The remote workforce has hit the headlines hard over the past few years, from a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic to a strategic approach to growing your enterprise.
If you’re looking to use more freelancers to augment your existing workforce, and feel the need for better systems and processes in place to make it work, check out
Fiverr Enterprise, a Freelancer Management System (FMS) built for the growth of the remote workforce.
In the meantime, if remote work is on your mind, here is everything you need to know, and seven important trends to watch.
This is part of a series of articles about Remote Employee Management.
What is a Remote Workforce?
Your remote workforce is any workers who do not do their job from a specific office space. This could be employees who work primarily from home, or it could be freelancers and consultants that work for themselves — and onboard your business as a client.
You can lean on a remote workforce for a number of reasons, but some of the top drivers of the growing remote workforce are:
- Worker satisfaction: Many people simply don’t want to be traveling into the office day after day. Working from home or a location of their choice allows them the freedom to enjoy hobbies, free time, and family responsibilities, and gain more autonomy over how they complete their work.
- Talent shortages: With such a fierce battle for the best skills, companies often embrace a remote workforce so that they can hire the best person for the job, no matter where in the world they live and work. Remote work opens up the whole global workforce as potential candidates.
- Resource optimization: Remote work, especially working with freelance talent allows enterprises to scale up and down as necessary to keep costs to a minimum and allow the business to meet project needs exactly. When extra talent is needed, working with on-demand talent allows for unparalleled time to market.
The Evolution of Remote Work in Recent Years
These reasons and many more have led to a huge increase in remote work over the past few years since the pandemic ended. While businesses often talked about “return to the office” mandates — in reality, remote work has moved from strength to strength.
91 million Americans have been given the option to work remotely all or some of the time, and that doesn’t include the 64 million freelancers who are by nature location-agnostic. Remote work is here to stay.
7 Remote Workforce Trends for 2024
With remote work front and center, here’s what you need to know to keep your enterprise on the forefront of labor trends this year.
Increased Adoption of Hybrid Work Models
For many, embracing a remote working strategy doesn’t mean throwing away the office keys for good. Hybrid work models could mean that you allow employees a certain number of days to work from home, or it could mean that you have some workers in the office, while others are freelance — or work remotely.
Advancements in Remote Work Technology
Technology has made it easier than ever to embrace remote work. Engagement platforms make sure your workers aren’t suffering from burnout, while communication tools like Slack make it simple to check in and stay in touch. In 2022, 74% of organizations used Office365 email and collaboration apps like Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Only 32% reported using on-premises email services like Microsoft Exchange.
Rise of Digital Nomadism
Remember that remote work doesn’t mean you can call workers into the office on demand, and in fact — many of your workers might decide to work agnostically, living in different countries or regions for long stretches of time. Flexibility over location is a huge perk for many workers today, making it more popular than ever to embrace the digital nomad lifestyle.
Cybersecurity Measures for Remote Work
It’s important to think about how you will secure a network that suddenly includes many more devices and locations. Many workers will be using home computers and private devices to complete their work. Create a plan for how you will secure WFH, whether that’s remote desktops, or strict policies and procedures. A smart onboarding workflow can make sure that even freelancers understand and document data privacy expectations.
Remote Work for Non-Traditional Roles
As the door is open for remote work, you can start thinking about allowing freelance talent or a remote workforce to handle even non-traditional roles within the organization. While it might seem normal to hire a freelance video editor or a remote developer — what about managerial positions? Many businesses are now looking to hire remotely for C-suite employees, or other important positions. A freelance CFO is a particularly popular choice, allowing organizations to get top quality financial talent for the number of hours they need.
Employee Monitoring and Productivity Tracking
What’s the ethical balance for monitoring efficiency and productivity of employees and freelancers working remotely? It’s a difficult question, and no surprise to see it under the spotlight. For Gen Z, remote working doesn’t lessen the trust. According to a recent survey, when working remotely, 65% felt more connected to the team, 62% were more productive, 58% felt like they were able to be more honest, and 53% felt more trust for the rest of the team. Remember also that freelancers may decide that they don’t want to work for your business if monitoring and tracking is part of the deal.
Freelancer Management Systems (FMS) & Freelance Platforms Gain Traction
One of the hardest challenges for today’s enterprises when it comes to remote work is how to find freelancers, and how to manage and pay them accurately and with visibility. Here’s where new freelance management solutions,platforms such as Fiverr Enterprise, come in.
Fiverr Enterprise is a SaaS solution that gives you full visibility and control over your entire freelance workforce by allowing you to source, hire, onboard, manage and pay, all while ensuring compliance, so your teams can work faster and maximize business growth. For those who are looking to leverage remote workers this year, and make it easy to quickly scale a freelance workforce on demand for any role across the business — it’s the smartest trend on the block.
Schedule 30 minutes with one of our workforce experts to see how it works.