The future of work is now. Companies are hiring more and more remote workers, and not just within their own cities. When you’re hiring remotely, there’s no reason not to look further afield and widen your talent pool. Keep reading to discover the top reasons you should be hiring remote workers at your company.

What Are Remote Workers?

The term ‘remote worker’ refers to any employee who works remotely. This can mean that they work from home in the same city, across the United States, or even in another country. These employees work from anywhere including at a café, park, or anywhere else they like, not just from home. A digital nomad is a person who travels around the world, working remotely wherever they are. This might be an island paradise, a major city, or anywhere with Wi-Fi!

These people don’t need to come into the office. You will see that they have been doing their job through the outcomes of their work. More and more managers are beginning to see that they don’t need to watch their employees like a hawk to make sure that they get work done.

Benefits of Hiring Remote Workers

For you as the employer, there are plenty of benefits you will get from hiring remote workers. Here are just a few of them:

Save on Costs

With remote workers, you don’t need to hire office space for them, so you will save on rent. It has been estimated that businesses with staff working from home save up to 10,000 each year on real estate expenses. The costs of cleaning, furniture, office supplies, and bills all reduce when you don’t have as many people in the office.

But that’s not all. You get both the saving of office costs but also less wasted time when your staff work remotely. Employees spend roughly 20% of their time at work not working. This reduces when people are working from home because they spend less time in pointless meetings and interacting with each other.

Better Productivity

You may be surprised to learn that remote employees are often more productive than the employees who are physically in your workplace. Studies support this fact over and over again! So, why is this? We can think of a few reasons.

The first is that these employees feel valued. They are in control of their own time and you have offered them the freedom to get their work done however they see fit. There is a great deal of trust involved when you are the manager of remote teams. The staff understand this and feel valued because of it.

Also, remote workers are allowed to work flexibly. This allows them to control their schedule and work when they can focus and be productive. For example, it may work best for some people to work from 12 pm to 8 pm. This is often not possible in an office environment.

Finally, the reason that remote workers are more productive is that they can simply focus on their work and not the noise around them or office politics. You’d be surprised how much time you spend chatting to others and getting distracted in the office.

Widen Talent Pool

If you only hire staff from the city your business is in, you are severely limiting your talent pool. If you searched instead for someone who lives in the same state, country, or anywhere in the world, you will greatly open up your options when hiring.

This means that you can truly find the best person for the position, not just fill it with someone because they live close by. You might find someone perfect who happens to live across the country. Plus, once you open up a remote job position, you will likely get more applicants as plenty of people are looking for full-time remote work.

How to Ensure that You Have Satisfied Remote Workers

If you’re considering hiring remote workers, you need to ensure that you do it right. You want these people to be happy in their jobs so that they will be productive and contributing members of your team. So, here are some aspects to consider with your remote workers to ensure their job satisfaction.

Access

First, many employers who are new to hiring remote workers fail to set up everything they need. You likely have a checklist of what a new employee needs on their first day at work. A remote employee will need all of this and more. Make sure that they have access to any software they need to complete their work. This will include video conferencing and communication software to keep in touch with you, such as Skype, Slack, or Zoom.

If they don’t have access to all the software they require, they won’t be able to complete their work. Ask them if they need anything. Otherwise, you may be left guessing as to why their work isn’t getting done.

Recognition

You need to remember that a remote employee can feel isolated at times. They submit their work and you might read it and think ‘awesome!’. If they were in the same office as you, you might turn around and tell them ‘well done’. Some of this casual recognition can get forgotten when an employee is remote. So make an effort to tell them when you are impressed with their work so that they can continue to feel valued.

Rewards

When a staff member has completed a big project or landed a huge client, you will often congratulate them. Consider offering a reward when something like this occurs. This gives people an incentive to work hard and set big goals for themselves at work.

A reward could be anything like extra leave, a gift card, or a thoughtful gift basket. Keep your employees feeling valued and hopefully they will have fantastic job satisfaction.

Hiring remote employees can make your life much easier. Treat them right and you will reap the rewards! Save on costs, get higher productivity, and widen your talent pool by hiring remote workers at your company.