Since 2008, the number of remote workers (someone who works at least 1 day per week away from the office), has increased by 74%. This has been driven, in part, by increasing employee desires for a stronger work-life balance, with 22% of UK employee’s quitting roles to find more flexible employment.
Research indicates remote working in Manchester saw significant growth of 17% during 2017-2018, with Birmingham growing at a similarly impressive 13%. These figures outperform London’s 9% growth, demonstrating that clear opportunities exist outside of the capital for engagement within the remote market.
Showing few signs of slowing down, although the benefits of remote working from a candidate perspective are frequently recognised, it is often easy to forget about the commercial benefit.
How businesses can benefit
It goes without saying that by opening your office to remote workers, you will be able to access a wider pool of talent. This means you may be in a stronger position to reach those professionals with hard to find skills - from our experience, these may include UX/UI designers, animators, web developers, and graphic designers with specialist PHP, .NET, AngularJS and Javascript skills.
Despite the more extensive nature of the talent pool available when including remote workers, a key issue many temporary recruiters face is bridging the gap between the availability of remote working candidates, and those clients willing to consider remote working as a viable option. Whilst demand for remote working is increasing, only 56% of UK businesses offer remote work. Taking into account that 16% of these are fully remote corporations, this leaves only 40% of UK companies offering both in-office and remote positions.
With 50% of UK workforce predicted to work remotely in 2020, our Temp Consultants already have access to a wealth of exceptional remote candidates. Without the opportunities provided to complete tasks on a remote basis, it may be argued some clients are at risk of missing out on much of the difficult to source and skilled project staff (to the potential detriment of project deadlines). After all, let us not forget that accessibility to the remote working market can reportedly increase revenue by as much as 43%.
How you can enable remote working
Whilst remote working brings clear commercial benefits, you may not be aware about how you can implement it within your team structure.
To assist with a successful transition, you may wish to examine your internal procedures and/or consider implementing new technologies in a bid to promote success. We know many businesses who enable remote working through usage of various cloud software platforms such as Slack and have reported very positive results.
The success of these platforms, however, is reliant upon both internal and external teams working seamlessly to ensure effective collaboration and adherence to project deadlines. It is therefore important to consider both how your teams operate and are structured before you make any significant changes.
For a more in-depth discussion about how we can help source your remote workers or how you can implement remote working within your business, feel free to contact our freelance recruitment team.
