You can’t help but notice remote work is no more innovation. The future of work keeps transforming the way we work and live: workers leave jobs looking for more flexible job options and the majority of millennials are interested in working remotely. But what does this trend mean for your business?
Although this latest trend can bring exceptional benefits to our lives, there’s no one-fits-all decision. Managing a remote workforce takes a different approach and presents its own challenges. So how do you know building a remote team is the right step for your business? Here are several scenarios when hiring remote workers or freelancers is a win-win solution.
You want to build a team for your startup fast
You don’t hire a team overnight, not even over weeks. The hiring process can be incredibly time-consuming, especially when your talent pool is limited to local employees. You start hunting candidates, get through a long assessment and interviewing process, train them, and get some results in a couple of months.
Building a remote team, you can access top-tier talents outside your geographical limits. No need to wrestle with the previous employers for your candidates, no need to persuade them to move to your city, no extra costs – a remote team will start much faster than any onsite team.
As mentioned above, more and more people value work-from-home jobs. In the era of the future of work, we need more workplace flexibility and more space to control how we can structure our lives around our work. And when you offer your candidates to work remotely, they’re more likely to agree right away.
You have a specific project that should be completed (fast)
Let’s say you have a specific short-term project in mind or need a new product feature. No matter how professional your team is, they can’t have all the expertise you need at any point in time. On the other hand, building a dedicated team will take a lot of time and effort. And here come remote workers or freelancers.
When all the team members are busy with your main project and you need extra workers without further commitment (at least for now), building an offsite team is a lifeline. Once they complete their work, the project is successfully delivered, and you are happy with the result, you can say goodbye. But if you’ve enjoyed the collaboration, you can always continue to work together.
Also, it’s not a secret that recruiting highly skilled tech professionals can be a challenge for a non-technical employer. When you decide to build a remote team, you can delegate this task to a specialised agency that will take the stress out of the whole process.
So, if you’re hiring freelance developers or need someone to assemble a project team for you, you can simply go with tech-oriented communities, such as Toptal, CodeControl, or Honeypot.
These and other similar companies not only help with the hiring process but also assist with managing offsite teams if needed. Working with these platforms, you’ll avoid the painstaking assessment process and reduce risks that always take place when you hire new employees.
You’re limited by budget, but you want to retain quality
Overhead costs are a significant item of expenditure, especially for early-stage startups. With a remote business, you’ll save both your and your employees’ money.
Savings come from less money spent on office space (or no need to rent it at all), electricity, furniture, technology resources, lunches, and other overhead costs. Telecommuters, for their part, can save between $2,000 and $7,000 per year.
Being open to employing remote workers, you will find the best candidates willing to join your team for much less than you would spend when hiring someone in-house. Additionally, when you hire remote workers, you can spend the money you save to hire more qualified talents.
Instead of providing an exceptional working environment or relocating skilled candidates, you can hunt the best talents with competitive salaries. They won’t mind, trust me.
You want to reduce turnover and increase productivity
Ironically, sending your workers home will help you reduce turnover and improve staff satisfaction. According to the State of Remote Work report, companies that support remote work experience 25% lower employee turnover. It also shows that 71% of respondents agreed they would more likely choose an employer who offers them the ability to work remotely over another in their next job.
So, if you want to save your time and money that you would spend on a hiring process time after time, you should definitely lean towards hiring a remote team or let your on-site employees work remotely.
Moreover, telecommuters claim they are more productive when working from home; some of them even say they accomplish more tasks in less time than when they worked from the office and no wonder.
This increase in productivity can be attributed to multiple factors, including the absence of often-distracting traditional work environment, the opportunity to get work done during the most productive hours, the freedom to select the most inspiring spaces to work from, and more.
Image: Unsplash
You are ready for the pitfalls
Last but not least, deciding to build a remote team, you should be ready to face new challenges and learn new things. While the concept of remote work can be extremely beneficial for both employers and staff, it’s often difficult for managers to make things right.
Many employers consider the fact they don’t always have control over the situation and can’t physically monitor employees to be the most challenging. To keep everyone moving in the same direction, a great manager should be able to provide a clear strategy, announce it, and trust their team. Without trust and a great deal of patience, a person can never build an effective remote team.
Telecommuting, you won’t ask for advice during a coffee break or hold weekly team-building activities. And here comes another problem: it takes effort to make people get to know each other when they work remotely.
If you want to build a great remote team, you’ll need to adapt and apply the best practices that will help you make things work for everyone involved.
Before you start managing a remote team, answer the following questions:
- How do you create and maintain company culture in a remote team?
- How do you sustain good communication?
- How do you motivate a remote workforce?
- How do you sustain meaningful connections?
- How do you make remote teams feel inclusive?
- How do you encourage teamwork?
- How do you monitor their performance?
Once you find the answers to all these questions, you are ready to manage a team from anywhere in the world.
In Summary
Remote work is not a panacea.
Remote work keeps gaining popularity due to the numerous advantages it provides, but it doesn’t mean it works for everyone. Before you decide on building a remote team, double-check the scenarios mentioned above and make sure you’re ready to adapt to the changes it brings.
If you need to hire many professionals at once, scale up quickly, fit into budget limits, or launch a new complex project fast, hiring a remote team is your way to go.
About the Author
Adelina Karpenkova is a Content Marketer at CodeControl, a freelance platform matching the world’s best freelancers with companies that need their services. She loves writing about the future of work, startups, and online marketing. She thinks content marketing is the best mechanism to show your expertise and build your brand.
