To follow an asynchronous, remote-first approach your people need the tools to be productive. We’ve already described a wide range of tools earlier on this blog. You can’t have everything, of course. Your company’s software procurement policy will also be a limiting factor when you decide which tools you can introduce.

If you can approve software spends though, listen to your team carefully. If you can't approve these yourself and you discover your team needs certain tools, then here are a few ways to get them.

1. If you work as an internal team, explore if you can get software licences only for them. This may mean that you bill the expense to an internal expense code. 

2. As a consulting team, you may have a bit more flexibility. Talk to your clients about how these new tools can help the team be more productive. Clients can often purchase software for a consulting team as part of their IT budgets.

3. Explore your company policies and find out if employees can purchase certain tools for themselves using a company allowance. Not all organisations allow this, but if your employers do, then this is an easy way to introduce new, productivity enhancing tools to your team.

4. If none of the above approaches work, make a business case to whomsoever it may concern in the business so you get the tools you need. This can be a long, frustrating process in bigger companies. I never said being a leader is easy!

Whatever you do, don’t fall prey to the “shiny new toy syndrome”. There’ll always be a new tool in the market that does a certain task a wee-bit better. That’s no reason to introduce the tool to your team. The cost of onboarding your people to the tool may outweigh the benefits you get from it. 

Oh, and don’t forget your people’s home offices. As people get more comfortable with remote work, they’ll figure out workspace hacks and improvements to make themselves more productive. Real estate prices vary across the world, but if you take a median cost of $1500 per year per employee for office space, you’ll save quite a lot of money each year when you adopt a remote first strategy. Plough some of that money back into people’s home offices. It doesn’t have to be a huge amount. Your employees will appreciate every bit of support in making their work lives more flexible and productive.