Get FREE recomendations
Even though the world is still shaking because of the COVID-19 pandemic and preparing for the next virus strain reveal, remote jobs have been gaining momentum for decades. The spreading of the internet, desktops, powerful smartphones, and all that stuff made it possible to cooperate through the thousand kilometers without a loss of efficiency. And how those globalization trends can save costs now, during the crisis? What should a young founder know about remote work not to struggle if relies on Remote Developers? Let’s go step-by-step.
What should employers understand about remote cooperation?
Probably, we won’t tell you anything new about the COVID pandemic. Maybe only the most obvious and well-known things that relate to remote work. Thus, economies all over the world suffered because of the illness, but quarantine measures seem to be justified as human life is of the highest value. Nobody knows when the world will return to regular life, and that is one of the most distracting aspects of this situation. The only thing people can do is to readjust their working process to the new reality.
The absence of reliable forecasts of when things will return to pre-pandemic order forces doesn’t wait but find solutions now. Of course, those who could switch to working from home are not the most affected companies, but even they met numerous obstacles that should be overcome. However, let’s review the primary pros and cons of working from home for both business founders and developers before making conclusions.
Benefits of Remote Work Business Model
Primary aspects of distance jobs:
- Reduced office-related expenses
- Ability to employ workers from abroad, a wider pool of talents
- Commuting absence is the core stress factor
- A better work-life balance for employees
- More friendly communication among workers
- Quite a specific psychological behavior
With Ukraine in the heart
Staying with Ukraine in the heart and having over 10 years of experience in Staff Augmentation, Orange Sputnik creates the most suitable conditions to hire developers for companies relying on IT technology.
To achieve the results without the stressful virus pandemic impact like COVID-19, we conducted research called The 2020 State of Remote Work held by Buffer and AngelList. This report includes data and answers from approximately 3,500 remote workers, and the main benefits of working from home look like the following:
- 32% of respondents prefer having a flexible schedule
- 26% enjoy the remote approach because of the ability to work from any location
- 21% like to work from home as it doesn’t require commuting
- 11% are happy to be closer to family and spend more time with them
- 7% simply love the ability to work from home
- 3% of respondents chose other reasons
How can a business founder benefit from using a remote working model?
However, a remote job approach has advantages also for entrepreneurs. Thus, companies that are ready to employ Remote Developers who work from a distance can expect to have the following benefits:
- Significantly reduced organizational expenses (office space, perks, workstations, etc.)
- Access to a wider pool of talents (especially an actual for the IT sector, since developers can be hired worldwide)
- More affordable labor (following the previous item, a business founder can employ inexpensive developers from abroad; insurance and some other topics are usually skipped with this approach)
- Easier cooperation of engineers from multiple countries, as almost all of them know the English language on the appropriate level by default.
These are the primary reasons to try a remote cooperation approach as both business owners and developers can benefit from such a cooperation.
What should be taken into account by the company founder?
To be fair enough, there are plenty of drawbacks to working from home or transitioning process to such kind of cooperation. The most challenging aspect of the nowadays situation is the unexpected need to use remote work since not every employer is ready to see "virtual faces" listed of live persons. In this case, the most obvious issues that a tenant can meet are:
- The need to change corporate culture and relations inside the team
- The necessity of making well-planned structural changes
- The new working process should be established with the appropriate adjustments
- Not the best cooperation between workers (due to the lack of eye contact, unfamiliar behavior patterns, or similar details)
- Limited control over employees and restricted ability to check their workload (frankly speaking time-tracking tools are sometimes ineffective even in the office)
- Providing access and security changes to avoid leakage of information and data due to remote connections
- Different struggles that will distract workers who stay at home (see them below)
Of course, all these aspects and the difficulties of their implementation depend on the specific case. Thus, some young entrepreneurs may have a small team that is using CRM even for in-office conversations, so switching to work from home may not affect the whole cooperation.
Some businesses may have a person who is responsible for retention practices, so such an individual may adjust the corporate culture and organize something like online drinks to keep positive relations with the staff, which may reduce feelings like loneliness.
Drawbacks of Remote Working organization in numbers
However, every founder should take into consideration how workers perceive remote jobs. According to the Buffer and AngelList report, the list of primary shortcomings for those who work from home looks like the following:
- 20% of respondents meet difficulties with collaboration and communication (due to lack of personal contact; see details regarding different time zones below)
- 20% feel loneliness (also due to lack of friendly discussions or quick chats, which are present besides the work)
- 18% cannot fully unplug (as boundaries between home and work are blurred)
- 12% of interviewed stated distractions at home (don’t have an appropriate working space at home or alike)
- 10% mentioned different time zones with teammates as a problem (they closely connected it to the first item, but had a definite and independent reason)
- 7% cannot stay motivated (it seems to be a psychological trick of coming to the office that increases responsibility and alike)
- 5% are not satisfied because of vacation time (although it can be taken at every moment if you have a laptop and internet connection, the feeling of full relaxation may not come)
- 3% aren’t able to find an internet connection (reliable Wi-Fi in the appropriate place sometimes is unavailable)
- 5% appealed to other reasons (maybe noisy neighbors or alike)
Sometimes, startup founders consider work from home as an artificial or temporary obstacle that does not require any psychological and structural adjustments. If it happens a few times a month - it is not a case, indeed.
However, if such a collaboration appears as the necessary measure (COVID-19 would be an excellent example), a founder has to think a lot about the possible changes. In this case, we recommend the following:
- Focus the attention of the workers on goals and benefits like flexibility, safety, and commuting reduction, as COVID is only a pusher. It will help workers to look at the situation from another angle, where advantages overcome limitations.
- Review the frequency of communication from home. Thus, more calls and conversations will increase trust and a feeling of common work, which leads to better efficiency (even a new agenda can be introduced).
- Take into account that customers, suppliers, and other related sides to the business will also meet new conditions. If everyone works from home and loves to sleep more in the morning, maybe it’s time to change a schedule, become happier, and fix work-life balance. Traffic jams are not irritating them, at least now.
- Collect feedback from the software developers and other related specialists about working from home and changes you’ve already implemented. Implementation from bottom to top is often very useful.
- Try to analyze the mood and behavior of the developers and how it flows during the day or other periods. Even gatherings for silly games, virtual drinks, and other types of unusual talking can be a lifebuoy.
- Be careful with implementing time-tracking tools, especially if you do not have them during in-office work. They should be more of an analytical measure, but not a controlling one with strict rules.
- Don’t worry about implementing your ideas, even if they are not a widespread solution. An attentive founder always knows better his developers and other staff; often, they are hired having some specific soft skills.
As you can see, remote work is a rather a bit more complicated method to deal with the company's needs, which has both positive and negative sides. Even though the advantages of working from home prevail over the drawbacks due to numerous reports and research, some company founders still think it is better to rely on in-house teams.
In such a tough situation, we should rethink our attitude to remote working. It’s not accidental that 95% of those who are working remotely, encourage others to try earning from home. All these facts, once more, confirm that remote jobs bring permanent benefits like fewer in-office expenses and happier developers. It happened that we were focused on this type of cooperation before the pandemic. The coronavirus only enhanced the thought that distant employment has numerous benefits and can be used much more widely and frequently, especially in the IT sector.
CRM systems have already become an integral part of companies worldwide since they are helping to accomplish all the tasks from a checklist of any business. They are mostly used for the automation of processes and gathering all the managing responsibilities in one place. From invoices to email campaigns, from team communication to its management, and from dashboards to sales drivers - CRMs are a multipurpose helper. The decision on which one to choose depends on various aspects, including price and possibilities, while the most popular systems are:
- Jira
- Trello
- Asana
- Basecamp
- Zoho Projects
- Teamwork Projects
- Todoist
- Wekan
The companies that have already used one of the CRMs before the pandemic, undoubtedly faster, will switch to remote working as most of the processes have been already processed digitally. If someone has never used any customer relationship management tool, it’s time to try at least.
Monitoring services and time-tracking tools
Almost all the mentioned above CRMs have inbuilt time-tracking tools. However, this element deserves special attention in work-from-home conditions as allows to control remote developers and other workers better. Except for time tracking, such software can also make screenshots or record videos of the employee’s screens, keep keystroke logging, monitor the location of the workers, and even measure productivity.
Nevertheless, any business owner should be careful with providing time-tracking tools as every worker can turn from effective hardworking loyal employees to satisfying the parameters only of the specific monitoring application. So, you can try such software but don't think that it will fully replace a controlling function on distance.
Cons to employ Dedicated Remote Developers from other countries?
As Orange Sputnik providing Staff Augmentation services for European companies for over 10 years, we have plenty of experience in talking about the effectiveness and benefits of employing remote developers. Amid the mentioned above, we guarantee the following benefits of having remote developers:
- twice reduced wages and salary budgets for software developers with the same set of skills compared to in-house hires
- the polished workflow that leads to effective remote collaboration (own CRM system with footprint scanners, managers that pursue productivity of the developers but not interfere with cooperation with owner and founders)
- a wider pool of talents to choose from
- less to zero additional expenses (no need to buy a workstation and rent office space even when COVID-19 will be defeated)
- no organizational distractions (we take care of payouts, taxes, insurance, retention practices, and other)
- almost absent organizational obstacles like time difference and language barrier
- a few times faster process of hiring developers due to experienced managers and a vast database
- flexibility, as business owners can employ a temporary developer or request a relocation after reaching the profitability of the position or business in general
All these items above are cornerstone principles for our company.
Is it effective to hire Remote Developers?
Our service of hiring Dedicated Remote Developers is an affordable solution for well-established companies, enterprises, and startups. We keep tracking the level of English remains suitable for perfect working communication, cultural fit stays close to our customers, and mentality and core values are similar or close to our customers.
The behavioral element is the essential aspect of cooperation, so we double-check our candidates regardless of what part of the world they are from. Next, we ensure our customers have minimal or zero-time gaps, so European entrepreneurs can also feel all the comfort of working with remote developers.
There is no doubt that the financial factor is vital for small businesses, and the possibility of working with remote staff is a great bonus for technological enterprises. Software developers are one of the most prepared for working from home and startup founders and business owners must understand the benefits of such a cooperation.
As you can see, remote work is a rather a bit more complicated method to deal with the company's needs, which has both positive and negative sides. Even though the advantages of working from home prevail over the drawbacks due to numerous reports and researches, some startup founders and business owners still think it is better to rely on the in-house teams.
In such a tough situation, the attitude to remote working should be rethought. It’s not accidental that 95% of those who are working remotely, encourage others to try earning from home. All these facts, once more confirm that remote jobs bring permanent benefits like fewer in-office expenses and happier developers.
Due to the nature of our work, it happened that we were focused on this type of cooperation before the pandemic. The coronavirus only pumped up the thought that distant employment has numerous benefits and can be used much more widely and frequently, especially in the IT sector.
Remote Work Model best practices, a checklist of getting Software Developers
There is no doubt that Staff Augmentation is the best way to hire remote developers. During our journey of cooperation with startup founders, business owners, and entrepreneurs all over the world, we collected the most reasonable arguments for trying and using this method:
- All the intellectual property belongs to the customer, independently of the period of cooperation
- Most of the boring and distracting details (payroll, dismiss, retention practices, different facilities, and comfy conditions) are covered by our side
- Our customers can easily try this way of distant collaboration without any losses due to its client-oriented approach
- Ability to find the best fit from the wide talent pool and safe time on the hiring process
In fact, Staff Augmentation combines the best sides of outsourcing, staffing, and freelancing looks like the collected cream from all remote practices, and that is why it is an excellent way to accelerate your business. Even though COVID-19 is fully a negative phenomenon, IT startups and small businesses received a unique possibility to have a better new way of cooperating. It’s a fait win-win solution, be sure to apply it to your company's strategic development plan.
What do the numbers from the information above say, prove, or dispel? What conclusions have an employer made watching those results? Let’s group them in the following order:
- Remote jobs are a stable growing trend in all domains and industries and not only in the IT sector, which brings positive changes for both companies and workers. That is the conclusion of UK researchers Felstead and Henseke, which is only confirmed by the numbers from Owl Labs report 2019. The last article showed that adding the ability to work from home will make about 80% of workers happier. At the same time, 71% of remote workers are happy compared to only 55% fully satisfied in-office workers. So, switching to this kind of cooperation contains many positive aspects, just keep your sight more mindfully.
- Three reasons only cause almost 80% of all benefits of remote jobs: Flexible schedule, ability to work from various locations, and commuting absences are the top-3 to pay attention at first. Relying on these facts, startup founders and business owners can adjust even an already existing working process, providing additional days from home or a flexible in-office schedule. As a positive side effect, it makes it easier to become a better leader for your company.
- Only 30% (20% collaboration + 10% time zones) of remote employees stated organizational difficulties as the core drawback with a trend to drop down. It means that 70% of the successful working from home is not related to technical difficulties that the employer should organize. So, startup founders and business owners can skip this point and focus more on cooperation itself.
- About 45% (20% loneliness + 18% unplugging + 7% motivation) of respondents meet psychological barriers, which should be taken into consideration by the business owners. Fortunately, most of these issues can be overcome without investments, as those who are responsible for the retention practices in-office now can switch their forces to increase the satisfaction of remote workers. So, it’s time to focus and think about psychological balance concerning employee satisfaction and work-life balance, while COVID-19 only accelerated this process.
- COVID-19 will boost remote jobs in every business field of economic activity, as both employers and workers just do not know how beneficial such an approach to work can be. Probably, it’s more an assumption, but here in Orange Sputnik, we know how startup founders and business owners sometimes react to the possibility of hiring a Remote Developer. Many young entrepreneurs think that eye contact and handshaking are the keys to productivity, responsibility, and quality. It’s true, but only to a certain degree. There are plenty of other aspects that influence the happiness of the worker and employer, and distance is not the first enemy of the best cooperation and relevant results. After all, the cornerstones of success are desire, discipline, and hard work, but not a place where workstations and a team lead are located.
Orange Sputnik is always open to suggest the best Dedicated Developers Teams for your business. The vast talent pool of Remote Developers and our 10+ years experience ensure the best match precisely for your needs.
Today Orange Sputnik headquatered in Prague with main operating R&D offices in Kyiv and Dnipro.
CALL US:
We build Dedicated Teams for Software Development for Enterprise Level and Startups.
The goal of our work is to push the Software Development Strategy to a the next level.
Get Quote for free
Get your recomendations on how to make
a fixed and predictable cost of a Development Team
for free.
