5 key benefits of remote staffing
This post is a kind of logical continuation of one that we published earlier this month on dealing with some of the most pressing challenges of remote staffing. If you missed that one, we suggest you go have a look at it, just so you have the most context possible.
Right - now that you’re all up to speed, and probably even more eager to know about the advantages of remote staffing (hints of which you could probably already glean from the previous post), we can begin discussing the factors that make remote staffing such a popular option.
While it’s true that there will be some challenges encountered when working with a team of remote partners, this kind of project outsourcing is also hugely beneficial - even taking into account all the potential issues.
How is that so, you ask? Aren’t there just more communication issues, bigger costs, more difficulties with monitoring ... essentially more of everything?
Well, no, a lot of these “myths” can be debunked, and we believe we already did a good job at that in the aforementioned post. But, even if they couldn’t be debunked, more of everything also means more of the good stuff, not just the bad stuff.
Think of it - greater flexibility; the capability to scale only when you need it and when you’re ready for it; a lot of redundancy, a luxury you don’t have when managing a project exclusively in-house; lightning-fast acquisition and onboarding; the capability to get exactly the kind of expertise your current project demands, and likely even skills you don’t even know it will demand later on in its progress ...
All of this adds up to the foremost advantage of remote staffing, that is, the capacity to more smoothly navigate the ever-shifting landscape of digital projects and/or agencies.
Still not convinced? Not a problem - we can’t wait to dive into specific benefits and discuss them in more detail! After getting through our list, and especially if you’ve read the previously mentioned post on the challenges of remote staffing, you’ll be able to see the whole picture more clearly and always know when this kind of partnership is the right fit for you.
1. Scalability
One of the biggest questions that digital business leaders of today are asking themselves is: how can we effectively scale our business?
It’s certainly a question worth asking. One cannot expect a business to truly be successful on a larger scope if it doesn’t grow or scale. However, in a constantly shifting digital environment, which also brings about a fluid scope of work, effective scaling can become problematic.
This is precisely why remote staffing is such a great fit when the need to scale arises. Recruiting and managing in-house employees while also taking care of all of their expenses is not only costly, but also very time-consuming (read: costly2). While this does result in growth, it doesn’t exactly scale your business.
Of course, you also have to take into account the possibility of not being able to find a full-time employee who lives near enough to join your on-site team. With an ever-increasing demand for experienced developers, this is a concern you’ll likely have to address (if you haven’t done so already).
This scenario changes completely when you establish a partnership with an off-site development team. With remote staffing, you can bypass the lengthy recruitment processes and instantly expand your in-house team.
You get the luxury of deciding how many remote workers you want to hire - and the initial number is not set in stone, either. Once you’ve established a successful partnership, getting additional developers to work on your project will be even faster and safer (there will be a much smaller risk of making a bad hire or at least this risk will not be on you).
This gives you protection from unexpected changes to the scope of the project. An unplanned increase of its scope is no longer an issue when working with remote partners. At Agiledrop, we are usually able to supply clients with new developers in under a day - or even significantly faster when we already have all the documentation and information related to the project.
By working with us, you’ll get an instant boost to your workforce for the duration of the working arrangement; you’ll be able to tackle a greater number of bigger projects while keeping your expenses to a minimum.
As such, scalability is very likely the number one benefit of remote staffing. More than that, actually - most of its other benefits are directly or indirectly linked to scalability. These are what we’ll discuss in the following points of this article.
2. Redundancy
This next benefit is in fact a kind of subset of scalability and a lead into the third benefit which we’ll discuss a bit later on. We’re treating it separately since it looks at growing your team from the other perspective - we’re dealing with redundancy.
In our context, redundancy essentially covers the other side of the fluctuating nature of digital projects, the “down” period where you have fewer projects and less work.
With an exclusively in-house team, the down periods impede your progress and growth even more than you’d expect. Not only do you have less work and by consequence less income, you have all these employees who were vital to previous projects still on your payroll. This basically means double the cost, with no gain.
And, should you decide to let someone go on account of there not being enough work, you’ll again have certain expenses. Even if an employee resigns of their own volition, this process is not instantaneous, and they keep receiving their salary up until their departure.
It’s a different - and even more costly - story when an employee is given resignation, especially if the justification for it is “not enough work” (after all, it isn’t and cannot be their fault that you the employer are unable to provide work for them). In addition to their ongoing salary, you’ll also have to cover all the costs associated with their severance.
Moreover, you’ll risk creating a negative atmosphere and sending a negative signal to the rest of the employees, who do have enough work, but may start contemplating other career opportunities on account of that. This may cause you to lose even those employees whose expertise is crucial to your ongoing business.
Very likely, when weighing your two options against each other, you’ll come to the realization that the best solution would nonetheless be to keep your employees on your payroll and wait for more work to arrive. But, logically, you won’t be happy about it.
One of the magical things of remote staffing, already hinted at before, is the ability to get reinforcements to your team only for the duration of the project. Even if you have to end the contract prematurely, there are no long-term consequences like when you fire full-time employees. While we covered the case of an increase of a project’s scope under the benefit of scalability, the other side is neatly covered by redundancy.
So, not only is remote staffing a great choice of growing your team when it cannot handle the increased scope of work, it also eliminates all additional expenses for the period when the project is finished and the extra workforce is no longer needed.
A partnership with an agency such as Agiledrop gives you the flexibility (buzzword alert!) to hire and fire as your project demands, with no resentment and no expenses associated with letting people go. You get the developers, the timely quality work, then shake hands and remain friends.
3. Flexibility
You have to admit - this was a super smooth transition into this next point! The capacity to instantly respond to changes in the scope of your work via scaling and descaling your business can be neatly summed up in a concept that actually covers more than just these two advantages: flexibility.
In fact, flexibility is like an added bonus to the two benefits we’ve just discussed. The ability to get as many developers as your project needs with no obligation to retain them after the project is concluded allows you to be incredibly flexible.
And this flexibility doesn’t just cover unexpected changes issuing from the project itself. Working with partner agencies also provides you with a fail-safe against the plethora of uncontrollable factors that can arise whenever people are involved, such as unforeseen health issues or urgent family matters.
As we pointed out in our post about the biggest challenges of remote staffing, there’s not much you can do when one of your in-house developers has to take a sick leave or any other type of paid leave (some emphasis on paid).
With remote staffing, however, you don’t need to worry about what to do in such situations. You can count on your partner agency to supply any necessary replacements in case something happens to the original hire.
But the major benefit of remote staffing in the context of flexibility actually goes beyond just a single project. In the introduction, we already touched upon the constantly changing and by consequence hard to navigate digital sphere.
Finding the right outsourcing strategy allows you to not only be flexible with regard to the project in question, but actually with regard to your very workflow, making it much easier to handle this shifting nature of the digital.
This means that the “up” periods aren’t as hectic, while the “down” periods aren’t as devastating to your business development. You’re able to smoothly adapt to market needs as well as keep up with new and emerging technologies, either by not having to focus so much on HR or thanks to the diverse expertise of your remotely working developers (or, most likely, both).
It essentially boils down to this: this flexibility obtained through remote staffing enables you to take on more projects and win bigger deals with more important clients. Additionally, it lets you focus more of your energy and resources on business development and helps you to stand out from the crowd, priming you for growth and success.
4. Faster acquisition
Right, so, the previous three points dealt with what you’ll gain by working with partner agencies. Let’s now take a look at how remote staffing can save you time and resources thanks to the accelerated process of hiring and onboarding.
We mentioned earlier that the recruitment of in-house employees can be very time-consuming and consequently costly. Searching for the most suitable people is just the first step - and, naturally, the more workers you need, the longer it takes.
Then you have to interview all those candidates, likely discounting a decent percentage of them. Those that do make the cut then have to go through onboarding processes - and all the while time just keeps stacking up. We won’t even go into the obvious costs of salaries, travel and health expenses, paid leaves and adequate equipment.
Luckily, there’s an easy, one-stop solution to all of the above. Yep, you guessed it - it’s a remote partnership! Partnering with an agency and relying on them to provide you with the needed experienced personnel will notably cut down the time searching for developers, as well as most of the expenses.
Perhaps the best thing about such an arrangement is the sustainability of the relationship. Once you’ve partnered with an agency that you’re satisfied with, it’ll be that much easier and faster to get additional developers from a proven source that you trust will deliver the right profiles based on your requirements.
Another time-saving advantage of remote staffing becomes apparent in the onboarding of newly hired developers and their integration into your existing team. At Agiledrop, all new employees go through an in-house onboarding project, during which they familiarize themselves with all the most up-to-date tools and practices.
This onboarding is carried out by our highly qualified development leads who also play a major role in selecting the most adequate person for a project. Since they’ve served as their mentors, they’re able to make a very informed selection quickly and efficiently.
What this means for our clients is that we basically cover 100% of the onboarding costs; when you hire one or more of our developers, they can immediately adapt to your workflows, become your temporary teammates and start working on the project.
The end result is that, despite a possibly higher daily rate of a remote hire than that of an in-house employee, the time saved more than pays off for the difference. Add to that all other areas where you are able to cut down on expenses and you can see why such a partnership is indeed a great fit for ambitious businesses that are focused on growth and scaling.
5. Specific, but diverse expertise
The last advantage of remote staffing that we’d like to point out relates to all the ones previously discussed in this post. Actually, it’s very likely one of the key reasons why outsourcing via staff augmentation has been established as such a successful business model: we’re talking about the ability to provide exactly the right kind of expertise for any type of project.
It is at the same time the reason for and the result of such a business model: agencies started to capitalize on diverse and/or niche market needs, training employees to respond to those needs while acquiring more diversified skills during the process.
Perhaps a certain project demands, say, a dedicated ecommerce developer that your in-house team lacks. Naturally, you don’t want to turn down interesting work coming your way, but you only need this specific expertise for this one project, not full-time. This is one aspect where you can immensely benefit from a remote partnership.
Having worked on a variety of projects for different international clients, the developers of an agency such as Agiledrop not only come pre-trained with the specific expertise a client’s project needs, but have also likely familiarized themselves with even more fringe cases.
This enables them to quickly find solutions in similar situations. But, even when they encounter a new problem, it doesn’t mean they’ll get stuck in a rut and waste precious time. The open-minded and solution-oriented mentality they’ve cultivated will allow them to always approach new challenges in a logical and innovative way.
In the case of Agiledrop developers, this is additionally accentuated by our strong promotion of collaboration and knowledge-sharing. Mentoring and being mentored don’t stop once the onboarding is concluded; everyone is encouraged to help out when they can and to likewise seek help from their peers before trying to solve something unfamiliar on their own.
Because of this, our clients always benefit from our entire team’s expertise, even when only hiring one or two developers. This way, they get more than their money’s worth, making for a much higher ROI (especially when taking into account all the cost reductions mentioned in the previous point).
So, tying back to scalability and redundancy, it’s obvious how valuable it is to be able to get a developer with a specific set of skills. By default, outsourced developers only work for the duration of a project, providing their expertise while not turning into a financial burden once that expertise is no longer needed. Effective scaling - check!
In conclusion
Now that we’ve discussed each specific advantage of remote staffing more thoroughly, we can see how strongly connected they all are. The connection between the first three is particularly obvious, as we already pointed out.
But there are also others that we haven’t specifically addressed, e.g. fast acquisition of remote hires naturally provides a lot of flexibility thanks to reduced overheads and a hyper-efficient means of scaling.
It thus seems we’ve come back to and reinforced another claim we already made in the introduction: all of these specific benefits result in the ability to better cope with the constantly evolving digital space by allowing you to keep up with the pace of its evolution, stand out among the competition and secure bigger projects while saving resources.
Have you found yourself in a situation where you’re turning down work because you lack the development capacity or certain necessary expertise? We’d be more than happy to help you scale your business and win more deals - give us a shout out!
