Key Takeaways
1. Today, employers are finding that many employees would rather quit their job than give up work-from-home privileges. As a result, companies need to adapt to the flexible work revolution. You need to adopt a remote-friendly team structure to remain competitive and attract top talent.
2. In findings published by Reuters, there is a growing consensus that future work culture will be remote-first (often known as having a ‘virtual workforce‘); while experiencing a different set of expectations from their managers.
3. With industries such as emerging technology and software forecast to grow by 104% and 50%, respectively, this presents a challenge for employers to find and retain top talent. In response to the increasing demand to fill complex technical roles, recruiters and employers are opting to fill these positions remotely, thus, taking advantage of a remote-first culture.
Why should your company hire remotely?
While many workers are tempted by the ‘Great Resignation’ among their peers and have decided they don’t want to return to an office, your company can use this fact to its advantage: By hiring remotely, you can access the best talent, unique skill sets, and regional expertise worldwide. Furthermore, when you hire remotely, you can build more diverse teams that can contribute to moving your company forward.
We consider the disadvantages and the benefits when you hire remotely below:
Hire remote employees fast Horizons EOR services.
What are the benefits for a company in hiring remotely?
- Boost your reputation with potential hires
- You will enhance your reputation as a flexible employer if your company allows remote or hybrid office arrangements (with some workers in the office and some working remotely). In a tight employment market, this can be a necessity to avoid losing hires to your competitors.
- Productivity gains
Remote work has been reported to increase productivity while on the job, reduce (or, in most cases, eliminate) commuting time (which means employees are ‘fresh’ on the job), and, reduce our carbon footprint, ultimately benefiting the environment.
- Reduce costs
- Your company can reduce overhead by limiting its need for office space, or keep costs in check by hiring where employee costs are lower.
- Where a hybrid arrangement applies, with staff only working remotely part of the time, you can still save on the total amount of allocated deskspace and work infrastructure.
- Widen your talent pool
- When you hire remotely, you open up your company to a wider range of potential employees. Instead of simply hiring locals, or those willing to relocate, you can hire staff from virtually anywhere (as long as you otherwise meet compliance requirements).
Video: When companies hire remotely, does it change our city centers?
Expanding on the productivity gains mentioned above, Bloomberg Quicktake questions what effect reduced commuting is having on our city centers.
What are the disadvantages when you hire remotely?
Hiring remotely is not all ‘upsides’: There are challenges that go along with the benefits. Some of the potential disadvantages of hiring remotely include:
- It can hinder creative collaboration
- If you are in a creative business, like advertising, your staff may rely on in-person meetings and personal feedback to arrive at successful ad campaigns. The give-and-take discussions of workers in remote positions are limited, without the ability to have as much casual interaction, observe body language, or gather clues about how a person is feeling from their expression in a meeting.
- Therefore, businesses in creative fields may prefer not to hire remotely, needing the in-person interaction of creative writers, designers, and artists.
- Supervision challenges and loss of control
- Some companies may feel that they cannot supervise remote workers and those in the office. Managers who oversee workers in far-flung locations must rely on trust more than immediate supervision. This can cause problems in the workflow deadlines and in the delivery of products
- Time zone differences
- Some managers find it difficult to adjust to their workers’ time zones which may be, in some cases, 12 hours difference. These US managers may find it challenging to be advising a remote worker in Singapore at 10 pm EST in the US when the Singapore employee is just beginning his day.
What are the disadvantages when you hire remotely?
Modern firms can hire remotely when they integrate their Applicant Tracking Systems with AI-driven tools and features like AI Suggest by uKnowva. It helps to generate top skills, complete job duties and roles, and interview assessment questions within seconds, reducing 10-15 hours of research work to 15-30 seconds for the recruiters to hire a talented workforce remotely. It also helps to reduce the bias in the hiring process for the recruiter and increases their productivity to streamline the recruitment drive for remote teams. Recruiters also access people and hiring-related analytics and dashboards on uKnowva to make effective, efficient, culturally emotional and intelligent decisions when wanting to attract the best talent in the industry, irrespective of their locations.
Major companies that hire remotely
CNBC.com recently listed the top 20 companies in 2022 that are hiring remotely. They include SAP, CVS Health, and Dell. Here is a brief description of each company and the workers they are seeking:
- SAP’s headquarters is in Newton Square, Pennsylvania. Its industry is enterprise software, and it is hiring paid search strategists and recruiting software engineers.
- CVS Health’s headquarters is in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. It is a health care company, and the remote workers it seeks are clinical pharmacists, senior informatics consultant leads, and pharmacy technicians.
- Dell is based in Round Rock, Texas. It is a technology company and is seeking remote workers who are outside sales product specialists and account executives.
FlexJobs saw a 12% increase in remote job listings in 2021 over 2020, with notable growth in accounting and finance, as well as HR, recruiting and social media roles that can be done partially or entirely from home. Nearly 30% of listings are for jobs at a manager or senior level.
How to train a new hire remotely
Effective remote onboarding is critical for companies to retain talented team members and achieve long-term success. Studies indicate that up to 20% of staff turnover happens within the first 45 days of employment.
The first step in the remote onboarding process starts with ‘pre-boarding’. As an employer, ensure that before your new employees’ first day, they’re up-to-speed on your company policies, as well as the steps involved in their role.
Prioritizing onboarding programs can improve employee retention, particularly those programs that emphasize a company’s commitment to advancing employees’ careers.
In your training process, let your new team members know what the company expects of them. Schedule check-ins at a regular time.
If you decide to bring your remote team to headquarters for an all-hands meeting, allow for the fact that remote workers will need time and extra care to assimilate. In between the business meetings, schedule some down time when workers can get to know each other in a casual setting, such as playing softball or going on a picnic.
Top sites for companies hiring remotely
There are a handful of websites you should regularly visit when you want to expand your remote workforce. Two of the most popular sites for hiring remotely include:
- Weworkremotely.com, which boasts the largest remote work community in the world, with over 3 million visitors. It lists dozens of salaried opportunities across many fields. Many exciting new start-ups post here, but you’ll find more established companies, too. Some industries include programming, customer support, management, design, and marketing.
- Flexjobs.com, which has been active since 2007 and lists hybrid, remote and flexible jobs. It has one of the largest databases of part-time, full-time, and temporary remote jobs. It selects legitimate opportunities across more than 100 industries.
Horizons can help you hire remotely
Many companies prefer to hire an international employment firm, like Horizons, when they wish to hire remotely. Horizons is experienced with hiring globally and can address all the tax and legal issues involved with your hires.
If you need our assistance with hiring a global workforce, please do not hesitate to contact us today.
Frequently asked questions
When you hire remotely, you are not just canvassing candidates in your local area but around the world. The scope and range of candidates that you can reach means that you can hire better-quality employees. Your business can scale up or down, with on-demand specialists and remote workers. As, Greg Heilers, co-founder of Jolly, put it: Your team spans multiple time zones, enabling a better coverage of vulnerable assets, quicker response time to clients, and more around-the-clock progress on projects.”
The Washington Post reported that pre-pandemic, in an August 2019 survey,62 percent of respondents said they would rather interview in-person, for the obvious reasons: They stated in-person is the only way to judge a potential opportunity truly, it’s easier to connect with the interviewer, and the chances of technical difficulties are high in a virtual interview.
But in a March 2021 study, 41 percent of hiring managers said they were adopting a hybrid approach to interviews from now on, with 23 percent planning to go fully virtual. Virtual interviews are less time-consuming, allow hiring managers to access a wider pool of candidates, and — given the rise in fully remote positions — may allow candidates to be evaluated in the environment where they will ultimately work.
