The Extra Challenges of Hiring Remote Employees

Managing employees is one of the most difficult parts of running any business, but it can also be incredibly rewarding. If you and your employees get things right, you’ll work more efficiently and massively increase your earning potential.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of scope for things to go wrong. 

This is especially true if you work remotely. Running a business from home is more viable than ever before, and you can even work with employees all over the world.

But it does make management a bit more complex. How can you effectively manage your employees from home, or wherever you work from?

First Of All, Does Your Remote Business Need Employees?

This is one of those questions that every business owner needs to ask themselves. Hiring an employee is an investment and, sometimes, a risk. 

The first thing to do is to work out what your future employee would do. You’d need to create a role for them anyway, so it’s worth doing this early. 

So, is it worth it for your business to take on employees?

That’s a question only you can answer. Some tasks, like accounting, are worth outsourcing to an outside company. Others would benefit from an employee who can take on the extra workload and help you build a team. 

When it comes down to it, the only way your company can grow and take on more customers is with help. If you plan on expanding your business by hiring remote employees, here are a few things you will need to tackle at some point. 

If You Hire Remote Employees You’ll Need To Deal With Additional Admin Tasks and Taxes

You should also weigh the benefits of hiring an employee or outsourcing a task to a freelancer or contractor. 

Hiring an employee involves taking on more responsibilities as an employer. You need to deal with extra paperwork, including taxes and insurance. You also have to understand employee rights and benefits, including holiday and sick pay.

These are definitely admin duties that you don’t want to neglect, because tax mistakes and other issues could end up being painfully expensive. 

As your team grows, it might be worth hiring someone to deal with these administrative duties. 

Keep Up Communication With Remote Employees

Communication is pretty much the only way that you can work effectively with a team. In an office, communication comes quite naturally. You’re all in the same building, so you can easily talk to each other. 

What about when you work remotely?

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 has a lot to answer for. But it also had some unexpected benefits. 

While remote working was definitely a thing before 2020, it wasn’t anywhere near as common as it became. Even when it was possible for offices to open up again, many businesses and people stuck with the remote method of working. 

Technology also moved on to allow for this. 

This means that, now, there are so many ways to communicate with your team. 

Video conferencing is a great way to meet “face to face” with employees and clients. You can also conduct interviews this way and have proper conversations. 

Email is the classic way to communicate with other professionals and send documents and leave that all-important paper trail. 

You can also use instant messaging systems to continue conversations and send quick messages. 

Some companies use online workspaces to keep track of projects, clients, and whatever else they need to. Again, this has the benefit of working perfectly fine no matter where you or your employees are. 

Effectively Manage Time

Part of managing your team is managing their time. We all know the saying that time is money, and that’s even more true now than it once was. 

One of the downsides to remote working is that it’s harder to keep track of how your employees are spending their time. 

In an ideal world, you should be able to trust that your employees are using their time wisely. Sadly, we don’t live in an ideal world. 

Employee time theft is incredibly common. Simply put, if an employee is spending paid hours doing something that isn’t work, they’re stealing that wage. 

Now, this isn’t to say that employees should spend every second working with blinding efficiency without any breaks. They’re still human. But if you’re being billed for hours that aren’t being worked, you’re losing out. 

One simple way to prevent this is to ask remote employees to record the time they work. There are different systems for this, but it can be a weight of your mind to know that your time isn’t being stolen.