It is no longer uncommon to hear inquiries from candidates like: “do you allow WFH?”, “Do you allow remote employees?”, and other questions about the flexibility of being physically present in an office.
In this new age in tech, candidates have come to have higher expectations for remote work either as a part-time or full-time option.
Here are some things to consider when thinking about remote employees:
If your company is headquartered in a higher cost of living geography, you could majorly save money in multiple ways.
Hiring people, especially engineers, is expensive – for remote workers, you can typically expect to see less daunting numbers when it comes to salary ranges.
Some workers may even be willing to take less for a remote job vs an in-office job because of how important flexibility is to them on a sliding scale vs compensation. But don’t forget, it is still very important to pay your employees fairly.
You may also be able to save in “overhead” if you have a decent percentage of your employees working remotely.
Think of all the office space you won’t have to pay for! In markets like San Francisco and New York, you could be saving a bundle in this case!
On top of hiring remotely as a money saving tactic, hiring remote is also a great means for retainment. Now more than ever, employees crave a certain flexibility in their career and in their work/life balance.
For those that truly love the flexibility of working remotely, they would rarely give up the ease of working from home vs getting back into an in-office environment.
Working remotely allows people of all backgrounds and situations the freedom to live a balanced life. Not to mention, because remote workers are able to create their own work setup, they are equally, if not more productive than an in-office worker.
Of course, there are things to be noted on the flip side of this coin.
Hiring remote workers is a great move for a company, but only if the organization commits itself to integrating these employees well – this is especially true for a “split” organization where there are both remote and in-office employees.
Your communication channels must be open and effective to truly optimize a geographically dispersed team.
Other things to take into consideration are: time zones and working hours, how to interview for remote roles, and how to find employees who will thrive in a remote environment.
Working remotely isn’t for everyone, as much as we may all like to believe it could be for us. Hiring those who will flourish in a “work from home” environment will be critical to the success of bringing on remote employees.
Make sure to ask potential employees what types of working environments they have had in the past and how they would iterate on those situations to create a conducive remote environment for them should they get the position.
In addition, you need to align expectations with candidates on suggested working hours, especially if there are many time zone differences at play.
Meaning, you must think clearly through how time zones may affect meeting scheduling, deadlines, etc. before you embark on a remote hiring endeavor, then communicate this out to your internal teams and potential new hires so they have a clear understanding of how you are making remote teams function properly.
There are a lot of pros to hiring remote, but you cannot just simply do so and expect to not put in any further effort to create a positive work “space”.
Like any work environment, in or out of a physical office, building a team and culture takes a lot of thoughtfulness and adding or expanding on your remote operations can amplify the need for these efforts.
If you are interested in remote candidates, check out woo.io for access to hundreds of highly qualified potential employees. Happy hiring!
The thoughts of the author are hers alone and do not speak for/represent the opinions of her employer.
