Don't Write Off Remote Work Just Yet: 4 Tips for Success
As a very early adopter of a remote work philosophy, I have a few tips for working with your employees that have helped fuel my team's success.
BY YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR COUNCIL@YEC
By Marjorie Adams, president/CEO of Fourlane, the top financial technology consulting firm in the United States.
As the CEO of a company that's been fully remote since its inception, I've been watching the return-to-work drama as a spectator. While employees and HR departments are still battling over work-from-home policies, there's one thing I can say for certain: Remote organizations can succeed.
I built Fourlane to succeed as a business solutions provider, and that meant establishing policies and a culture that would cultivate business success. It didn't make sense to me to expect that the best people to fill job openings would live down the street. A remote workforce was a sensible business decision for me.
And it's worked. Since I founded Fourlane in 2009, we've made countless lists of the industry's top value-added partners. I've also learned from mistakes and course-corrected over the nearly 15 years of running a company. As a very early adopter of a remote work philosophy, I have a few tips for working with your employees, from hiring through retention, that have helped fuel my team's success.
1. Find the Right People
When you're fully remote, you can open your job posting to everyone -- but you want the right candidates to find you. Carefully craft your job titles and descriptions to target phrases that candidates would be searching for. Get ideas from other similar job postings, and make sure the pay range you list is competitive. I suggest listing the position's pay range upfront; it gives job searchers an idea of the seniority level of the position and can save both parties time if salary expectations are wildly different. Keep testing the job titles and descriptions until you start getting qualified applicants.
2. Offer Enviable Benefits
The benefits you offer reflect your company's values. For example, reimbursing employees' gym memberships shows that you care about their health and well-being and signals that your organization values work-life balance. The benefits you offer can also help you stay competitive. You want the most qualified candidate for your job to accept your offer over a competitor, and you want the talented employees that you've trained and invested in to stay on board. Providing a string of drool-worthy benefits carries weight. Consider perks such as phone bill and gym reimbursements, student loan assistance, higher education tuition funds, and fertility and adoption assistance.
3. Create Processes for Stability
Even small businesses can create formal processes for tasks such as hiring and onboarding. Documenting your process and sharing it with job candidates and employees creates a sense of stability. They can feel more confident and secure just from knowing where they stand in the hiring, onboarding or annual review process. I feel much more confident each time we bring someone new to the team or get ready for performance reviews because the steps for these repeatable processes are documented. It makes it easier to share my preferences for my company's way of doing things without having to be in the weeds, trying to micromanage it all myself.
4. Provide a Path for Growth
I find it important for my employees to know where they stand and where they're aiming to be. On a short-term level, that means creating goals and key performance indicators for employees to measure success. For the long-term, it means working with each employee to understand the career trajectory they envision. Even when a worker is in the right role, there are other opportunities for growth, such as adding leadership or mentorship responsibilities. Trainings, conferences and self-serve learning opportunities are other great ways for employees to recharge and feel mentally stimulated. I also build in compensation growth to cover rising costs of living as well as to reward performance over time.
These practices have set my company and our amazing staff up for success as a widely recognized industry leader -- and for personal and professional fulfillment. So while the debates over remote work rage on, I know a secret: Remote work can be a very powerful tool for success.
Photo credit: Getty Images.