7 Reasons to Switch to a Remote IT Team
Hiring, managing and motivating a remote team is, in essence, a challenging endeavor. However, there is a growing trend among IT companies worldwide towards trusting their day-to-day workflow as well as complex creative tasks to dedicated development teams in remote locations, and there are solid reasons why this business model is becoming increasingly popular. Here, we will focus on reasons why you may want to consider hiring remote employees and on how your organization could benefit from welcoming them on board.
1.Reduced expenses
Now that technologies allow to work from anywhere and ensure seamless access to business resources and applications, remote workers are capable of being as effective as your on-premise employees, but the costs of such teams’ provisioning and management are significantly lower for a number of reasons. Reduced office tenancy cost is just one of them.
Think of retirement plans, paid days off, sick leaves and hefty motivation packages – the current labor market must haves you just can’t do without, if you choose to stick with on-premise employees within the US or Western Europe. On top of that, hiring remote teams from regions like Eastern Europe allows you to save on IT staff salaries. All in all, recent surveys show that setting up your own remote team will cut your expenses by 60%.
2. Wider talent pool
This, on the contrary, may not seem so obvious, but hiring remotely grants you access to a significantly wider pool of IT talent. With on-premise workers your choice is limited to employees in your area or those willing to relocate – if you offer them competitive compensation packages. Working with remote teams, your choice expands to best candidates from all over the globe. You can look for people with skills and experience tailored to your specific business tasks and objectives. Moreover, you can compete for talent with global giants such as Oracle, Apple and Microsoft, all of which have offices in popular IT outsourcing locations like Eastern Europe.
3. 24/7 development process, availability and customer support
Having employees in different parts of the world allows your company to operate across different time zones, which gives you unmistakable competitive edge. Always having someone promptly answering customer inquiries and calls regardless what country they come from makes your company available for contact 24/7. By employing remote teams, you ensure your company operates almost incessantly – due to time differences, the development process may continue non-stop: as your in-house development team gets off work, your remote team (say, in Eastern Europe) starts working and not a minute gets lost. Moreover, having a remote team working from distant location will contribute to making your business more flexible and dynamic.
4. Broader perspective and team diversity
Cross-cultural teams actually help you get broader perspective on your business tasks and find more innovative and creative solutions. Remote team members will infuse your organization with unconventional ideas and out-of-the-box thinking, which is especially valuable if you want your business to expand internationally. Moreover, they may give you valuable insight on foreign markets, as well as understanding of different expectations of users from all around the globe. Also, many companies are hiring remote workers to encourage cultural diversity.
5. Result-oriented approach
With remote workers you no longer have to resort to micromanagement. Its not if they are in the office on time or how they communicate with their colleagues that matters, you judge them by their productivity and how well they deliver the end result. On the downside, having your employees work remotely means keeping your hand on the pulse of their attitude and mood swings is no longer so easy, but with some careful planning you can use video meetings and daily chats to keep communication lines between you open.
6. Better motivation
In most cases, remote teams from less expensive and oversaturated markets will be more motivated to show outstanding results and keep up the good work. Unlike highly-demanded local specialists who are inclined to view your company as yet another startup, remote employees will most likely be enthusiastic to work on a cool Silicon Valley project without extra incentives. Usually, such workers are responsible and rank high on self-motivation scale – these people are driven to succeed and achieve and have impressive self-organization skills. Needless to say, their proactivity will help your organization stay dynamic and agile.
7. Staying in line with current labor market trends
More and more companies worldwide now switch to working with remote teams and your competitors are unlikely to be an exception. In fact, IT industry giants employ distant workers all over the globe which helps them stay far ahead of competition – according to Forbes, Dell, Xerox and Salesforce have been on the prowl for remote workers recently.
As of today, the trend is likely to persist as the benefits of offshore and nearshore development are hard to ignore. Of course, a lot depends on your business model and organization specifics, but hiring remote workers may actually prove one of your company’s best strategic decisions.
