Keeping remote employees engaged with company communications and HR information can be a real disaster zone for employers, especially when your remote workers are newbies.

Just imagine – they don’t have a constant access to news updates and company policy; they can’t put their colleague’s names to faces making project collaboration harder; they don’t have a complete list of their coworkers and their contact details within arm’s reach for most of their working day.

The good news is they don’t need to be chained to their computers to stay connected with the clients, your team, and other stakeholders involved in a project. HR tech will sustain the harmony and productivity of your workforce.

We’ve put together a list of simple HR apps that can help you to collaborate with remote employees in a more engaged and effective way.

Staffbase

Staffbase offers companies the ability to launch their own employee app in just a couple of minutes to reach every member of the team with internal communication content.

Features:

– Apply your styling using your company’s corporate colors, logo, etc.

– Manage your own content. It has ready-made plugins for news, forms, meal plans, directory, and others features.

– Reach every employee (no matter whether or not he or she works in the office). The app can be installed on every smartphone, and it doesn’t require corporate email.

– Unlimited storage for text, images, and attachments.

– Integrate with Plugin API, SharePoint, Single-Sign-On, Active Directory, REST API.

Platforms:

– IOS

– Android.

– Windows Phone.

Pricing:

– Starter tariff: $29/month (includes 30 employees; $1 for additional employees).

– Business tariff: $599/month (includes 300 employees; $0,50 for each additional employee).

– Enterprise tariff: depends on company size.

For free:

– During the 4-week trial.

WISP

WISP is a mobile intranet, a simple HR solution that helps to create mobile company employee handbooks in 15 minutes.

Features:

– Apply your styling using your company’s corporate colors, logo, etc.

– Share company news.

– Communicate company policy.

– Create polls.

– Find any of your colleague’s contact details in a couple of seconds. The app helps employees put the faces of their team members to names for easier project collaboration.

– Use messager (team conversation, direct messages), share your status (online/offline), and see the status of sent messages (delivered/read).

– Share files up to 200MB in all formats.

– Integrate with Bamboo HR.

Platforms:

– IOS

– Android.

– Windows Phone.

Pricing:

– For small companies: $49/month (includes 49 employees).

– For medium companies: $99/month (includes 50-149 employees).

– For large companies: $199/month (includes 150-299 employees).

– For companies with more than 300 employees: depends on the size of a company.

For free:

– Up to 9 employees.

Slack

Slack is a messaging service.

Features:

– Organize team conversations in open channels; create private channels; reach a colleague directly.

– Drag, drop, and share your files (images, PDFs, docs, spreadsheets). If you use services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box, you can just paste the link and that document is in sync and is searchable too.

– Connect all the tools you use to Slack. Set up your integration so that you get all your notifications directly within the app.

– Search your entire archive within PDFs, Word documents, Google docs, and more.

– File storage of up to 20 GB (depends on plan).

Platforms:

– IOS

– Android.

– Mac & Windows Desktop.

Pricing:

– Standard: $6,67/month per active user billed annually. Or, $8/month per active user billed monthly.

– Plus: $12,50/month per active user billed annually. Or, $15/month per active user billed monthly.

For free:

– It can be free for teams of all sizes, but with less features and controls.

Yammer

Yammer is a private social network app that helps employees collaborate across departments, locations, and business apps.

Features:

– Organize communication for a project, a team, or anything at all.

– Make Groups public or private; collaborate with external groups.

– Share ideas, questions, and updates with coworkers.

– Upload files, photos, and videos and have conversations around them.

– Integrate with Microsoft Office.

Platforms:

– IOS

– Android.

– Windows Phone.

For free:

– Free trial.

Igloosoftware

Igloosoftware is an intranet, connecting people with the information they need to do their best work.

Features:

– Author, edit, and publish content to your corporate blog or newsfeed.

– Share your ideas on an online forum.

– Use a shared calendar to keep track of important events, meetings, and deadlines.

– Create areas for collaborating across teams, projects, departments, or committees.

– File sharing and preview.

– Email a file from your mobile device directly into Igloo.

– Document reservation.

– Update your profile to include knowledge, skills, abilities, and even hobbies.

– Simplify the tasks.

– Task management.

– Search your entire archive.

– Integrate with the apps your customers use.

Platforms:

– IOS

– Android.

– BlackBerry.

Pricing:

– For small companies: $12/month per user.

– For growing companies: $6/month per user.

– For large companies and unique use cases: custom quote.

For free:

– Up to 10 employees.