15 Benefits of a Remote Team

There are several benefits when you have members in other locations.

Here the main advantages of having a remote team:

1) Price

It is much cheaper to have developers or employees who work out of countries like India or the Philippines.

Even if you hire a remote employee via a services company you will still be paying less than a regular team member in countries like the USA or UK.

2) Larger selection

If you look to hire only regionally, then you might have access to a very limited labour pool. If your region has around 300’000 Inhabitants, then may be out of that, 1 percent, i.e. 3000 people might have the expert skills in a programming language or a specific technology you require. But these 3000 specialists might be already been employed by large scale organizations, who have larger funds.

If you are a company with 1 to 50 employees, you might have trouble attracting the right talent.

By looking at other places in the world, you could infinitely expand your reach. There are even small cities around the globe, which might have the right remote team member you are looking for.

3) Less regulations

The service provider, through which you hire the remote programmer or expert, will handle all the tax, labour law, office equipment, computer, internet, facility, and many other related things, which you will have to provide if you hire locally.

4) You can concentrate on your work

As all the preliminary things are taken care of (tax, computer, internet, etc.) you can focus with your software developer, web designer, coder, copywriter or whoever else, on the task at hand. Which is a big advantage.

5) More billable hours

Another advantage, which comes from point 3, is that you can bill more hours, which are saved by the service provider taking over those things. Your hourly rate will be definitely higher than the budget required by the offshore or nearshore company.

6) European or US clients are highly attractive to remote workers

In India, Pakistan and similar countries, it is highly attractive to work for customers from countries like the UK, US or Germany.

The employees like the cutting edge technologies and the international exposure they get through these activities.

7) Less office space required

Suppose you have already a 5 member team at your current location and exactly 5 work places. What if you want to engage a sixth person? That would only be possible if you would enlarge the office space (in case that is possible). More likely you would need to rent additional office spaces, which might be too big for one additional team member. That means, that the overhead will increase exponentially.

But if you look at outside vendors in nearshore or offshore outsourcing locations, then they will provide the office space. You could virtually get 20 more staff, without having to build one additional work space (which would entail costs like, additional computers, standard software licenses, monitors, and several more items).

8) Less time for management needed

Do you remember the time your employee complained, that the tea maker is missing milk and sugar? Over are those times 😊 The service provider will take care of these things.

These requests can take up a lot of time in some cases.

This is a point you should not underestimate, when engaging remote teams.

9) Lower labour law requirements

In western countries there are stringent labour laws. A small mistake in the written contract and you could be faced with large fines (if the employee sues you). In Asian countries labour laws are more lenient and on the other side, they do not apply to you directly. Which means you do not even need to care about that part.

10) Less paperwork

If you hire an employee locally, there is a lot of paperwork. It starts with the work agreement, to sending monthly pay slips and similar documents you need to keep or create.

In most cases you will be required to have monthly, quarterly or yearly returns in regards to staff matters.

If you have an offshore outsourcing partner in India, for example, you avoid those additional work.

11) Less admin staff needed

When having a large developer pool in-house, then you will need to have additional members, just to manage those people, like an administrator, an IT Admin (in some cases, usually outsourced to IT companies), a human resource manager, a team lead, etc.

Also this is would be a requirement of the past, if you have remote access to a workforce. The IT company or outsourcing provider would make sure that these staff are available.

12) More flexibility

If you are ready to pay a higher hourly, weekly or monthly rate, then the outsourcing company will allow for shorter cancellation periods of the services.

That way you could scale up or down easily. Which is not easily possible with permanent employees, who look for long term engagements. The service provider will make sure that offshore or nearshore resources are placed in other tasks (because also those outsourced employees value long term job opportunities).

13) Possibility to get highly qualified experts

In Europe, it might be difficult to get a highly qualified engineer, if it is a small agency or a one-man-software company.

But if the developers or expert is in India, they might be more than happy to work for these UK or German companies, because they know that they can learn specific skills with the help of these clients.

So it becomes possible to get these kinds of specialists.

14) Hiring process is easier

It can take up to 3 to 6 months and longer to find talent in the USA or in the UK. It involves additional costs like subscriptions to job portals, job advertisements and maybe even working with an HR agency, which works on a commission basis (they charge from 10 to 30 percent of the annual salary as commission when the developer is hired).

These things are taken over by the remote company. They have an in-house or external hiring team, which will take care of these things. If specialized they might have already suitable candidates ready or can find them, if given the necessary timeframe. They will pre-select the best 2 or 3 candidates, which can then interviewed by you and subsequently hired. Thus, a good part of the work will be handled by your partner in Asia.

15) Becoming a global company

One other major factor is, that by hiring in other parts of the world, you become a global company, which has access to different ideas and diverse opinions. Your outlook towards solving challenges becomes bigger.

Conclusion

There are benefits and maybe also some disadvantages (like not being in the same office). But the advantages usually far outweigh any shortcomings of this engagement model.

What is your experience with remote collaboration? Would love to hear from you.

Interesting articles:
Some rules you can follow when having a remote team
Secrets about such teams written by Atlassian


The author: Sascha Thattil works at Software-Developer-India.com which is a part of the YUHIRO Group. YUHIRO is a German-Indian enterprise which provides programmers to IT companies, agencies, and IT departments.

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