The Truths and Lies About Remote Staffing

The remote staffing industry is growing every year. Believe it or not, more and more employees are choosing 30 more minutes of sleep over a 30% salary increase. More employees are happier with home-cooked meals over cold, microwavable packed lunch. Truth be told, remote staffing is working.

According to Buffer, a whopping 99% of remote workers would like to continue working remotely in 2020. However, there are already a lot of misconceptions about the nature of the remote work industry. There are false claims about how committed remote staff are and whether remote staffing really delivers.

In this article, we will clarify all these lies and speak the truth about remote work.

Many business owners and managers believe that company information and data are transferred by unsecured servers, resulting in confidentiality breaches. However, this is untrue because remote staffing companies use modern technologies, in addition to qualified IT teams, ensuring that your data is safe and that your confidentiality is respected.

Contrary to popular belief, communication does not suffer under remote work. It is actually the key component to building and maintaining a successful working relationship between an employer and a remote worker regardless of distance from one another. Should one opt to work remotely, a great start for this would be asking the managers to outline clear expectations and tools for communication.

A growing trend among remote companies is providing various digital means of socialisation. Allotting intentional blocks of time in the day for a casual “Breakroom Talk” through video calls, off-site meetups, and non-work-related channels (pets, kids, sports). These aforementioned methods are all ways for remote teams to foster communication and to feel connected.

The most evident way a company will save money will be through real estate. In an article on business.com, it is shown that many American businesses enjoy savings due to telecommuting. Sun Microsystems, for instance, saves USD 68 million a year in its real estate costs.

Other overhead costs which are associated with having employees on-location, line items such as office supplies and furniture, janitorial services, and electricity, are effectively reduced. Lastly, allowing employees to work from home would reduce the number of calls from employees reporting sick or reporting their inability to travel due to inclement weather. These unscheduled absences can cost a business up to USD 3,600 per hourly per employee and USD 2,500 per hour per regular salaried ones. 

An argument could be made that office camaraderie is not the same when chunks of the team work off-site. But great companies are not made by water cooler gossip–which actually has the potential to make company culture suffer–but by the way employees are treated and valued. Adjustments to communication strategies can greatly improve this issue. A conscious effort must be made on the part of the managers to show their team members the value that is placed on them, should they not be available for a daily chat. 

Simply because remote workers do not physically arrive and leave an office each day does not mean they never clock out. On the contrary, they keep similar schedules as their office counterparts, and the same expectations of work-life balance should be placed upon them.

Conversely, for friends of remote workers, working from home–or away from an office–is not a justification to have that person become the go-to should they want an early happy hour drink or a last-minute airport ride. There is still work that needs to be done and deadlines to be met.

You’ll never know unless you try incorporating remote staffing into your business. So if you think you need a remote staff today, request a call back with us or give us a call. Give it a chance, and we are sure you won’t regret it.