With U.S. job openings reaching their highest level since 2000, and more than 90% of businesses reporting hiring challenges, significant labor shortages are hindering recovery and growth at a critical time.
For companies to rebuild to pre-COVID capacity and capitalize on opportunities for growth, benefit brokers and advisers must help their clients think differently about staffing. One way to do this is for them to expand the scope of their talent pool and utilize remote staffing.
The concept of remote staffing is new to some, but commonplace in many of the world’s largest companies. COVID-19 has forced people to think about the workplace through a new lens as employees can now work from home, the office, or even another state or country.
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There are several ways producers can help companies capitalize on this change. For starters, their clients can consider hiring from the global talent pool. There are plenty of highly talented individuals across the world who have the aptitude, experience and attitude to exceed expectations in many of these open roles, which is why our company pairs employers that are looking to build offshore teams with highly talented professionals in the Philippines.
By hiring offshore talent, businesses can rapidly fill their needs and save a significant amount of money on labor costs. The common misconception with remote staffing is that when these businesses move jobs offshore, they are losing some level of control. But in reality there are numerous benefits to those who move teams offshore. They automate and improve processes, as well as increase productivity, growth and revenue, which in turn creates more higher paying, local positions.
Remote staffing can result in improved processes and can accelerate an organization’s path toward digital transformation. It’s an excellent way to overcome the staffing shortage while creating new growth opportunities.
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Although remote staffing offers advantages including an increased talent pool, lower staff costs, and reduced time to hire, there are also challenges that come with this approach. For example, there is a perceived lack of productivity or performance that is associated with remote employees, but there are ways to ensure your team is productive no matter where they are located.
After managing remote teams for more than seven years, one thing we consistently focus on and improve is our measurement of employee performance. We utilize client and employee feedback surveys, key performance indicators and specific performance metrics to help us measure employee performance, and provide feedback through employee incentives or performance improvement plans.
Three key metrics that we use for every single employee include productivity, utilization and quality. Productivity measures the number of tasks completed over a certain period of time, utilization quantifies time spent per task, and quality monitors precision and accuracy for each task. These metrics provide great insight into employees’ performance and behavior, and allow us to adjust work schedules, identify potential instances of overwork, re-adjust or balance tasks between the team, and other potential issues that could negatively impact the employee or client.
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Another challenge with remote staffing is training and onboarding employees. Training alone can be a difficult task and doing it remotely adds a complicated variable. The key to training a remote employee is having a well-defined process for each of the tasks or jobs to be performed.
Breaking down a task to its core elements and detailing the process is not only helpful for the employee, but it’s beneficial for the entire organization. It provides an opportunity to eliminate waste, automate, and clean up certain parts of the procedure. Once this process is well-defined, training becomes much easier. Well-defined processes and clear measurements are factors holding back your clients from taking advantage of the global talent pool. Remote work appears to be here to stay. It’s worth encouraging employers to take advantage of it right now and fill those open positions that are holding them back.
