Do you feel like you’ve exhausted and struck out with the entire available employee pool in Silicon Valley and still have vacant positions at your startup? Maybe you can’t find someone to fill the exact need you have, or maybe the wage demands are impossible for you to meet at this point in your startup. Of course, you’d love to pay your employees what they want, but that’s not always possible in the early stages of your company. What do you do when you’ve run out of local options? If you’re in this position, it’s time to expand your talent search and consider hiring remote workers. But how to broaden your scope? CLICK TO TWEET A startup I recently worked with had a serious challenge that many companies, new and established, face. They were having a difficult time finding quality employees with experience and talent that fit into their payroll budget. In Silicon Valley — as in every other Tech hub around the globe, affordable talent is hard to come by, especially for startups. The founders couldn’t sacrifice anyone else’s income, and they also didn’t want to end up with sub-par employees just to fit into their budget. As a solution, I suggested that they “act” outside of the box by decentralizing the team. In this case, the box was perceived geographic restraints. Instead, they investigated hiring remote workers to fill their vacancies. Many jobs, especially in the tech industry, don’t really need workers to be in an office space to fulfill the duties. While the startup was worried about managing remote employees, they decided to take the plunge. What they found was a larger talent pool at a more affordable price, which was exactly what they needed to continue moving forward with their startup. They were delighted to discover that an engineer from Wisconsin or a designer from Texas was just as talented as the candidates they were considering in Silicon Valley. With their positions filled, they were able to make excellent progress moving forward towards success with their startup. Why Remote Workers Love Joining (Silicon Valley) Startups There are many more benefits than what’s listed, but these are some of the more compelling reasons why you should hire remote workers. 1. They can’t move to you or away from you Many people are tied down by a mortgage, kids in school, or a spouse with a great job. They would love to move to Silicon Valley and work for you, but they can’t. However, by hiring remotely, you are opening up your search to hundreds of people who have great experience that you might have missed out on just because of where they live. An in-office employee moving away has a big impact on both your work culture and your productivity. There are so many reasons why someone would leave a job, and many of them have to do with geographic location. You won’t lose anyone due to needing to be closer to family, leaving because their spouse got transferred or is attending school somewhere, or not being able to afford living in Silicon Valley anymore. When a remote worker moves, the most you need to sacrifice is maybe a few days of vacation to make the move. Otherwise, since they can work from anywhere, you can rely on them as permanent employees. 2. There are plenty of fish in the sea For every one employee who is in your location and could work for your, there are at least 100 more who are not. Restricting your accessible talent pool to your geographic area removes hundreds of quality workers from your search. If you’re creating a tech startup in an area that isn’t tech-centric, hiring remotely would allow you to find developers, coders, or engineers in places like San Francisco and Boston. You can even make your search worldwide to the enormous pool of talented workers from anywhere like the Philippines or France. 3. Remote workers are more productive You might be inclined to think that remote workers would spend less time worker than their in-office counterparts, but the opposite is actually true. In fact, in a recent survey by Global Workplace Analytics, 53% of remote workers reported that they were likely to work overtime, compared to only 28% of in-office employees. With the flexible hours and no commute that remote working allows, it’s easy to see how they wouldn’t mind working an extra hour or two every day. Offices are full of distractions. From impromptu meetings to chatty colleagues, there is plenty happening that can take you away from your work. At home, your workers can focus on their tasks completely uninterrupted. Additionally, office hours are typically set from nine to five, and not everyone is at their most productive during that time. You might have employees that get the most done when everyone else is asleep, or like to bang out their tasks before the sun comes up. Additionally, office workers often equate being at the office as working. It’s impossible to know how many hours your employees are actually working while they are at work, so you need to gauge productivity by what is getting done. Remote workers can’t fool themselves into thinking that they are “working” by just sitting at their home computer, so they tend to be more productive during their work hours. 4. Communication improves When you first start out, the few employees you have know everything. As you grow, it’s impossible to keep that up without top-notch communication, and you can’t rely on overheard conversations of water cooler chats to spread information. You have to work with different channels like Google hangouts, Slack and other type of communication and collaboration platforms to stay in touch. 5. Find more qualified workers Restricting your search to one area or demanding new hires to relocate can dramatically narrow your results. By hiring remote employees, you broaden the talent pool and include a larger number of qualified workers in your search. As an added bonus, remote workers tend to be happier than in-office workers, which can translate into better results. 6. Remote workers save you money As a startup, one of your biggest concerns is budget, and replacing an employee is a cost that you might not be able to handle. It is estimated that an employee making $50,000 per year will cost you 20% of the salary to replace. If any of your positions require high levels of training or education, the turnover cost will be even higher. Remote work can be used as a perk to retain your best workers and avoid having to pay to replace in-office workers. Recruiting new employees can cost you $7000 on average, or possibly more if you use a recruiter. That’s a big chunk of change for startups, and you might not even be happy with who the recruitment agency selects for you. The time it takes to hire someone averages 10 to 12 weeks from job posting to an accepted offer. All of that downtime means there is either no productivity or the job is being diverted to someone else, which is going to cost you money, too. Not having to rent a big office space allows you to save money as well. In fact, a recent study found that switching to telecommuting full time could save your business $10,000 per employee per year in real estate costs. For a startup, that is a huge savings. Utilizing remote workers helps you avoid expenses that on-location working requires like office chairs, office supplies, janitorial services, and utilities. Finally, remote workers are less likely to call in sick or miss work due to inclement weather. Unscheduled absences like these can cost your startup up to $1800 per employee per year. 7. Scale as you grow What happens when you outgrow your current workspace? Moving an in-house team every year or so is expensive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive. With a remote team, you’ll never have to move offices, and your employees can function in a convenient way. CLICK TO TWEET Things to consider before going remote Remote work has plenty of benefits, but there are a small number of challenges to consider, too. 1. Your management style will need to adjust Managing a team of professionals in different locations is not the same a managing an in-house team. You’ll want to make it a point to reach out to each of your remote workers on a regular basis and make an extra effort to stay connected to them so they feel like they are part of the company’s culture. Investing time in your remote workers will make them feel like they are truly part of the team, and they are likely to stay loyal to you, too. You will want to be as transparent with your remote workers as you are with your in-house ones, and give them the same access to information as everyone else. There are different tools like Dropbox and Gdrive that allow you to share information easily. 2. Not everyone is cut out for remote work Not everyone will find the freedom of remote work a way to become more productive. The ability to hire the right people for remote work is key. Certain personality traits and values align well with remote work, and you should look for those things. People who are self-motivated, organized, good and managing time and priorities, and can work independently are ideal candidates for remote work. Since much of the communication done with remote workers is via chat or email, you’ll want them to be good writers. A bad writer can turn a short chat into a long one, which cuts into valuable time and decreases productivity. Find some way to test writing skills in the interview process to weed out the applicants who can’t write clearly and concisely about complex issues. If you are interviewing someone who has not worked remotely before, be sure to thoroughly cover all of the concerns, questions, and possible issues in the interview so there are no surprises once they start working. 3. Hiring will still take some work Although you’re increasing the talent pool you have to work with, it still might take some effort to attract qualified applicants. You may need to spend some time actively recruiting people to apply for positions with you. To find qualified workers, go to job boards where your ideal candidates are likely spending their time. Posting on the big sites like Monster or CareerBuilder for a specific and highly-skilled position isn’t a good idea. AngelList is a good resource for startups to use to find remote workers, and other resources are WeWorkRemotely, Dribbble, and SupportOps. Tools for remote workers and employers In addition to the job boards mentioned above, popular services like Freelancer.com, PeoplePerHour, and Upwork allow startups to find affordable remote workers to complete small tasks or work on specific projects. Sophisticated freelancer management systems are emerging for startups to make it easier to manage remote workers. These systems help create a digital bridge between full-time employees and remote workers to help everyone stay integrated and connected. For communication, things like HipChat, Grape, Google Hangouts and Skype for Business allows you to make face-to-face contact with your remote workers on a regular basis. Having a great human resources information system and some type of shared drive is invaluable with remote employees. Software that allows simultaneous, multi-user editing and collaboration is necessary if you’re using remote workers. CLICK TO TWEET TAKEAWAY Startups can benefit in a number of ways when they take advantage of remote workers. Not only does it open up a large and talented workforce that you might not have access to locally, it allows you to save money and scale as you grow. Find the right marketplaces for your niche and execute on it. (!!) And, the most genuine way of showing virtual appreciation for a writer is to share & tweet . In case you haven’t done it yet … I’m looking forward to it! Thank you for reading/watching this and stay tuned for next week’s post. Originally published at whatittak.es .
