There are many benefits to employing a remote dev team. You’re opening yourself up to find the best IT talent, and how that gives you the opportunity to hire some really remarkable people.
But hiring remote dev teams isn’t just about the people, even we’ll admit that. Hiring remotely helps your company meet its targets for carbon footprint reduction. It also saves you money; you’ll need less square footage of office space and less equipment to go on them.
And if all that wasn’t enough, remote dev teams are more robust. By their very nature, they are a built-in fail-safe against problems that would bring a regular group to a standstill. Issues like these:
- Network Failures
Have you ever lost a day or more to a company-wide network outage? Frustrating, isn’t it. Maybe it’s a hardware failure, or perhaps someone took the bait on a phishing attempt, and your Tech Support guys are all running around trying to disable ransomware. Whatever the scenario, if all of your staff are working from the same servers and using the same hardline to the net, that’s a weakness.
A distributed developer team gives you built-in redundancy. Rather than having all your connectivity eggs in one basket, they’re spread out. You won’t see a room full of staff waiting for the network to let them log in because even if your distributed team can’t get onto the company network, they can still get on with work on local copies or access cloud-based servers and development tools.
This isn’t just an advantage to your team; it’s something that prospective clients will love to hear. Make it a virtue – customers will be reassured to know that very little will stop your team from delivering to the deadline.
- Local Events Can Impact your Business
For your average remote developer, having to pass someone on the stairs rarely causes a significant problem regarding getting to work. Starting early and finishing late (because they don’t have the commute) is one of the reasons why remote employees work more hours.
And, of course, it’s not just traffic that can cause a problem. Extreme weather conditions can mean staff can’t get into the office, whether it’s heavy snowfall, driving rain, or the sort of heat that air-conditioning can’t handle. Working from home keeps your people safe, comfortable, and productive no matter what the weather is like.
- Diversity and inclusion teams
Now that we’ve talked about how remote teams are more likely to be able to finish the job, it’s time to discuss why remote teams are just generally better. The first of those is that distributed teams tend to be more diverse.
Although the men are catching up, women are still more likely to be working from home. If yours is one of the many organizations that need to work on their female representation, then looking to hire remotely is a great opportunity. Flexible working helps to attract and retain great talent.
And if you hire from around the world, you will be hiring people from different cultures and religions who will all bring their perspectives to your work. This is important because study after study has shown that diversity improves performance.
- 24-Hour Available Employees
Hiring remotely gives you greater flexibility in terms of how you use your resources. Why? Because if you hire IT staff working in different time zones, you can get 24 hours of development coverage. How you use that time is up to you; you can, of course, have different staff working on different projects.
5 pm in London is Noon in Chicago, so when Charles finishes his work, he can hand it over to Al, who is fresh from lunch break. 5 pm for Al? That’s 9 am for Bruce in Adelaide – and when he’s finished for the day, Charles is just drinking his first cup of tea of the day. If that team uses the great communication skills that we know underpin successful remote working, there’s no reason this scenario shouldn’t help you meet your goals.
- Good Teamwork
There’s no doubt that remote working is on the rise, and with benefits like these, you can see why. Technology has made the world a lot smaller than it used to be, and it pays to take advantage of that and hire the best, no matter where they are.
