What's inside:
What’s fueling the trend, besides caffeine? A perfect storm of rare but realistic circumstances; these include massive layoffs, companies downsizing (then quickly ramping up hiring), outsourced jobs, expansion into new lines of business, headquarters relocation, and so on and so forth. What’s most surprising about this recent demand for remote workers is that it’s coming from both sides of the desk. Now, more than ever, employers are seeing the value in flexible jobs.
More than 26 million Americans—about 16% of the total workforce—now work remotely at least part of the time, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Between 2005 and 2015, the number of U.S. employees who telecommuted increased by 115%.
This got me thinking. What are the core technologies a company needs to establish a sustainable remote workforce? After a few seconds of online research (because that's how easy it was to find), I uncovered this short but precise snippet from AboutTech:
“3 Basic Technologies Needed for Mobile Work:
As you can see, telecommuting works for so many organizations because most companies already have the infrastructure in place to support flexible jobs. What are some of the other added bonuses to telecommuting you ask? Let’s start with work life balance. We’re all doing more with less (you can argue both professionally and personally). Flexible jobs empower employees to take back their schedules and organize their lives as they see fit. On that note, another popular staffing trend making a big splash is unlimited vacation holiday days. Blame this one on our UK pals all you want, but everyone from Netflix to Virgin to small mom and pop shops are reinventing their HR policies to accommodate the needs of today’s workforce.
While flexible jobs don’t work for everyone, this staffing trend is
taking shape in key talent pools; particularly in IT staffing. Software engineers, computer programmers, cybersecurity jobs, and system administrators round out the list of highest paid IT staffing jobs. Other areas gaining momentum include public relation specialists, graphic designers, writers and authors. We found that IT staffing jobs like internet security, website maintenance and computer repair jobs were the most popular remote jobs available.
Before submitting the real estate listing to your corporate headquarters, managers beware. There are several considerations to make before establishing a remote workforce. Consider whether your business can support flexible jobs. Do your employees thrive on collaboration? If so, you might want to consider how you’d implement such an isolated work environment. Another major consideration is the law for hiring full-time, part-time, freelance and contracted employees. With remote workers comes the need to pay employees likely living in one or more states outside your corporate headquarters. Ensuring that your payrolling services meet state and federal compliance is key to establishing the framework of at home work policies. For additional information on the considerations of setting up your remote workforce policy, read this article by TLNT.