Preparing for remote employees and teams takes a great deal of strategizing. The transition can be painful and ineffective if poorly planned, and human resource managers have an important role to play in directing the transition. Before scoping out remote talent on platforms like Jobkast, human resource managers hold a crucial role in evaluating remote work readiness by considering following essential elements.:
Do You Have the Budget You Need to Make the transition?
Transitioning to remote working conditions requires resources and can carry significant costs. Technology equipment and software are important considerations, but elements such as data and cybersecurity can carry longer term costs that need to be carefully assessed with team members across departments. Over the past few years, workplace productivity has been shown to increase in remote working conditions, which also impacts budgetary considerations. Employees wishing to work for longer hours and “off-hours” need more support and technological assistance, which carry larger budgets as well.
Are Job Roles Adaptable to Remote Work?
Just like every company is not made for remote work, every role is also not made for remote work. Some functions require in-person presence and cannot be performed at home, while others are not clearly enough defined to consider for remote work. One of the key elements of the remote work transition is an audit of every position that will be remote to ensure that the role is clearly defined and that it’s adaptable to the work-from-home environment.
Can Departments Work in a Hybrid Manner?
Unless your company is going fully remote, which is still not the majority of cases, teams need to be able to access resources and people at the office and at home in a seamless manner. It is not enough to be 100% proficient either at home or at the office – the interaction between the two environments needs to function as well. Tools to maintain employee engagement throughout the value chain, from remote to in-person work at the office, need to be leveraged to ensure that departments can collaborate across any number of working models. To learn more about building a location-agnostic company culture, click here.
Addressing these three major considerations will allow human resource managers to make significant strides to determine whether and which roles and functions are ready for remote employees. Once the role has been tagged for a transition, it will be critical for HR managers to define exactly what is entailed in the “remote” requirement – from citizenship and residency requirements, to benefits, perks and mandatory in-person meetings.
