Attracting formidable talent to your business is hard enough. Businesses have dealt with the conundrum of creating the perfect incentive package to attract effective talent to their organisations whilst maintaining the financial viability of hiring such employees. If your business has been around for a while, you would understand that good talent pays for itself and some…
Yet businesses looking to hire in the modern age are faced with more complications. With companies like Facebook switching to remote working permanently, employees are faced with greater options to weigh in their search for the perfect occupation. So new employers are inclined to match the competition. If your competition is offering new, young, passionate talent to work from home three times a week, this can be a huge work-life-balance quality that shifts them higher in the human resources pecking order.
The question then remains, how can businesses adapt to this new environment? If employee expectations are set to consider hybrid working, full-time remote working, and the better work-life-balance associated with this, what can businesses expect? Read more below where we discuss the matter of remote working in the business environment.
Is remote working a suitable option for all businesses?
When it comes to hiring staff, it’s important to make them feel included in the workplace by building a thriving and productive team on the foundations of building company culture. Some leaders believe that it is the culture that dictates the success of remote options. These include Kate Cox, Chief Marketing Officer at MoneyPenny, who illustrated “We hire people remotely because we’re looking for people who have brilliant customer service skills…” Kate explained. “And then we spend an awful lot of time working on the culture.”. It’s no surprise that remote working has been attributed to a detachment from the company and a lack of ‘loyalty’. Thus, if businesses were to pursue remote working as an option, especially for new hires, it’s paramount to invest in building a company culture that surpasses the boundaries of conference calls and geographic locations.
Building a positive company culture and instilling this into new hires not only allows remote working to feel like a reward, or a benefit, as opposed to a form of alienation but it also improves productivity, reduces stress and associates work with more positive events. For some businesses, establishing a fully remote workforce can be difficult. This can be due to the detachment associated with working from home. Nevertheless, this is exactly where hybrid systems can come in.
Implementing a hybrid system
Since the pandemic, remote working was a necessity, nevertheless as lockdown rules eased and people started going back to the office it became apparent that a middle ground could be set between in-office and remote working.
A hybrid working system has various benefits for organisations. This includes increased productivity, employee satisfaction, increased learning, better work relationships, and improved mental health. Obviously, this sounds like a dream come true for most businesses, with better working conditions at seemingly lower costs.
Yet, there are certain measures that have to be considered before the implementation of such a system can be performed successfully.
For more traditional companies, Charlie Mullins, Chairman & Founder of Pimlico Plumbers found that “You’re missing that company feel. Your training, your skills, your interlinking with people, what we’re about… You’re missing the ethos of it all. People are working from, and it works for some people, and some it doesn’t. And I’ve tried working from home, but I think you may not be getting the best out of it.” And it’s essential to understand these key factors preventing some businesses like yours from making the big jump.
Here are a few measures we recommend considering if you’re willing and open to implementing remote working:
- Trust your employees
- Monitor results
- Offer supervisory support
- Hold frequent meetings
Essentially, it’s important to trust your employees, whether you are hiring new talent or transitioning your current workforce from full time in-office to hybrid or even full time remotely, you are hiring these individuals because they are able to do their job, and this should be trusted. It’s important to monitor results to maintain the same level of support that would otherwise be provided given an in-office position. Hosting consistent meetings, briefings and catchups not only allows managers to stay up to date on events but it builds a rapport between the workforce and maintains the essential company culture that is required to make a company, well… a company.
If you are looking for a marketing agency that values your business, provides great insight and leadership internally and to our clients with an ethical reputation for quality – and need support across areas such as Sales, Client outreach, Content Marketing, PR & Media Relations, Social Media – give us a call and see if our ethos and customer-centric approach aligns with yours, and how we can help you save money and become more efficient across your marketing!
T: 01246 586330
E: marketing@brighterdirections.co.uk
