According to FlexJobs, half of American employees have jobs compatible with remote work.
That’s a pretty crazy number.
I might be bias because the last few years have been all remote for me, but it seems like remote work is becoming more normal than ever.
Technology is allowing people to do many jobs from anywhere in the world…or at least anywhere with a pretty good Internet connection.
My entire team is remote. I work from my home office in Wisconsin. Our account manager works in Melbourne, Australia. Our team of writers work from locations all the over the US, Canada, UK and Australia.
it’s kind of cool.
Remote work is becoming a way for employees to provide work to employers. But it’s also a way for companies to work with vendors.
Technology is allowing the world to become smaller. When you need consultant work, for example, you don’t necessarily need to hire someone located in your city or even your state or really even your country. You can find the best fit from anywhere in the world and use technology for the communication.
It’s great to support the local community. I believe in it. We shop at local stores for certain things, but we still buy from Amazon for other things. It’s just an opportunity too big too pass up.
But working with a remote vendor can give you pause in the business world.
Here are some things to expect if you’re looking to work with a remote company, one that isn’t located next door or down the street.
Look For Consistent Communication
The biggest challenge with remote work is communication. That’s obvious.
Nothing can really beat in-person communication. That’s why we have meetings. It’s why we’ve gone on-location to provide business services.
With remote work you’re going to lose the element of being there in person although virtual reality technology seems to be getting crazy.
Regular technology like video conferencing, email, texting, phone and all the other basic stuff is pretty good, though. One thing to look for when working with a remote company is consistent communication.
Usually that means that for every message you send to the person you’re working with that you should hear back within a business day. It might be 1-2 business days. That’s kind of a general. Depending on your situation it might require more immediate response; say within the hour or within a few hours.
When you’re working with someone that is remote it’s important to set the expectations up front. If they initially respond within the hour to every one of your emails and then all of a sudden switch to once a day you might worry about what happened to them.
Set the right expectations up front and that will relieve potential stress around the important challenge of communication.
Establish The Preferred Channel
I’m a fan of email. I like just about all my communication to go through email. I get some gruff from friends and family who say they can never reach me via phone or text. I admit that I’m not good with those channels. I’m a little better with face-to-face meetings, but not the best.
I realize that it’s different for everyone. I just saw the article about how the kids today aren’t really using email at all. Text is their preferred method.
The point here is that when you’re working with a remote team you want to set the preferred channel. If you’re the buyer in the situation you can probably set the preferred channel. For example, if you like picking up the phone and making a call then you’ll want a service provider that feels the same way about using the phone. If you have different preferences you can get into some frustrating situations.
Don’t Get Overloaded With Technology
You’ve probably heard about The Cloud, right?
It’s kind of a vague term, but basically it means information stored remotely that you can access with an Internet connection. For example, you save the photos on your iPhone to your iCloud account. Those photos are stored on a server somewhere. It really doesn’t matter “where” because you can access them anywhere you get a connection with your phone.
Cloud technology has really helped companies to work together remotely. My company uses Google Drive for a lot of the information we store. We have blogging schedules for every client and those are all stored on our Google Drive account. We can access them from anywhere and so can our clients.
A challenge that can arise when you’re working with remote companies is technology overload. You might prefer one form of cloud technology like Google Drive while the service provider prefers to use Dropbox or something else.
Establish the technology that works best for you that you are comfortable with and find remote vendors that can work with that. It can benefit you to experiment with other technology, but so much of it is the same now that you don’t really need to switch.
It can become frustrating when you have five different software accounts to share information or things like that and you’re trying to remember login information and all kinds of other things and eventually you can’t keep it straight.
Agree on what will work and stick with it and find a partner that uses the same technology so there won’t be any issues.
Conclusion
We really live in a great time in human history. The world is smaller than ever before in the sense that we can connect, work with and collaborate with just about any other human in the world. When you think about that it’s really incredible. Technology has made it possible. That means that you can find the best human or the best team of humans to work with to help your business grow. Location isn’t an issue.
There are tradeoffs with not working with a local team. You have to make sure that you’re on the same page with the firm you choose to work with if you go with a remote person. But if you follow the advice above you’ll avoid the common frustrations associated with remote work and the partnership can really pay off for you and your business.
