Remote Teams and their Increasing Popularity

As we stated earlier, remote workers have been around since the 70s. However, they are becoming increasingly popular as more people choose to work from home. Undoubtedly, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed heavily to the increased popularity of remote teams in so many ways.

A study by McKinsey has shown that one of the ways the pandemic greatly impacted the labor force is that more employees will continue working remotely with virtual meetings far more likely to continue, although less intensely. Examining occupations where working remotely does not hamper productivity, McKinsey reports that there is likely to be four to five more remote work in advanced economies.

How Remote Teams Became Popular During and After COVID

Due to the nature of COVID-19 (the fact that it thrived on physical contact), people had to maintain social distancing protocols to avoid getting infected. For companies and businesses, however, work had to continue, and since only very few workers could come into the office (if any at all), for non-essential services, most people had to work from home.

Initially, most people probably considered working from home only a necessity. But as more time passed, workers and companies have come to see and understand the multiple benefits of remote teams. Global Workplace Analytics reports that out of 1,500 technology professionals, 37% would take a 10% pay cut to continue working from home. Employees are also more satisfied with flexible work from home programs.

So, what do remote teams and flexible work arrangements offer workers and companies? And why have they remained popular even when people can now reasonably return to work?

Advantages of Remote Teams

• • Convenience: Remote teams are a lot more convenient for workers. The stress of commuting to work is not there, and it affords most workers flexible working hours. This way, more workers can travel or perform other tasks while doing their work. Eventually, this improves employee satisfaction.

• • Productivity: Statistics show that workers working from home are typically able to achieve more. This can be attributed to many factors like spending more time on work due to having to commute less, being able to take longer breaks, and not having to spend time in unnecessary meetings.

• • Better Work-Life Balance: This is an advantage for some and a disadvantage for others. While some workers enjoy spending more time with family while working from home, others report more distractions.

• • Cost-effectiveness: Companies do not have to spend more to operate functional workspaces employees typically use with remote teams. AT&T, for instance, was able to save $30 million in real estate costs by offering a telework program. They also do not have to take up other costs like internet use in the office, although it companies should reimburse employees that have to spend more money to get good internet at home for work.

• • More Talent: Remote teams allow employers to access talent from all over the world instead of being constrained to the talent that exists only around the company’s geographical vicinity. With a remote team, you can hire impressive talent worldwide.

These advantages show how incredible remote teams can be both for workers and companies. And with a lot more companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Dell looking to offer more flexible work options to their employees, remote teams are only going to get more popular.

Why Outstaffing is a Trend in Development Teams

We’ve carefully considered why remote teams are becoming increasingly popular among employers and employees, but another work trend that is also fast increasing in popularity is outstaffing, particularly among development teams.

So, why the increase in outstaffing, and what advantages does it offer an employer? But before we go into all that, what exactly is outstaffing, and how does it connect with remote teams?

Outstaffing means employing a third party to carry out some specific services for you. Also referred to as subcontracting, it entails getting an external company to provide support and handle tasks that you cannot handle internally. While it is often considered an outsourcing model, some differences exist between the two.

With outsourcing, you merely hire a third party to carry out some tasks for you on a contractual basis. On the other hand, with outstaffing, you hire an existing outstaffing company which then assigns their employees to work on your project.

This is one of the reasons why outstaffing is so popular with development teams. The software development space heavily depends on talent, which can be hard to get. So, instead of trying to get new talent, which can be pretty expensive in some countries (Global Workplace Analytics reports that recruiting and training a new hire cost thousands), the best option is often to get a company that already has a team of experts in a certain field on board.

Unlike outsourcing, where you get a freelancer working on multiple projects, outstaffing affords you the flexibility of not getting permanent hires but a team that is still 100% committed to your project.

Also, in most outstaffing scenarios, you work with offshore companies meaning you get access to more talent at a reduced cost, and your talent gets to work remotely. So, all at once, you can enjoy the benefits of outstaffing and a remote team which is pretty incredible.

With outstaffing, a development team can easily and quickly bring on more experts to fill in the gaps while working on a project. This process is also easier since outstaffing ensures you do not waste time and money searching for and hiring new talent.

AXIOM Outstaffing

The outstaffing model has been tested and has proven itself to afford software development teams the most flexibility. At Axiom, we understand how important this is, so we are committed to providing you with the best talent from all around the world. We also make the outstaffing process a lot easier so you can get it done better and faster.