1. Access to bigger talent pool
By hiring remotely, you get access to a much bigger talent pool. Ultimately, this allows you to scale your team without compromising on your standards, and without waiting long time for finding the right person.
You can quantify the effect of this by querying a particular position in LinkedIn recruiter for Berlin versus Germany or Europe. For a position we had recently, there were 46 developers in Berlin, 391 in Germany and 6.956 in EU-28. Therefore, going remote opens more than 100x bigger talent pool to target.
2. Increased employee productivity
Remote workers have a more conscious choice of when to work independently, and when to connect with others to collaborate. The lack of external interruptions is very good for product teams, who need to do primarily deep work.
TED Talks about remote work and productivity:
Research articles about remote work and productivity:
- This meta-analysis that summarizes the literature on the topic.
- This research experiment measuring employee effort, from Germany.
- This research experiment measures employee output, published by HBR.
“Do you believe that you get more work done when working remotely?”. Yes, according to 91% of the remote workers.
Remote workers outperform office workers and here’s why.
3. Improved employee retention and happier employees
The candidates love it. The reasons are typically either related to work-life balance, or access to this better career opportunities compared to their local area. You can make a small questionnaire internally about preferred perks, and include remote work in the list.
Remote employees are happier and feel more valued than on-site developers.
4. Higher employee engagement
Most studies conclude that remote employees have higher engagement than only in-office employees. However, engagement is highest at 60-80% remote vs. 20-40% on-site. We hear it consistently from remote companies that it helps with engagement to meet face to face periodically (typically 2-4 times per year).
