What Is Stopping You From Employing Remotely?
Today, we’ve been asked about hiring remotely and it’s an interesting one, because here at Dorks Delivered we do hire abroad and think it can be fantastic when done properly. We have people that work within Australia, as well as people that work overseas for us. The reason we decided to hire people remotely was due to a couple of factors. The main one is that we operate an IT company. As part of our business we need to monitor and manage other companies, and a lot of the time we needed to do this overnight. If we can monitor and get the work done during the off-peak time for these companies, we can make sure that they have their uptime and integrity during the day. Remote hiring is perfect for this, and perfect for some parts of our business.
Maybe the daunting factors of employing remotely is what’s stopping you. Hiring remotely is not without its faults, and you must be prepared before you begin to employ remote workers. There are a few things you need to make sure of. Firstly, you need to make sure that you have a system that allows for remote employees to be successful and hold them accountable for their work. You can do this by taking a record of what they’re doing, whether that be through screenshots, time entries or some sort of work trail that allows for you to dive in and find out what it is that they are doing. Keeping employees accountable will protect you from being in the dark about how much work is getting done and to what quality work is being produced.
Keep Them Accountable
I’ve also found that accountability can empower employees to find new ways that they can improve on workflow. People like being praised and rewarded for their work. If you can demonstrate to them by the processes you put in place that they are part of the team and are important, it is more likely that they will put in maximum effort and give you bloody good results.
For our company, we created very detailed documentation processes, known as our standard operating procedures. This gives us the ability to pass on the information to any of our employees, and that’s not just technical staff. That’s accounting, bookkeeping, marketing, sales, and technical staff. Everyone has the same standard operating procedures that they can read through so they can understand how to do their job.
We don’t just give them this document and say, “this is how it’s done.” We actually ask our employees to create the procedures and then have us, as a team, look through all of them and make sure that they’re as they should be. We refine and critique these over time. There is no set in stone or hard and fast rules, but we don’t keep it this document and never change it. You want to make sure that your procedure documents always evolving with you. This is a huge thing to overcoming one of the technical aspects of hiring employing remotely. Remember, accountability is key!
You can easily create a similar system. If you did this it would give you more confidence to employing remotely once you know that the work will successfully get done.
Keep the Costs of Your Business Down Without Sacrificing Quality
Another reason some people hire abroad is to save employment costs. Some people go, “oh, you’re moving jobs out of Australia, and that’s bad.”
In reality, for a lot of work in Australia, the entry point to hire someone is between $40,000 and $60,000. If you’re going to be hiring anyone with any technical knowledge or technical skills in whatever the craft is that you’re doing business, you could easily be looking at between $85,000 and $160,000+ for a gifted employee.
Those numbers, for most people, push them outside of what would be realistic to run and expand a business. These issues can be avoided if you look abroad. The world is now very globalised, so you can hire a great staff and keep the running costs of your business down without sacrificing quality. By doing this you can limit the business costs being pushed down onto your end users, which is ultimately where they will end up.
If you’re hiring someone in Australia for $90,000 but there are staff available overseas for $40,000, that’s $50,000 to play with. You could do a whole heap with this saved money. One thing that could be beneficial for new businesses is to use this money to be more competitive with business pricing until you get your name out there and you’re able to then offer something more than just having the lowest prices. This shouldn’t be your only point of difference against your competitors, but that’s another story for another blog!
Maybe you are worried about communication not be great if you employ remotely. We actually find that its the opposite. When we hire remotely, what makes it work for our company is the ease of communication through technology. Nowadays you’re able to very easily communicate an idea to someone else in the far reaches of the world without too much of a problem. Another plus to this is that it gives you a much wider audience to be able to find the best candidate to suit you and your needs in business.
I could see a lack of knowledge about where to actually hire people as being a reason that stops you employing remotely. Luckily, there many different places to find people as there are lots of different freelance websites out there. Some of the most popular are Freelancer, Upwork, Fiverr and even advertising on SEEK could result in a perfect match.
It Can Be a Daunting Task
It’s not going to be all roses when you start looking for new employees. There’s going to be people out there that are amazing, and then there’s going to be people out there that are not, just like regular hiring. When hiring remotely you need to go through the same process as you would with a face-to-face interview. Have your same questions set up and have a Skype meeting with them so you can get to know them better.
If you want to be super thorough, have another staff member with you to look over any of their body language changes as you’re discussing things with them. You can profile them and go through Myers-Briggs test or something similar to make sure that you are hiring someone that’s going to mesh in with your team. The fit is very important. Don’t just look over it and think, “Wow! I’m saving five dollars an hour. This is going to be amazing.” Go through the same hiring process. Keep your integrity and make sure that you’re hiring someone that resonates with your business.
It can be a daunting task hiring someone that you don’t get to see every day in an office. Ultimately, I believe that hiring remotely does have significantly more rewards. You will be able to have an efficient staffing network and the ability to know that you can operate your business on a 24-hour schedule with a marketplace full of skills that are unsurpassed. You’re also helping your carbon footprint and giving people opportunities at having great futures all around the world. There should be nothing that stops you employing people remotely. It can be scary at the start, but if you make sure that you can find someone to help you through these steps you should be good as gold!
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