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Diversity is the greatest benefit of remote work
March 15th, 2020
2018. The world saw over 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) hours of freelancing work done every week .
2020. a whopping 30% of Fortune 500 companies like Apple, Cisco and Amazon are hiring gig workers from all parts of the world, while small businesses are scrambling to hire more workers online.
Things will perhaps never go back to the same again. With the current global pandemic, the world has suddenly come to a standstill. Businesses have shut down and office districts look like ghost-towns. The only businesses still running on all cylinders are the ones with a team of remote workers.
As we pray for everyone’s health today, we find a silver lining in all this, even in home confinement.
The world seems to be coming together for the first time in modern history.
Unity in diversity
.
Hi, I’m Raul and I’m the co-founder of Monday.VC.
When my business partner (from New York) and I founded this company 3 years ago, we had already engraved this philosophy of ‘unity in diversity’ in bedrock.
We enjoyed a sweeping global network. Narrowing down our possibilities and hiring people from one place only would’ve been a painful proposition. We also had something else in common - an inquiring spirit, that had no desire to be part of a team where everyone was of the same race, gender or spoke the same language.
There was another reason ...
Equal Scope and Opportunity
We wanted to create a company that was worth being part of. An international working habitat that would provide equal opportunity to everyone, irrespective of nationality, sex, color, religion or gender.
So, we went on to create a place where employees from all over the world could ‘unite’ and collab in a friendly environment with equal scope. That meant a person living in a country like South Africa or Spain would enjoy the same environment as the other person (with similar talent) from the USA or UK.
Now, during the COVID-19 crisis, we're suddenly seeing a monumental shift in the team-building approach, only within weeks.
The fear has become a motivator
.
Businesses are seeing the opportunity they missed and the benefits of having a global remote team
.
The scramble for going diverse and remote has begun.
Think. Think about the limitless possibilities and what you can accomplish by hiring people with radically different ways of looking at life and the world. Imagine the unlimited bandwidth you can add to your business.
You lift the limits. And, you make the world a better place.
I’m a huge endorser of diversity and remote work, but that does not mean it’s everyone’s cup of tea. With the pros, always comes a few cons.
So, let’s take an unbiased look at the positives and negatives of working with remote teams.
4 Disadvantages you must know
Let’s take a look at the dark side of the moon first. Because this will help you decide whether a remote team is fit for you (or not).
Different Time Zones
In our own experience, this is the biggest pain in the backside.
Forget 9-5 working hours. You have one guy from Sydney, another one from New Delhi the other two from Central Europe and one from Cairo. That’s your UX design team. How do you manage them all in 24 hours?
To get around it, we had to create several slots of operational hours at Monday.VC
Hours of operations: 11am-1pm ET
Extended hours of operation: 10am-2pm ET
Super extended hours of operation: : 9am-3pm ET
To anyone new in remote team-building, that’s enough to cause heartache. But there’s a way around it, we’ll come to that another time.
Endless typing
To collaborate, stay on top and keep things organized, you need to type a lot and ping pong messages throughout the day. And next, you find important conversations and files all buried under a pile of words and you’re left combing channel chats.
There are effective ways and sophisticated user-friendly tools to get around this problem. To find shared files, organize and collaborate quickly and effectively, we use some awesome tools:
Guru
Asana
Jira (Atlassian)
Coda
Google Docs
Slack
Standuply
These are just a few tools to mention. There are tons more.
Too many meetings
For some, this is a great way to meet people and discover new opportunities. For others, it’s a major landslide.
Not everyone likes sliced bread
There are people who are simply not cut out remote working. We had a few amazing professionals who decided against work-from-home as it made them feel cut-off and lonely.
Advantages of a Remote Team that All Businesses Must Know
Personally, I find the advantages (of working with a remote team) far outweigh the disadvantages. I’ll talk about the top benefits here that are relevant to all businesses across the board.
Birth of an independent and productive company culture
Creating an identity and unified company culture through diversity might not be an easy idea to digest at first. It’s only when you start working together as a team, you see a positive culture slowly unfolding.
Here’s one of the best descriptions of ‘company culture’ I’ve ever heard:
"Company culture is
the set of behaviors that people do at work that makes them feel they belong to each other"
– Cesar Gonzalez
When people from contrasting backgrounds meet together and nobody is superior or inferior, something magical happens. Through a greater sense of bonding, people give birth to something extraordinary, a new unique culture that runs through the entire company and
.
At
, we’ve seen how culture-fit hiring has helped us feel close despite the distance. Our values are an artifact that helps us express why we belong to each other.
Our short Philosophy at work: CCCIGA
Compassionate candor
Committed Ownership
Curiosity
Inclusivity
Gratitude
Openness
People often ask us “Where are you based?”. We say, “All over the place"
As you can tell from the pie below, that IS the honest answer.
Things get more interesting now.
Take a closer look below to find out more about our background.
How about gender equality?
We slice the pie right through the middle.
What about sexuality?
It’s not our business we feel, and we do not pry into people’s personal matters or love life. The more diverse, the better.
How diverse should I get?
If you ask me, as much as you can. Currently, I’m considering employing older workers who are 50+.
I know some of you are freaking out but read this
and see why big companies are so eager to employ mature workers.
Besides being good leaders and having awesome work ethic (through years of experience), they also offer insight and network that we’re missing.
Did you know legendary copywriters like David Ogilvy and Joseph Sugarman presented some of their most epic works late in life?
Other advantages:
Beat the traffic. Remove the fatigue
This is one of the biggest selling points for remote work. Workers are never caught in traffic and there is NO excuse (except for being sick) for being late. Timely meetings and zero commute fatigue.
Increase productivity with fresh workers.
Access to a wider pool of talents
A huge majority of talented young millennials look for workplace flexibility. Surveys have shown me that this is what they want and expect. They want the freedom of working from anywhere as ‘digital nomads’.
Unless you offer remote work, you simply cannot access these talented individuals.
Lower cost
Hiring an office space is expensive. It’s one of the biggest fixed costs your businesses will have to deal with. Running a remote team means, you can either work from your living room or get by renting a smaller office.
Make the most of innovative tech
Without a remote team, there’s no reason for you to be aware of the latest tools that enable fast, effective remote work and collaboration. These invaluable tools help businesses run smoother, faster in an unprecedented way.
The Takeaway
Diversity at the workplace reaps tangible and intangible benefits. The most effective way to achieve this diversity is through remote work, hiring top talents and even amateurs from all corners of the world.
Experts show how heterogeneous groups can bring more creative ideas into the mix. Studies point to increased productivity and competitive edge.
I understand remote work is not for everyone, but the trend is showing a sharp upward spike. Endless meetings, typing and awkward work hours can be a put-off but the advantages far outclass the inconveniences.
If you’re an entrepreneur and have recently been forced (under the current circumstances) to go online looking for remote workers, I encourage you to do so on a long-term basis.
Diversity with remote work is an eventuality that
WILL
happen across all borders. The shift has begun. Why wait?
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