range of guided meditations pegged to specific scenarios or moods.
• Thought Diary is a great place to record your thoughts and analyze any problematic or unhealthy thoughts you might be having. 
• Talkspace is a great resource for remote therapy that can be conducted over text, audio or video messaging.

Do you have any other favorite apps to help improve productivity and working from home? Let us know in the comments below.