What to Consider Before Hiring Remote Workers

Remote work is an incredible tool for growing businesses. However, there are some real problems for those who want to get it right.

On the outside, you might immediately think of the positives. Lower overhead, similar quality work, right? This is the idea often preached by evangelists for remote work. People like me.

However, there are a few distinct downsides that people tend to overlook when it comes to remote work, and I’d like to address those today.

Let’s say you’re a U.S.-based marketing agency and half of your workforce is in the U.S. and half is based in India. Who gets paid what? Do you merely stick to the market rates for each country?

Let’s imagine that someone in the U.S. team moves to India to live permanently. Do they stick to their U.S. pay? 

This might not sound like an intense issue. Perhaps you know exactly how you’d solve that issue for your organization. So let’s make the idea a little more complex.

Let’s say your entire team is in the U.S., half in New York, and half in South Carolina. If they are both paid market rates, the New York marketers get paid substantially more. So as in the last example, there’s a disparity. Equal work, different pay. 

What happens when someone moves from South Carolina to New York? Do they get a pay rise? 

Ethics around pay and remote workers don’t have a clear answer. What’s more, the right answers vary between organizations, cultures, and people. However, there are a few workarounds. For example, you could pay by deliverable, or offer a flat rate for everyone. But that would mean you’re overpaying/underpaying some of your workforce, at least according to the market.

Let’s say you’ve sorted out the pay question and all employees in the company are content. The next issue to contend with is company culture. 

A business that wants to cut costs by splitting into separate geographical regions is playing with fire. They have the potential to change their company’s culture for the better. However, at worst, they’ll fragment their organization’s identity. There will be less shared identity. More silos, less commitment to a company. That means less loyalty, and a grumpy workforce likely to flee if they can find something better.

Listen, I’ll always be a tremendous fan of remote work. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t come with some real risks, both in terms of what’s fair compensation, but also in terms of what works long term for an organization.

My advice is for companies not to move to remote work solely to save money. There has to be something else. Let’s look back at that company split between South Carolina and New York. If the founders are two people, one from South Carolina and one from New York, then it makes sense in terms of the organizational identity. 

With increased pay transparency coming, employees will need a reason. Workers who become aware they aren’t getting equal pay for equal work, well, that’s likely to lead to real problems on a long enough timescale. 

Lastly, we’ve also got legal compliance. With different states, counties, and even cities changing their own rules for remote work and pay transparency, staying compliant on pay could be a real issue. That may be a little out of my wheelhouse personally, but it’s certainly something to keep in mind if you’re looking to go remote.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself if you want a remote workforce: