With so many businesses preferring to form teams remotely, some still stick to in-house staff. Today, I want to go over the different aspects of bringing your company remote to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of the decision.
At Starkflow, we advocate for the remote option because of the numerous benefits you get, more on which in this article.
What’s the Difference?
Let’s start with how a remote team differs from an in-house one in the first place.
In a remote team, members usually don’t live in the same area, most often even the same country. That’s why a remote team is usually multicultural.
In an on-site business, the level of how diverse the team is in terms of the approach to job performance and business running is lower.
Remote or On-Site?
Moving to the topic directly, there are some meaningful pros and cons of working with remote teams. Some are more important, some can be neglected.
Let’s discuss the advantages of having a remote team first.
Pros
1. Access to huge talent pools
Probably the biggest benefit of going remote is that you have no limits in terms of the talent pool you access. You have specialists from around the world in front of you, which includes people of different professional backgrounds and with diverse skills that expect different salaries.
You gain a great opportunity to balance the cost and quality according to your budget. These are the vital needs you have to meet as a business.
For example, for HOPE Research Group, we shortlisted more than 500 candidates in the IT sector in India, 40 of which ended up being hired. Our access to the global talent pool allowed finding the best specialists to form a remote team for HRG.
2. Increased productivity
Increased level of productivity is another benefit you get when collaborating remotely. You don’t spend a lot of time on the management itself; you just set tasks, wait for them to be done, add corrections if needed and that’s all.
No micromanagement is required in remote business, which saves you time to focus on other things. In turn, the team works independently while being flexible in the working schedule.
The goal is to get the job done. How and when they work doesn’t matter. The team focuses on the outcome, working in the most comfortable way for them, which increases productivity and the pace of task completion, so you get the job done quicker.
3. Reduced cost
Reduced cost is yet another pretty meaningful benefit of having a remote team. You don’t have to pay for the rent, including an office and equipment, and don’t need to provide benefits to employees.
For example, there is no cost of unemployment insurance that you have to cover, which averages $10,000 a year for a 30-person team in the United States. Along with other benefits you have to take care of, such as maternity leaves and vacations, the sum you save up with a remote team can be huge in the long run.
You just pay for the job to be done, maybe covering some essential resources they need. In fact, sometimes you do pay for the employee to work in a coworking space or purchase them equipment they do not have, but it still ends up costing less than having a team on-site.
Still, the actual cost you have to pay will most likely be much lower than if you hire local employees to an office. Salaries differ across the globe, so you can find someone skillful at an affordable rate.
4. Lower employee turnover rate
When people work on the project they have chosen while creating their own working schedules and workplaces, they don’t have much stress. Instead, the work becomes enjoyable and brings more satisfaction.
In this case, employees want to keep the job and perform well to produce the desired outcome. Both parties are satisfied and there’s no need for changing the job or replacing the employee. So the turnover rate is lower with remote teams.
5. No commuting needed
When you manage a remote team, all you need is a laptop. You don’t have to spend time going to the office and going back home at the end of the workday. Instead, you can get things done while being wherever you need to, and the same applies to the entire team.
In addition, you do not have to take care of installing check-in systems to track employees’ attendance, i.e., when they come to work and when they leave. Everyone focuses on performance and task completion instead of creating an image of a working environment that is not necessarily effective in reality.
Eventually, everyone saves time that is further used for task completion. So you don’t stress and can focus on what’s really important for your business, and the team can do the same as well.
6. No bureaucracy
This one is also worth discussing. The absence of any bureaucracy is a huge advantage of leading a business remotely. You don’t have to stick to any local regulations or politics that usually make no practical sense. You don’t even have to deal with lots of papers.
You create your rules about how to manage the team and organize the process.
For example, when we worked with Sony India, we had to find developers very fast because the company needed the solution as soon as possible. So after the 143 candidates we had shortlisted went through all the selection stages, 2 of them got hired and started working immediately.
Because of the well-established legal entity, our candidates could start working immediately with no extra delays because of the administration issues or other troubles of this kind.
7. Huge upside
While hiring people in-house makes you stick to taxation policies, especially in the USA, hiring employees remotely provides you with several beneficial solutions.
For example, you can avoid double taxation and reduce taxes for employees by deciding where to hire employees based on the taxation fees. Just think about it: income tax in Florida is zero while it’s 15% in New York.
As I have mentioned earlier, unemployment insurance is also a major burden on employers in the States, and with remote teams, this is no longer a concern if an employee leaves or decides not to work for you anymore.
And there are also some rewarding options of how to manage taxes when you work with people abroad. So you get one more way of reducing expenses by hiring a remote team.
These are some of the most crucial advantages of remote teams. Let’s now move to the drawbacks of bringing your business remote.
Cons
1. Culture fit
Culture fit is a vital aspect to consider when you form your remote team.
Although it can happen in an in-house team as well, remote team members usually come from different traditions and cultures. This can affect communication etiquette and even cause barriers to communication.
Team members may also have different approaches and attitudes towards the work because of the priorities in life dictated by their culture. Eventually, an inappropriate culture fit makes cooperation a challenge.
2. Potential communication issues
Since you would manage a remote team online, you can come across different factors that make communication and hence, collaboration a challenge. Technical issues, network failures, different time zones and even language barriers can all prevent you and the team from proper and timely synchronization.
And sometimes, there’s nothing you can do about these factors, so all you should do is be prepared for such cases.
3. Less control
The absence of micromanagement is good but on the condition that the team is ready to work independently. You can come across people that would lack the discipline and sense of responsibility to contribute to the progress by performing their job well and according to the schedule.
Therefore, you need to choose employees carefully to know you can rely on them not to suffer delays and losses later.
4. Unreliable qualification verification
When hiring people remotely, there is a chance of being lied to in terms of how skillful and experienced candidates are. Of course, they are strangers, and sometimes you can’t get enough information to validate their expertise. Any certifications can be fake.
However, there is a solution. For example, at Starkflow, we do vetting to ensure that the person is a good fit for the position. Simply put, we do a background check to ensure that the portfolio or provided list of related experience has evidence.
So there is always an opportunity to get some evidence for a candidate’s background.
Wrap-Up
There are different aspects of a business to consider before making the decision to go remote.
However, the benefits of building a remote team definitely prevail in the world we live in today. And the list of those provided in this article is supposed to persuade business owners of the worth of going remote.
If you have already decided to go remote but don’t want to take care of all the hassle with hiring and administration, contact us, and Starkflow will take care of your business.