Adapting to a Remote Workforce? Consider This List of Things to Prepare

The biggest change that suddenly emerged in the corporate world is the transition of physical office to a remote workforce. Not only on a small scale, but on a global scale. With the COVID-19 pandemic being an economic and business killer, almost everyone was on the edge, hanging on by a thread, filled with uncertainties and doubts. Businesses that were able to quickly adapt rose from the disaster that the COVID-19 pandemic brought. The most vulnerable businesses during the pandemic were startups to small businesses that either lack the capacity to proactively adapt to the pandemic or they either lack the resources to even begin with.

A few years after COVID, remote work is still the preferred setup by many. A study by freelancing platform Upwork estimates that by 2025, 32.6 million Americans will work remotely. If you’re a company or organization that is thinking if it’s about time to adapt to remote work arrangements then this article will serve as a guide of a general list of things to prepare in adapting and transitioning to a remote work arrangement.

Table of Contents

What are the Benefits of Remote Work
Benefits of Remote Work for Employees
Benefits of Remote Work for Employers
List of Things to Prepare Before Adapting to Remote Work Arrangement
Enable a Remote Workforce with TalentHero
What Benefits Can Your Business Get from TalentHero
Takeaway

What are the Benefits of Remote Work?

The fascinating thing about working remotely is that your workers have the capability to work from anywhere they want. In reality, it is proven and tested that working from home increases productivity, better employee well-being, and better overall workforce performance. With these game-changing benefits of remote work it makes the negative corporate myths obsolete.

But besides that, there are multitude of benefits that come from working remotely for both employees and employers. It’s easier to further understand why workers and professionals are heavy on the demand for having a remote work arrangement when we discuss the benefits.

Work-life Balance

Having the perfect balance between work and personal life is one thing employees are trying to achieve. Work-life balance is an important component in preventing your employees from experiencing constant burnout since it greatly affects overall productivity. Working remotely allows your employees to work from anywhere they want. They could be comfortably working at your home office, or visiting their family far away from town, or even working in a tranquil beach resort. Your employees don’t have to go to the physical office just to go to work. Your employees don’t have to waste a valuable chunk of their time per day just to go through the stress of commuting, being stuck and traffic.

Increased productivity 

It has been proven that remote work or working from home increases productivity and efficiency amongst employees that are participating in a remote work arrangement. There are a lot of factors that build up productivity. It’s the smallest and slightest thing that matters for an employee to stay productive. Things like energy, stress levels, state of mental health, and environment all affect the rate of productivity. As we’ve mentioned earlier, when your employees participate in a remote work arrangement, they don’t have to waste time and energy in going to the office, preparing and stressing the clothes they have to wear, and pouring the energy into commuting, or any distractions that they have to face that would affect their overall well-being.

Improve employee well-being

Remote work allows your employees to have more time for themselves. They don’t have to worry about having no time to enjoy their hobbies on their own personal time. Instead, as soon as they clock out of work, they can prep a healthy home-cooked meal, or go to the gym and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Or enjoy their favorite session of guilty pleasure and lie in bed to binge watch their favorite show or series. They also have the opportunity to socialize and hang out with friends. These are the little things that employees want to achieve. It promotes positive employee well-being, which are all positive benefits of having a remote work arrangement.

Saves money and time

Working remotely is more than just having the luxury of working from anywhere or at your home office, but it also allows your employees to save more money and time. When your employees are working at their home office, they can significantly reduce their living expenses by a lot. Which means, they can allocate their money and increase their savings rather than spending it on work clothes, daily transportation, food take-outs, overpriced coffee, and less dining outside. Instead, working remotely allows them to work in their pajamas, prepare healthy meals, brew their own coffee, and work on their office corner at home. With this, your employees can improve their resources better for rent, mortgage, monthly savings, investments, and allowances, making them happy and keeping them productive.

More sense of personalization

When employees can work at their own comfort, they tend to be happier and more productive. It allows them to have a sense of freedom in terms of their working environment and atmosphere. Unlike working in a cubicle in a leased office, they have the opportunity to have their own workplace personalization in their home office. Your employees can blast their favorite jam while working, do some stretching after sitting down for hours and hours of working without distracting their coworkers since most of them will be working in their own personal space, apart from each other.

Benefits of Remote Work for Employers

Better talent attraction and retention

A remote-first company that also allows flexible working hours stays competitive in the job marketplace. With the recent spike in the demand for working from home and flexibility, having remote work as an employee benefit is enticing amongst job seekers. Chances are, it would be easier for your organization to attract qualified job candidates. On the other hand, your existing employees are happy to stay loyal to your organization.

Have the opportunity to hire talents internationally 

When your company implements a remote work set-up, your organization has the opportunity to take a step outside the local job markets. Providing remote work or work from home benefits your employees allows your business to function even without having your employees work in a physical office space. Which means, your organization can hire and onboard offshore talents.

Allocate your expenditure better

With a remote-first policy, your workforce would be working at their desired workplace 100% of their stay at your organization. Which means there would be less spending on long-term leases on office spaces, procurement of office supplies, utilities, maintenance, and similar of the such. With a remote work arrangement, your organization can utilize your resources well and allows you to save a lot of money and time, which enables you to scale your business faster.

Promotes an inclusive workplace

Companies that adapt to remote work arrangements enable inclusiveness to their workplace. Your organization will be hiring and onboarding employees from different locations and even outside your local job market. Inclusion of various cultures, background, ethnicity, sex, and religion in a workplace creates a positive workplace environment and culture for your organization. Having an inclusive workplace attracts and retains talents because they won’t have to worry about being excluded, judged, and discriminated against when working in the workspace.

Enables flexible working hours

Implementing flexible working hours is highly beneficial for your company. It allows your employees to have adjustable working hours, as long as they render the required working hours per day. So, for example, your typical working hours start at 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM, your employees can go to work at 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM without having to worry about being late, as long as they render 8 hours (or the required working hours). 

Remote work and a flexible work schedule can sometimes go hand-in-hand depending on the employees’ benefits that the company provides. But if you’re running remote, why not implement flexible working hours as well?  Having flexible working hours together with remote work is one solid way to attract top talents and retain your existing employees.

List of Things to Prepare Before Adapting to Remote Work Arrangement

Before your company or organization jumps into the remote work trend or even adapts to remote work, it is important to first understand and plan the list of things you need to prepare. Transitioning or adapting to a new work arrangement is not easy especially after companies have established years and years of work culture, background, and workplace management systems. In this selection of the article, you will identify the list of things that you should consider before fully going remote.

Workspaces

There are different approaches to going remote. You could have your employees work at their home offices, subscribe to a coworking space, or even send your employees to their preferred coffee shop, with reimbursement benefits so they don’t have to spend their own money buying coffee.

Home offices

The most common remote work setup for your employees is being stationed at their own home office. Typically, a home office setup requires a sufficient computer or laptop, a reliable internet connection, an ergonomic chair, and of course a desk. If your employees don’t have any problem with using their own equipment, then your remote work setup is good to go. Some companies are generous enough to provide their employees with full-set home office equipment such as company issued laptops, ergonomic chairs, stand-up desks.

Coworking Space

A coworking space is famous for its collaborative working atmosphere where professionals, startups, small businesses, freelancers, or anyone involved in the corporate field can work together in shared space. The great thing about coworking spaces is you don’t have to pay long-term leases just for an office space. You can ditch your coworking plan if you don’t want to avail it anymore. Not only that, you don’t have to pay for utilities, electricity, maintenance, and the space, but you still get to take advantage of the full office space with access to amenities.

Your employees can even go to the coworking space whenever they feel like it. They can even adapt to a hybrid-flex working arrangement and choose the days when they want to go to work, or stay at home.

If your company still wants a professional-fun vibe instead of their employees being stuck at home, a flexible and 24/7 coworking space like Weremote is the perfect coworking space for your remote work needs. A coworking space like Weremote also provides free coffee, water, and tea so your employees don’t have to buy overpriced coffee every time they go to work.

Office lease

If you’re hiring a team outside your country, let’s say in the Philippines, and all of your hires are from that country, and getting an office lease is another alternative for a workspace but not better than getting a Coworking space. The thing with an office lease is, it is quite expensive and you are required to pay for longer terms compared to a coworking space. So, instead of going for an office lease, get a coworking space instead!

Equipment

Your employees require sufficient equipment that they can use to be able to fully function remotely. But if they have equipment that they can use such as a personal desktop/laptop, a desk, and a reliable internet, then your employees are basically good to go. Although, some office positions or industries require specialized or powerful equipment in order to achieve maximum productivity and efficiency. A graphic designer, video editor, multimedia artist, and animator would require powerful computers to be able to produce quality output without having to compensate.

If your company is generous enough to provide office-issued benefits such as work desktop/laptops, ergonomic chairs, stand-up desks, and reimbursement for internet bills, then it is a plus for your employees.

Systems

Going remote work means your employees, teams, and department would be working separately. But with existing technologies and solutions it is now easier to manage your workplace through chat, video conferencing software, and cloud-based data software.

1. Online Chat Software
2. Video Conferencing Software
3. Payroll software – Running a remote work arrangement means having a digitized system for all of your workplace management. Giving out payroll to offshore team members would be difficult if you go with manual bank transfers as your mode of payroll distribution. The great thing is, administering payroll and time tracking in remote work arrangements has been easier due to the latest business solution technologies. With a payroll platform, it would be easier for your HR department to administer payroll due to automated technology that lowers the risk of human error while making their work faster. A payroll like TimePay Hero (coming soon) is perfect for businesses and provides a digitized and streamlined solution of administering global payroll with only a click of a button. 
4. Task and time tracking software– One way to track your team’s productivity remotely is through a cloud-based task and time tracking software where your team and departments can input their daily tasks together with a time table. With the help of task and time tracking software, it would be easier to manage your team, check-up on their tasks to help you further administer and prioritize tasks much easier. 
5. Recruitment – As we’ve mentioned earlier, adapting to a remote work arrangement means you have more options to hire and onboard employees outside your local job market. Which means more opportunities for you to choose from a global talent pool. One thing for sure is that a recruitment platform is the bridge between your company and global talents. A recruitment platform like TalentHero enables you to hire, recruit, oustource, and onboard talents in different time zones and across your borders.

Enable a Remote Workforce with TalentHero

With a list of things to prepare, TalentHero is the number one choice for your recruitment needs that would essentially help you in building a remote workforce. TalentHero digitizes and streamlines your recruitment process from recruiting, hiring, and onboarding process which makes the manual hiring process obsolete, easing the heavy workload of your hiring department. Not only that, but TalentHero also provides a SaaS + Job marketplace where employers can choose from the top 2% of talents in the Philippines, with specialty in their own field.

Whether you are a startup, small to medium enterprise, or a large multinational company that is looking to slowly adapt to a remote-first workforce, TalentHero can help you with all of your offshore hiring and onboarding needs. TalentHero can provide all the top talents you need for your organization. Whether it’s single to bulk hiring of 25 employees, to rank-and-file, supervisors, managers, department heads, C-suites, or even startup founders. To workers with specialization such as full-stack developers, multimedia artists, social media managers, art directors, copywriters, business developers, TalentHero has the capability, equipment, and people to help you build the right remote workforce for your company.

What Benefits Can Your Business Get from TalentHero

Hire talents globally

Your business can access talents across the globe through TalentHero’s job marketplace + SaaS hiring platform, where you can connect and hire talents outside your country’s borders.

Better talent options 

TalentHero’s candidates promise only top-quality prospects through our extensive screening processing of candidates. With psychological and work ethics tests, background checks, and specific skills screening, we assure to only hire qualified talents for your organization.

Smooth off-shore onboarding

TalentHero is a job marketplace + SaaS platform which makes the hiring process seamless, centralized, and fast. In every part of the candidate search, recruitment, and onboarding are only through a click of a button.

Low-cost operations 

Acquiring talents outside your borders might be a hassle due to local government policies, compliance, and taxes. But with Employer Hero, your organization can acquire talents across the globe without setting up a local entity through Employer Hero’s Employer of Record Services (EOR). 

Enables work from home + flexibility for your workers

With the current high demand for work from home, work-life balance, and flexibility of working hours for employees, your organization can attract talents fast, enabling these working environment demands.

Focused hiring strategy

Your organization doesn’t have to worry about the actual process of hiring since a talent outsourcing platform like TalentHero will handle that for you. Even though TalentHero will acquire the talents for you, your organization still has the final decision on your hiring decision. TalentHero is just a bridge for you to connect and hire talents. Your H.R. departments can focus on their workload since your hiring processes will be outsourced, keeping a productive and efficient workforce in your business organization.

Less risk

TalentHero’s digitized and centralized hiring, recruiting, onboarding, and talent outsourcing platform reduces the risk of human error during the talent recruitment process. Our expert hiring managers will handle your recruitment and onboarding processes, ensuring focused hiring processes, and providing a less risky yet quality service for your organization.

Takeaway

Now, if your company or organization is planning on transition slowly from a traditional office setting to a remote workforce then that is a one-step ahead for your company. This article can help your company to make remote work a feasible plan for your workplace since engaging in remote work arrangements offers a multitude of benefits for both your employees and workplace.

Having the ability to adapt is one of the strongest competitive edges that you can gain. Of course, resources or your finances can be a hindrance in achieving the result that you want. But at the end of the day, resources are just one of the play cards in your deck. Your workforce management, business strategy, your marketing strategy, and value delivery play an important role in how you will be able to adapt to existing market and workforce trends.

Got any questions on how to adapt to remote workers? Send your inquiries at [email protected] and see how TalentHero can help your organization create a remote workforce.