Performance at work is crucial for companies to assess personnel productivity and monitor data on hard and soft skills, leadership qualities, and employees’ attitudes. Such analysis is helpful for both managers and the entire team. Here’s why: Indicators such as task complexity, resource expenditure, and deadlines are considered when assessing labor efficiency. For example, employees cope well with their job duties but do everything late and interrogate colleagues.

Can you imagine a working environment without team communication tools? Nowadays, that’s almost impossible. Once you start using them, there is no need to keep in touch with colleagues via email. Team chat applications bring the whole team together in one place, organizing the working process and keeping conversations flowing. However, with so many tools hit the market, it can be tough to find the best one for you.

Microsoft and Google have been battling for years to own the future of tech. Today, I’m comparing two of their popular tools – Skype and what was once Google Hangouts. (Now it’s split into Google Chat for messaging and Google Meet for video calls.) Thanks to building Chanty – a simple team chat, our team had to perform an in-depth analysis of our competitors.

Flowdock is one of the oldest team collaboration tools on the market. Announced in July 2009, the app launched public beta in March 2010 – more than three years before Slack! Flowdock was first designed for developers but has since become a tool for many different types of professionals. After over a decade, Flowdock closed on 1 October 2022. Many teams are now looking for new ways to work together. Slack was designed for various types of teams since the very beginning, having launched in 2014.

The way we work has changed a lot recently. Hybrid and remote working are now the norm, meaning teams have to rely on communication tools to stay connected, organized, and productive. With remote work becoming the norm due to the pandemic, it’s clear that seamless collaboration is essential for success. Teams are spread across time zones, hopping between virtual meetings, juggling projects, and trying to stay on the same page. The key to making it all work smoothly? A powerful communication app.

Someday, artificial intelligence will break time boundaries, days will have more hours in them, but still not enough for us. The thing is, it’s not about how much time you have but how you use it. In this sense, technologies can help us today. “Time is money” is a well–worn cliché and although it sounds hollow, it is by no means devoid of meaning. Poor time management costs companies millions of dollars, reducing the productivity of individual employees and managers.

Trello, the visual project management tool that’s famous for its user-friendly Kanban boards, has come a long way since it first launched in 2011. It was originally designed to help teams manage tasks and projects more efficiently, and it quickly gained a following thanks to its intuitive design and flexibility. Fast forward to 2024, and Trello is still going strong in a competitive market, evolving to meet the needs of both individuals and teams across various industries.

When it comes to project management Basecamp is one of the most well-known names in the game. Founded in 1999 and officially presented in 2004 by 37signals, it is only a year younger than PayPal. Since then, Basecamp has become one of the leading project management tools, helping countless teams across industries stay organized and collaborate better. Their focus has always been on ease of use.

Launched in 2013, Slack continues to grow at a heady pace, boasting 10 million daily active users and 85,000 paid customers. Despite Slack’s blatant success, quite a few tools are breathing down its neck. Workplace by Facebook is surely one of them. With Meta’s recent announcement that Workplace will be shutting down in 2026, now is the perfect time to explore what this platform has to offer in our team chat wars series.

I’m not into gaming. To tell you the truth, the most advanced game I ever played was Mario back in the 90s. But here I am today, writing about comparing Discord vs Slack — the most advertised team chat app out there. As luck would have it, some of my coworkers are gamers and heavy Discord users. They helped me out and shared some expert opinions about Discord for this comparison.

In 1991 the University of Cambridge created the first webcam. The reason? To monitor the coffee pot and check who was drinking all the coffee in the office. You know, the important stuff. Fast forward 30 years and the video conferencing market is now worth millions. The pandemic has only accelerated this growth, making video conferencing applications essential for today’s businesses. Companies are now globalized, and remote work has become the norm.

If you google “project management tools”, there are a number of them that will show up in every review, comparison, discussion, and post in general. One of them is Asana, a great project management app created by a Facebook co-founder and ex-Google engineer. Besides its features, there is another thing that a lot of people are interested in: Asana pricing. In companies with a lot of employees, every additional seat means more money to spend every month.

If you are that person who says, “I don’t use task management apps because getting into them takes too much time”, chances are, you haven’t found a platform that fits your team’s needs. Using a task management application allows team members to assign tasks, set priorities, and monitor the progress of ongoing projects. It also helps managers oversee workloads and ensure everyone is on the same page.

With the onset of the pandemic and the shift in workplace behaviors, there was a sudden need to facilitate collaboration and digitization to enhance productivity and maintain consistency between team members across different locations and time zones. Satya Nadella and Bill Gates wanted to bid $8 billion USD to acquire Slack, the team chat SaaS company. Their meeting took an extraordinary turn, and instead of buying Slack, they decided to create their own app.

Slack has created quite a buzz in the world of team communication. With 10 million+ daily users and more than a $27 billion valuation, it is undoubtedly one of the most popular team communication platforms. However, Slack has gained a lot of competitors throughout the years (Microsoft Teams, and Facebook Workspace, to name a few) that offer highly competitive features and packages. And since Slack’s price tag is quite high many tools deliver more affordable solutions.

There are around 270 million Microsoft Teams users worldwide. However, organizations that don’t use Microsoft’s suite of services may need an alternative solution, as the platform is closely tied to the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Fortunately, many Microsoft Teams alternatives offer flexibility and robust features for team communication and collaboration.

Every HR department can relate to juggling emails, chasing down updates, and trying to keep track of a million things– all at once. One thing that can save the day is nothing other than internal communication apps. Good internal communication is the best way to keep the HR team (including employees!) informed, engaged, and aligned with company goals. These HR comms apps make it easy to manage everything from employee feedback to team announcements without all the back-and-forth that slows you down.

Here’s the truth: hardly any ‘chat apps’ are left on the market. Today’s corporate messengers are not just about communication anymore. As business needs have evolved, group chat apps have become powerful collaboration tools. The chatting apps now mix team chats, audio/video calls, file sharing, and integrations with third-party apps, making them complete ‘work hubs’ designed to satisfy all business needs.

The internet has completely transformed the way we communicate. The days of sending messages by pigeon or nervously waiting months to find out if a ship carrying your important information ever made it to its destination are long gone. Now, with just a few clicks, you can be chatting with a colleague half across the globe as though they were next door.

Effective communication is the key to a positive and healthy work environment. With a well-connected, happy, and motivated team, goals are easily achieved and projects move forward with less friction. Yet many modern workplaces still struggle with poor communication. Misunderstandings, unclear requirements, and confusion about tasks are common in teams that lack harmony and proper ways of communication. All of this harms employee performance.

Coffee could be killing your productivity. As former Googlers say, relying on your morning cup of Joe will likely worsen your work rate. But there’s also one thing that can boost your output, not undermine it. I’m talking about the best apps for productivity. These tools save us time, effort, and money—even if we indulge ourselves in a cup of coffee occasionally. So, let’s talk about business productivity apps. At Chanty, we are keen on exploring digital tools.

Effective communication in the workplace is crucial; it’s the key to achieving goals and scaling your business with ease. Miscommunications can disrupt your operations and severely affect your productivity. Several factors may cause a lack of communication at work. You must identify these causes and take the necessary measures to improve communication. With better communication, you will improve collaboration and minimize the likelihood of your teams working in silos.