When you’re hiring employees, you must ensure that they’re not just skilled but adaptable to the company culture as well. With remote hiring, you’ll have access to a much wider talent pool, but with the popularity of remote working, it’s sure to get more and more competitive. However, the process of hiring them can be quite challenging, especially if you’ve never done it before. You might be confused about finding remote workers, what to look for, what to ask them, and so forth. That’s why this guide has been created to help you figure out how to hire and set up a remote team.
How To Hire A Remote Team
Determine The Situation You’ll Be Hiring For
Firstly, you must decide what sort of situation you’ll be hiring employees for. Are you hiring a fully remote team, part-time, or a hybrid team? If you don’t have clear cut policies, you must start thinking about them now. After you decide that, you can sort out whether having prior experience is a necessity for your employees. For instance, if you’re going to offer remote working only as a perk, you don’t necessarily need to hire someone with experience. However, if you’re setting up a full remote team from scratch, experienced employees must be given priority.
You can use Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) like Multiplier to help get your employee set up and ensure that your employee is well taken care of and that they get the benefits that they deserve.
An Employer of Record (EOR) enables the company to hire legitimate, full-time employees in a foreign country, state, or province.
The EOR bears the responsibility of local legal obligations to ensure that the client company may hire local staff.
Both EOR and PEO relate to HR outsourcing. While many people think the two are the same, they are not. They may be similar but have their differences. It isn’t wrong if you haven’t identified these differences yet. But, knowing these differences can be of great help to decide if your company wants an employer of record or a professional employer organization.
Make An Online Presence
Having a solid reputation will make it easier to hire talented people and retain them. If you’re hiring local employees, it won’t be hard to get the word out about your company, and they might already have heard about or seen your office. However, if you’re hiring remotely, employees will depend solely on your online presence to learn about your company.
You must ensure that your company website and social media pages make you appear trustworthy, displays your company culture, and helps potential employees visualize themselves as part of your team. A simple but effective way of doing this is by maintaining attractive social media and career pages.
Create An Effective Job Posting
After that, you’ll have to make a post about the position you’re offering. Make sure that it clearly shows that it’s for a remote working position and every other important criterion for the job. Remote workers set up their own schedule, but they’ll still want to know what the job requires and their obligations. Let them know the level of flexibility you’re offering and, if possible, provide them a glimpse of what it’s like to be an employee in your company.
You should also consider including some employee testimonials. Let your current employees share their experience, what they like about working remotely, and why they chose your company. This will inspire potential employees and make them want to sign up for your company.
Check Their References
If the employees you want to hire possess remote working experience, it’s highly recommended that you check their references. Ignoring this step can prove to be a colossal mistake. Look for examples of effective independent work and initiative. You need to hire people who will accomplish the tasks without someone having to nag them about it constantly. They should have clear examples of taking the initiative and solving problems.
References will be able to help you with this. During this stage, you must also look out for red flags. If they’re hesitant, or you get a sense that they’re just making things up, then it’s a huge red flag.
Test Their Competency
You can do this through an interview or skill assessment, depending on your requirements. For instance, if you’re looking for a customer support employee, provide them with a customer support problem you faced in the past and ask them how they’ll handle it. Be completely objective and prevent from nudging them into giving an answer that you’re looking for.
Keep in mind that remote working is all about self-reliance and independence. Interviews can be quite nerve-racking, so it’s normal for interviewees to get nervous but don’t confuse that for incompetency. Focus on the quality of their answers.
Present Your Company Values
This is perhaps the most essential part. Whether working remotely or in-office, every company wants to hire workers that resonate with their values and goals. As such, during the interview and hiring process, be open about what you’re looking for and the values that are most important for your team. You must have a team that’s dedicated to the goals of your company. Paying your remote team on time and reliably helps you develop a good image and recruit better employees.
How To Set Up Your Remote Team
Besides hiring your remote team, it’s also vital that you know how to set up your team. Here are a few tips on how to do that:
Set Up The Framework
When dealing with a remote team, especially with cultural and geographical barriers, you must set up the framework. They’ll help stabilize your business operation. You must define the areas of responsibilities and summarize everyone’s respective tasks. Design the organizational chart to let everyone know where they stand in the organization. This will minimize confusion and prevent employees from overstepping their boundaries.
Create The Workflows
In an organization, a workflow is a schematic that shows how workflows along an operational funnel. By defining the process, a workflow makes work more efficient. Every area of responsibility has its own particular workflow.
Form The Operational Guidelines
One of the biggest differences between an in-office and remote working workplace is logistics. The mechanisms that ensure efficiency and organization in a brick-and-mortar workplace must also exist with a remote team. Operational guidelines mean the reference guide. This essential document lays out the rules and regulations of your business. This guideline must answer all the important FAQs. If any of your employees have a question or concern, they should be able to find the answer through the guideline.
Establish Your Technological Profile
After you’re done with the workflows and frameworks, your next focus should be your technological profile. It is a summary of the hardware and programs you’ll need to support operations. Generally, it is divided into the following:
- Maintenance/repair
- Communication
- File security
- File sharing
- Collaboration
Make sure that all your remote working employees have the programs installed on their devices. To prevent work delays and stoppage, all the hardware must be in tip-top condition.
Schedule Routine Meetings
Without efficient communication, your organization will just spiral down. Clear communication prevents mistakes, oversights, and misunderstandings. To achieve that, you must schedule meetings at least once a week.
Through these meetings, you must update your team about the developments and resolve pending problems. You should also use this venue to plan for the upcoming week. Not just that, but these meetings will also help strengthen the relationship among employees, improve communication and foster respect, transparency, and trust.
Conclusion
As the world comes to terms with the inevitability of a virtual workforce, companies will have to develop ways to deal with this unique phenomenon. With remote workers, you can’t use the same techniques as you would with a brick-and-mortar team. You’ll face challenges that are entirely unique to a virtual workforce. Especially if it’s your first time, it can be quite confusing. But as long as you’re able to set the guidelines for hiring and setting up your team, you’ll be able to come up with a team that you can do business with.
