Adopting a hybrid working model is not the real challenge. Creating (and maintaining) a great hybrid working experience is.

“How do I make hybrid working both enjoyable and productive?” That is the question.

Answer: a great company culture + the right technology = the best work experience in a hybrid setting.

And in this article, we’ll tackle the second element of this formula: the technology that helps your employees get the same level of performance as they would in an office environment.

While keeping them connected and facilitating communication and collaboration.

We’ll examine 15 mobile employee apps you’ll want to consider for making hybrid work great again… and again for your team(s).

The apps are broken down into 6 big categories:

• Productivity & Focus
• Task & Project Management
• Office Management
• Document Management
• Conferencing and Screen Sharing
• Collaborative Design & Creativity

TDLR:

• Adopting a great hybrid working experience requires a combination of strong company culture and the right technology.
• This article provides an overview of 15 mobile employee apps that can enhance productivity, collaboration, and office management in a hybrid work setting.
• These apps offer features such as task management, progress tracking, collaboration, and office space booking to help teams stay connected, organized, and productive.
• The key to choosing the right mobile employee apps for your own hybrid workforce’s needs includes defining your objectives, evaluating apps with employees from multiple departments, prioritizing customer support, and using trial periods to test the apps in real-life scenarios.

Mobile Employee Apps for Increased Productivity and Focus

1. Things

The must-have app especially for the “productivity-ists” in your hybrid team.

“Get things done” is the motto behind it and it’s precisely what it will help your employees achieve, as it:

• is surprisingly easy to use: stripped of all the distracting fussiness and customization options that turn other similar apps into… major procrastination tools
• Has an effectively simple interface: it’s more like a clean piece of paper to grab whenever you need to get things off your mind, neatly organized and… done.

In short, built off the powerfully simple principle of To-do lists, Things helps your employees working in a hybrid setting:

• Plan their days
• Manage their tasks and projects
• Regain their focus
• Get things done
• Reclaim control over their work-life balance

Its top features include:

• Progress tracking
• Drag-and-drop interface
• Mind mapping
• Analytics
• Collaboration
• Tags

• Create tasks and projects on the go
• Assign them different priority level tags to organize them across different projects
• Keep them on track via the Review perspective
• Keep track of what’s coming up in their days with the Forecast view that displays all the tasks and events in order

• schedule their work days and build schedules perfectly suited for them
• (better) prioritize their tasks and projects
• reschedule undone work
• rebuild their schedules when unexpected events happen
• keep track of upcoming deadlines and organize tasks according to their agendas
•  (even) help them realize that they run the risk of overcommitting themselves

4. one sec

One sec helps your hybrid employees keep their focus. And get the most out of their work days.

As losing focus is a true challenge particularly for hybrid working employees, who’re far more likely to struggle to fight digital distractions.

Its mechanism is wonderfully simple: whenever the user opens one of his social apps, the app nudges him to take a deep breath. As simple as that!

With this type of (basic) friction added to the employee’s attempt to open these distracting apps, it helps them set an intention before actually accessing them (fighting mindless scrolling).

And it eventually helps them delve into deep-focus work and regain control over their time at work.

Mobile Employee Apps for Collaboration, Task, and Project Management

• plan
• collaborate on projects
• tag
• color code their different projects

In short, with Trello and all its lists, boards, and cards, your hybrid workforce can see, at a glance, who’s doing what, things to do, and what has been accomplished.

It connects team members working on the same projects, remotely, and helps each one stay organized and on top of his tasks.

Key features include:

• Boards
• Lists
• Advanced checklists: break tasks into multiple subtasks
• Cards (and colorful card covers, that streamline collaboration)
• Butler automations: set rules, commands, and automation on your Trello boards to reduce repetitive work

6. Asana

Enhanced transparency, accountability, and great collaboration. These are the main goals for all remote and dispersed teams.

And that Asana — the project management app — helps them achieve.

As everyone:

• gets a bird’s eye view of what everyone else in the team is working on and exactly how work is distributed within the team
• can be held accountable for his/her workload
• avoids the risk of growing overwhelmed

Plus, they can automate their workflows by integrating Asana with other apps they’re using to get their work done from a distance: Google Drive, Slack, Toggle, Twist,

7. Monday

Monday’s a 5-products-into-one type of mobile app: Work Management, Dev (for managing sprints and enhancing collaboration between product and dev teams), Sales CRM, Projects, Marketer.

As a work management app for hybrid teams, your employees can use it both as individual tasks and client projects management tool to:

• Keep track of their goals and KPIs
• Track progress
• Streamline their work

Particularly for managers, Monday makes it easier to get clear insights into the workload and progress of each team member working remotely or in a hybrid setting and across multiple hybrid teams.

Plus, it integrates seamlessly with cannot-live-without collaboration tools for hybrid teams like Mailchimp, Slack, or Outlook.

8. Notion

The mobile employee app that helps you create a connected workspace.

And providing a great hybrid working experience is mostly about helping your remote employees be and feel connected.

How does Notion help you with that?

It offers your hybrid teams a centralized shared workspace: all the notes, tasks, and team info in one place. No more data scattered across several different communication platforms and team hubs.

With Notion, your distributed teams can:

• Keep records of everything on the go
• Visualize and manage all tasks and projects
• Map out all their tasks and events in a single calendar, to keep an eye on the big picture

Mobile Employee Apps for Office Management

• book office desks, meeting rooms, parking space, and office equipment anytime, anywhere
• schedule their days in the office: from the desks they’ll sit at, to the various meeting rooms they’ll be using for their in-person or hybrid team meetings and customer calls, to the specific office resources they’ll be using to get their work done: Mac or Windows, one monitor or dual display, individual or shared desk, etc.

The mobile app that helps facility managers:

• manage office spaces
• cut down costs
• support hybrid work styles

How exactly? By linking smart building data (IoT data that Microshare generates) and Business Process Management (BPM) programs.

In short, The React-M app receives recommended actions (or tasks, if you wish) triggered by IoT events and interpreted by AI.

And sent, as mobile phone notifications, to facility managers so they can take the needed actions.

Actions that can range from resizing real-estate footprints to suit more current needs in the context of a hybrid or remote working setting to… streamlining their ESG reporting efforts.

Mobile Employee Apps for Document Management

• Access their files and folders (even mark certain folders for offline access)
• Share them with their colleagues or clients
• Give and get feedback

… on the go.

Other features you’ll find valuable for leveling up your dispersed team’s working experience include:

• DocSend: gives them access to document analytics data like who’s opened or edited the documents
• Dropbox Backup: automatic backups of selected folders
• Dropbox Sign: speeds up specific documents’ approval with automatic e-signature

• It’s easy to use: you back up, organize, easily search for and access files and even grant granular access to them anytime, anywhere
• It integrates easily with many other tools too valuable for getting (hybrid) work done efficiently: from Meet to Jamboard, to Gmail or Docs

Mobile Employee Apps for Conferencing and Screen Sharing

• Doesn’t require video call guests to sign up on Zoom: they can access the virtual meeting with just a click on the access link. As simple as that!
• Offers more advanced noise canceling and light adjustment options
• Is better equipped for handling slow internet and video conferences with many participants
• Plus, the mobile app combines video meetings with chatting, texting, phoning, and whiteboard sharing.

• It comes with a conveniently large ecosystem of integrations, so you can automate a lot of your daily work tasks
• It offers a really helpful bot
• It allows you to add as many users and collaborators as you need to

In short, Slack brings all the right tools, people, and information together in one place and makes them easily accessible anywhere your employees might be working from.

Team communication and collaboration at its best.

Mobile Employee Apps for Collaborative Design and Creativity

• Invite other team members to comment, edit or just view their designs
• Create a Brand Kit with specific fonts and colors
• Approve workflows; particularly useful for large design teams, who can see faster progress with their projects

5 Steps to Choose the Right Mobile Employee Apps for Your Hybrid Workforce

At this point, you might be asking yourself:

“And how do I select precisely those employee apps that work best for my hybrid teams? Those that best meet my organization’s specific needs?”

Here are 5 steps to take that’ll help you narrow down your options:

1. Define your needs and goals: what exactly do you want a specific mobile app to help your hybrid team to accomplish? Keep in mind to ask your employees, too, what their specific needs are, to make sure the app will meet those needs and not just add unnecessary complexity to their workflows.

2. Have employees from multiple departments evaluate each employee's mobile app.

3. Prioritize platforms that offer reliable customer support and assistance.

4. Put together a list of must-have features for each category of hybrid work apps

5. Take full advantage of trial periods, so you can see the apps in real-life environments