By Ana Pereira
One month after Ingenio’s new website launching, I’m conscious that the work doesn’t end right after you launch a new website. There will be some bugs to fix, organic search traffic drops in the first few weeks and you may want to implement features that will improve the visitor’s experience after a couple of feedbacks. I expected that all those common events could happen, and I was prepared for it. However, I was surprised by a specific event: The “remote location”.
I’ve added the key features for the recruiters to post jobs, providing them a better user experience in the recruitment process regarding advertising jobs. The jobs page gives new features to our candidates to look for the best SaaS opportunities filtering by role and by the locations we focus on, which are mainly Ireland and the UK.
In the very first week, I faced the recruiters submitting roles with the “remote” location. Immediately, I contacted them, and I literally said: “Guys, sorry but “remote” isn’t a location. Are those roles placed in Ireland or in the UK?” I took just a little while for me to realize that I was wrong.
I swear this need didn’t really exist when I planned the website 6 months ago.
This week an uncommon hush has fallen across Google’s European headquarters in Dublin on as thousands of employees follow an injunction to work from home – a precaution against coronavirus that is being spread across the world.
An employee on Monday had flu-like symptoms. It wasn’t’ a confirmed case of coronavirus but managers decided to use the opportunity to ask staff to work remotely to test the company’s ability to function while the workforce is not present.
Keeping employee productivity while working remotely presents multiple challenges. Employees and employers need to adopt new practices, define policies, rely on cloud-based applications and other technologies.
Red Hat, Appen, Lionbridge, TranscribeMe, Dell, Hotjar, Hootsuite, Buffer are some of the fastest-growing SaaS/Software companies around the world that are on a hiring spree for work-from-home jobs.
Some of them are currently hiring for remote work across essential roles in the software development & IT Industry, such as designer, project manager, data a senior ERP project manager, sales manager, senior full-stack developer, product manager, software developer, security engineer, IT coordinator, account executive, sales executive, backend software engineer.
In 2019, The Global State of Remote Work found that 42% of remote workers plan to work remotely more frequently than they currently do in the next 5 years and that more than half of on-site workers want to start working remotely today. What’s more, 24% of respondents would take a 10% pay cut to work remotely.
In the UK the number of people looking for remote jobs increased by 81% from January 2019 to the same period in 2020.
Job Searches Related to Remote Jobs in the UK Jan/2019 – Jan/2020
Remote work is evidently growing in popularity across Ireland. Results of a pilot survey, which was undertaken in 2018 by the Central Statistics Office, with 15,000 homes across Ireland, provide an insight into homeworking in Ireland. Among those at work, 18% worked from home.
Job Searches Related to Remote Work per Thousand in Ireland by Month, 2016 – 2019
Employers and managers developed the notion that teleworkers are more distracted and therefore less productive. As well, they believe that collaboration and communication among teams suffer when workers are not all present on-site.
But, according to stats from Global Workplace Analytics, once employers have a successful experience with a remote work environment, remote work has the potential to improve productivity, attract and retain talent. However, in order to ensure that companies can get the benefits that remote work can provide; a few important aspects need to be addressed such as provide clear guidance on health & safety, data security, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and training.
It’s essential to consider creating a remote work policy. If you already have remote team members, consider take a step back and assess whether you’re supplying to them all those key needs. Communication will only suffer if the right tools and practices aren’t implemented on any team, and even more so for a hybrid one.
When remote workers share their biggest challenges, they often mention isolation, lack of proper routine, different time zone, communication issues. So, you also need to pay attention to what are the main skills for a good candidate that would be able to handle it. Their own personal focus, strong organisation skills, flexibility around office work hours (where a different time zone applies) and open communication. Effective communication is an exchange of information through a common system. An ideal fit for this type of job also needs to seek for being constantly integrated into the team.
It’s important not to rely on the technologies to do all the work of creating a cohesive, agile team. Remote work is a constantly shifting landscape. Consider keeping surveying, communicating strategically, setting clear expectations, personalize things and always collecting feedback. That’s the best way to make sure you’re doing everything you can to build up your team for success.
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