Remote Employees: Pros and Cons

This week we’ll lay out the pros and cons of remote fundraisers (and other employees) on a temporary or a permanent basis. 

Cons:

• It is harder to create a cohesive team, and it really depends on whether your organization can make it work.
• It is more difficult to onboard remote staff and staff supervision can be a challenge for some managers who are used to interacting face-to-face with a lot of their employees. 
• This kind of environment really depends on what proportion of your staff is working remotely. If everyone is working remotely, that's a little different, but if you only have one person working remotely and everyone else is in the office- the remote person may feel like they're being a little bit isolated.
• You really need to ask yourself the question as to whether your organization is set up to accommodate someone working remotely on a more permanent basis. And whether you have thought through and accounted for all the different liabilities and provisions that you need to make in order to ensure that that person can be successful in a remote environment.
• It is important to think about how you're going to account for times when this particular person will need to be in the office. It is one thing to have someone working remotely that's within a two hour drive from the office or on a different coast altogether.

Pros:

• It's definitely more employee friendly, particularly for organizations in larger cities. 
• It can broaden your candidate pool and save you money. If you are open to considering people remotely that opens the possibility for you to be able to tap into a much bigger market of talent. 
• It could result in overall savings. A lot of organizations sometimes struggle with office space and they want to expand their team, but they don't have anywhere to put them. So this gives you a good opportunity to do that without having to invest in additional buildings
• It generally increases productivity for self-directed staff. I think this is a really important point is that those who are able to work effectively from home are those that are pretty organized and self-directed  and do not need a lot of supervision. Staff who are used to having a lot of interaction with team members, for example or are easily distracted may have a really hard time working from home and may find it isolating. So sometimes you have to also take into consideration their personality. 
• It can be both equitable and inequitable. For some employees, working from home allows for more flexibility and potentially expands opportunities outside their immediate area. However, for others who don't have a dedicated work space at home or even reliable access to high speed internet - it can be an added challenge.

When you commit you should be all in, because it's not going to be quite the same thing as what you're currently experiencing. Now we have teams who have been together in an office for awhile and they're just asked to work remotely. Some of those bonds have already been established. It is a different thing to have people who've never met in person, for example, try to establish bonds. 

If you are thinking about expanding your team and not sure whether to consider remote employees, we're always up for a free consultation. Feel free to reach out to us and we'll happily jump on a call with you and find out a little bit more about your needs.