The coronavirus pandemic has made remote working a new normal. People now perform office duties from the comfort of their home and thought this was difficult for certain companies at the beginning, these companies have gotten used to working remotely and they have been able to achieve more productivity because workers can now work in their best time. One of the things that changed due as a result of people working remotely is file sharing. Files can now be shared with several people in a faster time amongst other advantages. Here are some other roles of file sharing for remote teams.
1. Accessibility
People are used to taking files from one office to another for one boss to append his or her signature or for other reasons. However, in the remote working environment, it is different. Knowing how to sign a Word document can significantly simplify the process, enabling you to manage approvals and signatures digitally. You cannot slide your chair over to the table of a colleague to help you cross-check or proofread a document, neither can you walk over to the next office to give a document to someone. Quick file sharing allows you to send documents to people without stress. You can send a document to an unlimited number of people at once. You don’t need to go to 500 offices to allow 500 members of staff to have access to a document. Other than that, you can even set the number of people that you want to give access to edit the document. This means that you can send a document to 50 people and only 10 of them will be able to edit the document, the rest will only be able to view and save it.
2. Collaboration
Quick file sharing allows you to work easily with other people. As a company, you will have freelancers and contractors that you work with, these freelancers or contractors can be from any part of the world and they do not have to travel to your location to work with you. You can quickly share files from your location and they can receive them from anywhere in the world. Also, because they are not full staff of your company, you cannot grant full permission to some office files. File sharing allows you to give access to these freelancers and contractors pending the time when they are working with you.
3. Compartmentalization
If you are a top official in the company, you will have documents from different departments on your desk (virtual desk in this case). File sharing tools allow you to arrange these documents so that they do not get mixed up. You can compartmentalize the company’s files, client’s files, and your files all in your system such that they are easily accessible and you do not need to spend time looking for a file when you need it. If compartmentalizing files seems like a big deal or proves hard to do, there are two things that you can do. The first is to get a personal assistant that will have full access to all your files and help you arrange them. If you do not trust anyone with your files or they are too confidential, you can create two administrators on your system – one for your files, the other for the company’s files.
4. Keeps you updated
With remote file sharing, you can have a record of amendments being done on a file. This means that you do not have to wait for different people to append their signature or make amendments to a file before sending it, you can upload it and when someone makes an edit on the file, you will get a notification. Certain file-sharing tools will even allow you to keep older versions of a file before it was updated so that if any wrong edit was done, you can go one step back and make corrections.
5. Data Consistency
Among members of your team, you can also send large files using file-sharing tools and all that is needed to receive these files is just data and memory space. File sharing allows members of your team to work on the most recent version of a file. This allows everyone to accomplish a task faster and more efficiently.
Final word
Being remote can come in different forms. You can work as a freelancer or a part-time staff or even as a full-time worker. Whichever way it is, working remotely has proven to be a better way of being more productive and file sharing is one way to increase productivity in the workplace.
Martha Payne is a Personal Growth Coach with 10 years of experience working as a business development professional. She is truly passionate about nurturing talent and ideas that evoke transformative change in individuals, teams, and organizations. Her focus is to help organizations develop leaders for the future – unleashing the full talent, passion, and potential of individuals (in particular Millennials) through tailored leadership development and coaching programs.
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