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What traditional organizations we can learn from them? It’s only half the battle to hire remote technical workers. The next difficulty is handling virtual teams. Low performance and ineffective workflows are not the responsibility of employees, but rather the result of bad management.
We heard a lot about outsourcing and outstaffing, both concepts are part of the remote possibilities but are not well understood.
What is Outsourcing?
Outsourcing is when you ask someone else to do something for you. These could be some specific tasks that need to be done.You might choose to outsource because the other company has more skills or resources than you do to get the job done.
In a nutshell, the advantages are:
- There is no need to keep track of personnel records and taxes because they are not required by the Tax bureau.
- No need to provide them with computers, internet or software.
- You save money.
What Is Outstaffing?
In many parts of the world, outsourcing is not a well-known practice. However, in the field of information technology, it has grown quite popular. Outstaffing means that you have access to someone else’s employees.
The employees do not move to another location, but they work for a different company for a specific amount of time. There are three types of people who can help you with your work: developers, designers, and QA.
Outstaffing is when you hire someone to do the same work as these three groups from outside your company. This way, you have more control over everything that happens, but it also means that you have to do all the paperwork.
You also save money, the person gets to know the company and details about your organization and you build relationships from one project to another. But those concepts are part of the old world, what about hiring remotely?
Some marketplaces to hire digital freelancers have emerged over the years and they are reinventing the future of work. Also, some of your actual employees wants to switch from office to anywhere.
#1. Remote Teams are not a cheap workforce
Usually, that’s the number one reason why so many people want to outsource product development it’s because they just don’t want to do the hard work. They think cheap, got crap and later on, they are still complaining. OMG.
Someone willing to start a tech company with no ownership of its product.. is just doomed to fail. The guy should have learned a bit about the value of software development by trying to produce a piece himself for a start. No matter if it’s a low code tool or anything.
Nobody achieves successful product development by giving a brief and waiting. Hiring remote staff is not much different from hiring local ones. You will need to interview them, coordinate with them, and have open communication with them.
You will also need to collaborate with them in order to get the most out of their work. Attitude is the key to success. Treating your remote workers as a low-cost workforce, assigning duties, and tallying results isn’t the best idea.
If you choose a different approach of seeing your employees as valuable contributors to your joint success, they will undoubtedly deliver superior outcomes.
It’s all about connections at heart.
#2. You’ll be up and running in no time.
If you are worried about a slow and difficult hiring process, you will be surprised. When you set up business relationships with remote employees, it is even faster than hiring locally.
To begin with, you don’t have to deal with overbooked days since you “meet” online, and traveling does not interfere with your employee’s work.
Second, since remote workers and teams usually have complete profiles, you can learn everything essential and achieve screening before contacting candidates.
#3. Building Trust
It might appear counterintuitive but it’s not because someone is close to you, they’re automatically honest? In-house development teams may do as many terrible things as, if not more than, online teams.
Do you know why? When you have immediate access to employees it reassures you. Be more careful when choosing the countries you hire from. Make sure to double-check the work that is done.
Some basic steps to implement for remote hires:
- Step 1: Describe the job
- Step 2: Filter the candidates that wouldn’t fit
- Step 3: Create a Test Job
- Step 4: Choose the best
- Step 5: Set Goals, objectives, and expectations
- Step 6: Define a proper on boarding process
- Step 7: Define a communication plan
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#4. Remote Team = Remote Tool.
Decentralizing is a proven model for software development, infrastructure resources, customer service, and even some marketing activities as long as you control the proper function repartitions among the team members.
A new type of team means a new type of tool. Dedicated solutions exist to cover the areas and proper workflow regarding project management, file-sharing systems, video conferencing, and software versioning.
Here are some of my favorites project and task management software that worth mentioning:
- Trello.
Trello is a free online project management platform that helps you to work on projects using the Kanban method. This means that you can divide your projects into tasks, and then work on each one independently.
You can create boards, add cards where you can indicate tasks, use color labels for prioritizing or ordering, and assign the owner. With Trello, the client may track the development process by entering minor development activities, leaving comments, and monitoring the rate of progress.
Trello’s simple but powerful features and easy-to-use interface make it ideal for collaborative work.
- Jira
Jira is a project and issue tracking software that may be used to keep track of almost any action, including marketing.
The system is highly configurable to fit any team’s unique demands, and any workflow or process, as well as custom reports and dashboards, for a fantastic project monitoring experience.
Jira also encourages collaboration through mentioning, commenting, and sharing. Jira is ideal for managing big development projects.
The system works by using tickets. There are three types of tickets: task, issue, and bug. Each ticket has a priority level, and deadline, and can contain different components, descriptions, and attachments.
A ticket is typically assigned to a specific team member who can modify the status according on implementation progress (open, in process, completed), attach files, links, screenshots, and so on.
- Basecamp
Basecamp is a versatile project management and collaboration tool that may be used to manage both internal team tasks and client work.
The project manager may limit permissions and choose which parts of the project are accessible to the client.
A dashboard provides a summary of all the inner discussions (real-time chats and comment threads), to-do lists, files, documents, and events.
In addition, all the tasks in a to-do list can be added to a centralized schedule, which many users find to be more convenient than using a conventional calendar.
Basecamp is very simple and easy to use, which is why many people like it. It’s also very intuitive, meaning that it’s easy to learn how to use.
- Slack
Slack is very famous, acquired by Salesforce a few years ago.
It’s a simple but powerful tool for file sharing with immediate synchronization. We tend to compare it to WeCom here in China.
Slack’s communication feature is powered by dividing conversations into different channels, which makes it more convenient and organized.
Slack distinguishes itself from other similar tools by its ability to integrate with third-party services such as Trello, GitHub, and Dropbox.
- Dropbox
One of the most popular cloud storage and file-sharing solutions makes it simple for its users to have their files in sync.
All the files are right away synched on all devices and for everyone. Simple and efficient.
The main advantages of Dropbox are privacy and collaboration. Users don’t have to install Dropbox software in order to work with shared documents, and everyone can join via web.
Video Conferencing Tools and Equipment
There are a lot of options there. What matters to pick the right ones pay attention to those aspects:
1. Consider the number of people attending.
Obviously, the more individuals who attend a meeting, the more sophisticated gear you’ll need. The technology that records everything in the room and transmits it to a computer is considerably different from a basic webcam.
2. Meeting requirements.
Do you require high-definition (HD) video and crystal clear sound for your meetings? Or are you going to conduct on-the-fly meetings with your remote workers? Quality has a bearing on the cost in general.
3. Location.
You may believe that the Internet connects everyone and everywhere. However, there are a few factors to consider when communicating (time zones, different technological standards, to name a few).
4. Supplemental materials.
Will you use any visual aids during your video conversations? Presentations with charts and videos incorporated, whiteboards for group notes, immediate questionnaires, and anything else you can think of may be used in conjunction with your meetings.
So select the technology based on your multimedia requirements.
5. Do you need a replay?
Make sure that the program you choose allows you to save your video conference and refer to it later.
Conclusion
Technology has completely changed the way we work. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses of all sizes to embrace remote work. However, not all companies are familiar with remote working models and how to manage a remote team.
There are many factors to consider when recruiting and managing a remote team.
Have any tips you want to share? Let me know or reach me out on Linkedin
