Remote Teams: 6 questions to access when filling skills gaps

Are you having skills gaps in your teams and looking to fill those skill gaps? Want to hire dedicated employees to meet the shortcomings? Then, please read this blog before investing your money in hiring full-time resources. The modern era post-pandemic has seen organizations aiming to hire remote developers.

As per one report by Forbes, 12.7% of full-time employees work from home, while 28.2% of employees have chosen to work in a hybrid model. Not only this one report by Forbes also states that by the year 2025, 32.6 million people will be seen working from a remote location.

Now, let’s first understand what is Remote Work and why hiring a remote team is a necessity for an organization.

What is a Remote Team?

A remote team comprises a group of individuals who collaborate from different parts of the world i.e. from different countries, states, and cities to work together on software development. Remote team is not a new term, as it has been around for a while but took rapid growth as soon as the urge for digital tools and applications prospered. 

Some big companies like Shopify and Twitter have been the leading pioneers when it comes to adopting the shift of remote work. After seeing the huge shift other companies have also started following the trend.

If you are not leveraging the benefits of remote teams then your organization is falling behind in comparison to your competitors.

Now, first, let’s understand a few advantages of a Remote Team from the perspective of an employee.

Advantages of a Remote Team from an employee perspective

There are ample advantages of a remote team, some of which are mentioned as under:

1. Provides a better work-life balance: One of the studies by PwC shows that 67% of the employees have stated that they can balance their work life with their personal life when they have been working from home. The time used for commute decreases and thus it increases time for rest, as this flexible schedule helps in maintaining a quality life.

2. Increase in productivity: As the employees are getting enough extra time for resting they can see a boost in their productivity. There are also less number of distractions which makes working from home even more productive.

3. Improvement in Employee retention: As organizations have started providing work-from-home options, it makes an employee stay with the company for a longer duration of time, which benefits both the employer and the employee. A report by Owl Labs states that 74% of employees like to stay in the same company if they are provided a work-from-home option. 

4. Improved lifestyle choices: Remote work enables a healthier lifestyle, as the employees can enjoy their habits due to the flexibility in the work schedule allowed by the remote work option. The benefits of this have been proven as the percentage of employees working from home is at a bare minimum percentage which is as low as 26%.

5. Customized Work Environment: Remote work allows an employee to customize their work environment as per their needs based on their comfort and productivity.

Now, let’s understand some key advantages from an employer perspective.

Advantages of a Remote Team from an Employer perspective

There are a bunch of advantages every employer gets by hiring a remote team. We have covered all the advantages in our previous blog about how hiring remote teams can be a first aid for smooth Project Management.

Now, let’s understand the disadvantages an employer faces when they hire remote developers / remote teams.

Disadvantages of a Remote Team

Even though a remote team offers an abundance of benefits, some disadvantages can pose a greater challenge for an organization. Let’s find out the disadvantages one by one.

1. Maintenance of effective communication:

For any employee who seeks to build a clear and striving communication pattern, a remote work module might pose some critical challenges. An absence of in-person interactions can result in delayed communication which can create misunderstandings that will impact the productivity of any software development project.

Solution: Incorporating a communication system can help you streamline the communication between the team members.

2. Achieving a work-life balance:

Any employee would seek a proper balance between their work and personal life. While working from home an employee might not be able to strike this much-needed boundary between the two. Hence, this poses a lot of challenges for organizations that are managing remote teams.

Solution: The organization should look forward to encouraging remote developers to use proper time-tracking tools to enable themselves to find the right balance between their work and personal lives

3. Avoiding isolation:

An organization that looks to hire remote developers faces the biggest challenge in managing its remote team. The challenge of tackling work isolation can directly impact the productivity of the employee. The absence of social interactions and feelings of isolation can put a mental toll on the employee which can reduce productivity.

Solution: The organizations should plan recurring events, such as monthly or annually to assemble your team in person. The company should also encourage welcoming events to welcome new team members.

Now, let’s understand some of the ways by which an organization can hire remote developers.

There are namely four ways in which an organization can hire remote developers, let’s understand all of them one by one.

How to hire remote developers: Top places to watch out for?

1. Outsourcing Software Development Company or dedicated teams:

This is one of the best ways to find a pool of qualified and skilled remote developers. When you collaborate with these teams to hire developers, they will provide you with the best resources that meet your requirements. 

When you outsource the developers from external companies it is known as IT staff augmentation or Outsourced Staff Augmentation.

2. Third-party platforms:

These platforms provide you with a list of remote developers based on the reviews and ratings, these companies help you in finding the most appropriate resource for your requirements. We would name two of the best third-party platforms.

• Clutch

• GoodFirsms

• 24 Best sites to hire remote developers

3. Social Media:

The easiest way to find the right IT talent. The organizations should post their requirements on different social media platforms to get the best candidates to choose from.

4. Freelancing platforms:

Posting your requirements on different freelancing platforms like Upwork, Fivver, LinkedIn, etc, can help you attract the right candidates based on the specifications mentioned therein.

When an organization is looking to hire remote developers, they can choose any of the above four options that meet their requirements. Out of all the four options hiring an IT staff augmented team through an IT staff augmentation company is considered to be one of the modern ways to hire remote developers.

Now, let’s understand some key considerations or questions to be considered before you hire a remote developer.

Hire Remote Developers: Some questions to access before hiring

Every organization needs to answer a series of questions before they hire remote developers, some of them are mentioned below.

The below six questions will be helpful to you while assessing the need to hire remote developers

1. What makes a candidate a good remote developer?

When you are on the hunt to hire remote developers, this is the first question that requires serious consideration. A clear understanding of what makes a candidate the best fit is very necessary. The below-mentioned elements will help you identify the elements that a good remote developer would have.

• Strong communication skills: Any candidate would be considered efficient only if they possess good communication skills. As the remote developers won’t be available physically, the communication flow would become a hindrance, thus strong communication is a very vital trait in any candidate.

• Discipline: As remote professionals are working from home, they are the only ones who need to find the correct measures to build discipline in them.

• Adaptability & flexibility: Any remote employees should possess an openness to adapt to any situations and processes to achieve the set goals and measures without any hassle.

• Prior experience of working remotely: This is one of the key elements to analyze before you hire remote developers. If a prospective candidate doesn’t possess any prior experience in working as a remote employee then he/she might find it difficult to fit into the scheme of things and might fail to meet the criteria of being hired as a remote professional.

2. How would be the onboarding process?

Many individuals out there feel that the onboarding process is very simple and easy. But, this is far from being a reality. The company needs to identify and consider the long-term impact the onboarding process can have on the employees, as some of them would not be available physically.

The below key points should be considered while building an effective onboarding process.

• Getting started: The first day of a new remote developer can be a game changer, that’s why the organization needs to ensure that they are creating a detailed plan for the new joinee. For instance, they need to conduct an informal meeting to induct the new member by answering all the questions they might have regarding the processes and procedures of the organization.

• Establishment of relationships: As the remote teams are set up virtually, it becomes difficult for the team to know each other, in such a scenario it becomes necessary for the organization to conduct virtual meetings to enhance the employee-employer relationship.

• Virtual tours: A virtual tour of the organization will build a sense of belongingness in the minds of the new members and this will help them feel valued.

A thorough consideration of these three points will help the organization conduct a smooth onboarding process for all the new remote team members.

3. How to monitor these employees?

Managing remote developers is a difficult task. There are chances that remote developers might waste time by simply surfing the internet, thus it might be a difficult task for the organizations to keep an eye on the work done. 

By using Cloud-based systems organizations can identify whether the work is done or not. By using cloud-based solutions the organizations can track:

• The login hours

• The apps and websites accessed

• The time spent on various tasks.

Using these tools will be very helpful for the organizations to ensure that the work is being done.

4. How can you enable collaboration among the remote teams?

After you hire remote developers, there’s an important question that needs to be answered i.e. How can you integrate collaboration between the in-house and remote teams? 

Building a collaboration between two teams can be considered a challenging task, for instance when you hire remote developers there are chances that the in-house team might feel left out and so they would not put the effort towards delivering their work. 

But to avoid such hardships, some points need to be considered

• The organization should define the right flow and process of communication and should always develop proper communication channels, not only this, they should also ensure that every employee is informed about all the channels used to build the communication.

• The organization must make sure they are aware of all the news and happenings in the company. This will make the employee ensure belongingness with the organization.

• Every remote developer should be encouraged and motivated to be a part of the physical visits, like pirates, events, or get-togethers.

• The organization should also conduct team-building activities and cross-team meetings regularly in order to conduct a smooth flow of communication.

By using these above ways any organization can ensure a smooth integration between a remote team and an in-house team.

5. How to manage different time zones?

You get a bunch of benefits when you hire remote developers, but everything comes with both pros and cons, therefore hiring a remote team might be easy but the real burden starts when you are looking to manage them. The biggest factor which can harm the management of remote teams is “Time Zones”

The difference in time zones can hamper the smooth management of any organization. Providing flexibility in working hours can help in tackling the challenge. Not only this, the organizations should find an overlapping time to make the communication flow a little smoother.

6. What would be the task allocation process?

Each company that is hiring remote developers needs to have a clear idea and understanding of the goals and benchmarks they intend to achieve by hiring remote resources. Unclear understanding at this stage can lead to confusion. Let’s understand some of the ways to tackle the issue.

• Automatically tracking the task: By using the right time tracking tools, the companies can enable themselves to get the right time insights on the tasks done by the remote developers.

• Scheduling breaks in advance: The project manager must inform all the employees to schedule their break times in advance to prevent any disturbance in the workflow.

• Set targets: By setting proper targets, the organizational manager can ensure the timely delivery of the project. By doing this, the manager ensures that all the members of the team are aware of their goals and responsibilities.

Any organization hiring remote developers should consider the above point for a smoother hiring process. If any organization is unable to answer any of the above questions then they might find it difficult to conduct a successful software development.

If your organization is successful in answering these questions, then you are on the path to hiring the best remote developers.

Closing Notes

The business landscape is seeing an upward trend and every business needs to keep up with this trend. The majority of businesses across different industries have leveraged the benefits provided by remote work models, especially a Software Development Company, as they are looking to hire a dedicated pool of remote developers to meet their software development needs. 

As discussed in the above blog, if you are an organization that is looking to hire developers on a remote basis then the above information is for you. Before hiring the resources considering all the above points and making the right plan is very necessary.

FAQ