Why Remote Teams Are the Future

It’s well known that there is no resource as scarce and as valuable as talent. Many companies are finding their growth stymied by the lack of talent available, or the price it comes at.
Meanwhile, around the world, there are skilled and talented people who are struggling to find opportunities. What remote teams do, essentially, is connect talent and opportunity by disregarding national borders in the process.

Successful companies already use remote employees

As reported by Venturebeat  “Cisco, Amazon, and Salesforce have large remote workforces. Dell has publicly stated that by 2020 it wants half of its employees working remotely. And leading this pack of tech giants is Intel, which had 82 percent of its employees regularly telecommuting four years ago. All of these companies are doing more than a few things right.”

It’s not just huge multinational companies which benefit from using remote teams. Start-ups have leveraged the power of offshore staffing to promote their growth. Indeed, start-ups fit more naturally into the remote staffing paradigm. Without an entrenched workforce in one location, engaging remote staff comes easier.

Most companies already engage in some level of remote working

Plenty of people are already working remotely – like answering emails from their smartphone after-hours or on the weekend. Many workers are requesting the ability to work from home to have more freedom and flexibility as the workday stretches beyond the traditional nine-to-five. It is worth business owners pondering the question – what is the difference between an employee who works remotely in another city, and one who works remotely in another country? Technology is rendering distance obsolete and opening up a literal world of talent to hire from.

A diverse workforce brings its own benefits

Having staff from different countries and with different backgrounds is becoming the norm for most companies. A survey of 1,800 professionals conducted by the Center for Talent Innovation in December 2012 found that diverse companies were more innovative.

The future is a global market, not just for remote workers, abut also for products and services. By actively embracing diversity in the workforce, companies can foster greater cultural sensitivity. This goes beyond having local language support, and includes things like being sensitive to linguistic nuances, user interface preferences, and customer use case priorities for different people around the world.

Using remote staffing has benefits for companies beyond the cost savings traditionally associated with outsourcing. By taking advantage of the larger talent pool available overseas, companies position themselves at the forefront of the remote working revolution that will become the future of the workforce.