Many businesses, both large and small, hire workers remotely because it proved to be a successful strategy for expansion.
Technologies brought the huge shifts in values, and it dramatically changed the job offers and expectations.
Probably, not every job has as many names as remote type of work. To embrace the diversity of names (from poetic ‘digital nomads’ to glossary like ‘eworkers’ and abbreviated WFH), it was suggested that all remote employees and freelancers were called Workers 2.0 (sounds trendy, yes?).
The famous memes ‘I should log on to pretend I work’, ‘Working from home = sleeping at home’, ‘I like working from home because it is much more comfortable than sleeping in my cubicle’, ‘My coworkers are my cats’, and these are the least intimidating, show distrust and confusion about remote hiring. But despite the resistance to a new reality, we can state that hiring remotely is an upward trend because figures confirm it.
43% of employed Americans said they spent at least some time working remotely, according to the survey of more than 15,000 adults, and the number of remote employees in 2017 increased by 4%.
What makes the remote jobs popular
General reasons
- The population all over the world lives in a more synchronized way and faces the same problems almost anywhere. There is a huge demand for both unification and globalization whether we like it or not. There are a lot of working people in the world, 150 million in the US and at least half a billion in Europe and Asia. The growing number means that the structure of the job market and its hiring options will get more diverse and complex.
- Commuting does create the considerable pressure. For example, Israeli have to deal with the longest commuting time (1 hour 37 minutes) while going to work and then getting back. But Japanese that are supposed to be the nation that enjoys the shortest commuting time still require 39 minutes on average to reach the office. The time cost is exhausting indeed, and this problem will certainly persist. It means that humankind will be forced to find the solution. Otherwise, it will not be able to keep up with the speed of a new reality.
- The office work is not as old as it might seem. The industrial revolution that started in 1800 established the custom of people working away from home so ‘switching’ to a new mode of working remotely means returning to the old tradition that had been prevailing for many centuries.
Individual reasons
- Remote workers have a huge variety of useful abilities and skills like self-control, inner motivation and capacity of generating updates and reports independently.
- Overall, people who are ready to take responsibility for their independent status and work remotely balance their work-life time more effectively if they have professional and personal qualities that mobile workforce require.
- Some jobs (an architect, a designer, etc.) require long hours of being in workflow that can be easily interrupted once the person finds oneself in the noisy office. So the result-oriented people will probably opt for working from home.
Technological reasons
- Staying collaborative is not a challenge due to connectivity opportunities the technologies provide. Discovering the most talented candidate is not determined by geographic area anymore. Hence, HR managers are not restricted in terms of hiring the staff. Disregarding the distance has never been easier!
- Time tracking gives an easy solution to recreating the presence at the office. Moreover, it will be a one-click-operation to check productivity on the level that was not reachable in the past. The employer gets the opportunity to see whatever tasks the employee was engaged with, and how long it took to perform them. The modern time tracking systems also allow the employer to calculate the payments as the reports can be converted into invoices alongside with tons of other functions.
- The world digitizes, and it makes practically any professional field open for switching some positions into the remote mode. Skype-like technologies let the employer not only control the remote employees but also simulate the human presence in full. Agility and visibility are probably the words that best describe the employers’ aspirations, and modern technologies respond to these demands in the best way.
- Artificial intelligence will simplify lots of procedures, which will probably increase demand on remote creativity-related jobs because creation-oriented positions do not necessarily require full-time presence at the office.
What jobs will be required
We can expect that soon there will not be any difference between the office and home in terms of working opportunities because automated managing will simplify the process of collecting the accurate data, arranging meetings, making and recording calls, conducting conferences. Therefore, it will greatly expand the scope of jobs that can be done from home. At present we have quite a long list of remote jobs:
- call center agents;
- customer support engineers;
- copywriters;
- website developers;
- social media agents;
- online course sellers;
- online tutors;
- project managers;
- operational recruitment managers;
- interpreters;
- provider data analysts;
- customer engagement managers;
- online development specialists;
- inside/outside sales representatives;
- clinical research experts;
- quality assurance specialists;
- buyer planners;
- complaint investigators;
- senior staff accountants;
- sales support agents;
- membership enrollment specialists;
- online visiting professors/experts, etc.
The market for remote hiring is huge. It covers logistics, healthcare, education, science, IT, travel industry, to name a few.
We can predict that the list of remote jobs will get even longer. The most promising sectors that will be responding to remote trend seem to be software development and online teaching/consulting/selling because their service has the enormous market expansion in potential. So if you are engaged with these sectors you might consider shifting to remote work.
Among other factors that contributed to remote jobs to be on the rise, we should probably point out time management software. It is the most innovative tool as its application lets control not only the hours that the remote employee spends on tasks but measure the productivity, which creates all the conditions for the overall good financial climate and further progress.
