How hiring managers are embracing remote workers

We know that remote work is the future. According to the statistics of the latest Freelancing in America survey, over half of the American work population will be working remotely by 2027. This is set to be the biggest revolution in the work industry for the century. The shift is going to be taxing not only for workers but also for the employment managers who are responsible for recruiting new talent for their firm. So, how are the hiring managers adapting to the shift in the form of work? Were they comfortable with traditional hiring or do they find remote hiring to be better? These are some of the questions we will be attempting to answer today.

It is a common notion that the move to freelancing was brought by the change in the mindset of the millennials and the progress in technology. However, hiring managers have contributed equally. It is the employment managers who govern how talent should be recruited and if it weren’t for their approval, the remote work revolution wouldn’t have taken off.

The hiring managers haven’t accepted remote work because it is an upcoming trend; rather, they have consented to it because it solves many of their own problems. The hiring process involves recruitment drives that last weeks and are both money- and time-consuming. If possible, the companies would, of course, like to shorten the hiring process, save their resources and expend them somewhere else. Hiring remotely from a platform such as ours allows companies to recruit talent within minutes and with just a few clicks.

The other hiring challenges such as access to skill, talent scarcity and compensation benefits are also looked after by remote hiring. On top of that, freelancers make for lesser overhead costs and make it easier for firms to expand their business.

Now, let us take a look at some statistics from the Future Workforce 2019 survey which shed light on how hiring managers (managing the millennials) are embracing the inclusion of remote workers.

The majority of workers across all generations including Gen Z (born between 1995-2015), Millennials (1980-1994), Gen X (born between 1965-1979) and Baby Boomers (born between 1944-1964) are allowed to work remotely by their managers.

The surveyed managers acknowledged the shift in the form of work and accepted that the number of workers who will be working remotely in the future will increase. They believe that older workers will have to adapt to the new emerging form of work. On average, 38% of the members of a team will be working remotely in the coming years.

Every 2 out of 5 managers said that they were getting more work done by freelancers than three years ago. The managers increased freelancer utilization to boost productivity, reduce costs, decrease workload and obtain access to skills that weren’t available in the company quarters. As companies adopt remote workers into their ecosystem, their utilization is expected to grow by more than 30% in 2019.

It is projected that by 2028 nearly every 3 out of 4 departments will have remote workers. Within each department, freelancers will constitute one-fourth of the workforce.

For accommodating non-traditional, flexible workers into the companies, hiring managers have to have resources and processes in place to support a remote workforce. The resources include software applications to send and receive project files, monitor progress, track the remote worker’s activity, analytics, and event calendar; whereas processes include the company policies and the terms and conditions agreement.

Out of the surveyed managers, 66% claimed that their departments had the resources and processes to support remote work. 34% of the managers whose departments didn’t have the resources and processes in place said that technology and internal policies were the major missing resources. There can be several reasons for the lack of resources: a) these departments haven’t yet realised the need for remote talent, b) they don’t have the funds to invest into the development of technology and other resources, and c) the support for remote workers hasn’t been prioritized.

Conclusion

It is evident that flexible workers are doing more work than ever for corporate organisations. And their contribution is only going to increase from hereon as more number of people turn freelancers. However, as we have seen, some companies don’t have the infrastructure in place to support remote work. Freelancers can be a massive cost saver for organisations, so it is only about time that the companies will realise the need for remote talent and invest in the development of resources and policies to support remote work.