From a fun trend to the new norm, remote work has come a long way over the past few years.
According to statistics, remote workers are expected to make up 73% of all departments in the near future.
Considering that one in five Australian businesses face skill shortages, hiring remote workers globally enables companies to vastly broaden their available talent pool beyond their geographic location.
Additionally, the current economic challenges drive Aussie businesses to embrace the cost-savings associated with the remote model without the need to hire foreign workers on-site.
If your business has yet to tap into the benefits of hiring remote workforce in other countries, this can slowly jeopardise your competitive edge.
Read on to find out the impactful benefits of building and retaining global world-class talent.
Table of contents:
- Cutting back on payroll and recruitment costs
- Building innovative, agile teams
- Reducing overhead costs
- Accessing a wider, high-quality talent pool
- Creating a stronger company culture
1. Cutting Back on Payroll and Recruitment Costs
For Aussie businesses, employment-related costs can be sky-high. Just think – Australia has one of the highest minimum wages in the world, currently set at $21.38 per hour or $812.60 per 38-hour week (before tax).
That’s a lot of money to shell out, especially for a small business. Not to mention the employee benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans.
Hiring abroad provides a great opportunity to cut back on payroll costs and save a lot of money compared to hiring locally.
Additionally, a global pool of talent can significantly reduce time to hire and cost per hire. Building a large talent pool allows you to minimise the amount of recruiting you have to do which, in turn, helps you cut down on recruiting expenses.
This is because you’ll get dozens of qualified applicants when advertising a position globally.
This helps you build a repository that you can tap into when future job openings arise without the need to spend time and money to advertise your new job position and wait for great candidates to apply.
2. Building Innovative, Agile Teams
Which one do you think is the most important for your business? Hiring people based on their talent and skills? Or, hiring people based on location?
While local hiring can greatly limit your ability to find the right people for your team, skill-based hiring allows you to build an innovative team where each member brings a unique perspective rooted in diverse backgrounds and experiences.
This will also help you achieve a goal that’s common for many modern businesses: hiring for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Diversity hiring yields many powerful benefits, including the ability to drive innovation, growth, and performance.
Innovative teams with members coming from different backgrounds will greatly improve your company’s output and develop solutions to overcome key challenges.
The combination of different backgrounds and working styles will spark new ideas and collaboration.
Plus, when team members are located in different time zones, work can be done around the clock.
3. Reducing Overhead Costs
Building a global talent pool and enabling employees to work remotely from anywhere in the world means cutting down on expenses related to renting physical office space.
Especially in countries such as Australia where commercial rents have climbed to sky-high levels, office space is the number one expense to consider when understanding the benefits of a global talent pool.
For example, Melbourne CBD has an average office rent of $689 per square metre.
Considering that each worker needs at least 11 square metres, it means that each individual costs at least $7.579 a year to have a comfortable workspace in the office. Not to mention the expenses for common areas and facilities.
On the other hand, hiring remotely means that your business can reduce office space because employees don’t need to be physically present in the office.
Or, you can use a virtual office to ensure your business has a professional presence without having to pay for traditional office space.
A virtual office can provide your business with a range of services (including meeting rooms, business address, and virtual receptionist) for a fraction of the cost of a traditional office – all while allowing you and your team to work remotely.
When you consider that on top of rent alone there are expenses such as utilities, maintenance, and cleaning services, just imagine how much money you could save by giving up your traditional office and hiring remotely.
4. Accessing a Wider, High-Quality Talent Pool
Considering that 90% of the qualified candidates are not in your backyard, you do not want to settle for mediocre talent by only hiring locally.
Typically, low-quality hires happen due to a couple of reasons: limited qualified applicants and not enough time to find the right talent.
But when you look abroad for new hires, you open yourself up to a much wider pool of talent.
Instead of restricting recruiting to your local area, hiring globally means that you can expect a large number of qualified applicants with sufficient training and experience.
This will give you the ability to find the right candidates with specific skill sets and fill roles with the finest talent.
This is especially important for businesses that face talent shortages as certain countries invest more in specific skills and technologies than others.
Take the United States, a hotbed for cutting-edge AI solutions, as an example. According to IAPA, Australia’s AI skills are just 21% of the USA’s.
Other countries that are known to be at the forefront of AI research and development are China, India, and Israel.
Access to a global talent pool can enable your business to enhance its global competitiveness by leveraging a broader range of experience and resources that may not be readily available locally.
5. Creating a Stronger Company Culture
Strong company culture means much more than Friday drinks in the office and in-person team-building.
There are many ways a global talent pool can contribute to a stronger company culture.
For example, bringing together people from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and cultures creates a more inclusive and welcoming environment that leads to a stronger sense of unity and shared commitment to the company’s mission and values.
Additionally, diverse teams can create a culture of continuous learning and improvement, where everyone is encouraged to bring fresh ideas to the table.
This, in turn, promotes growth by creating more cohesion within the group.
Plus, a powerful diverse team often provides connections and insights into new markets.
It’s not just fluency in a second language that can be a huge opportunity, but also a deep understanding of local customs, laws, regulations, and customer preferences.
The Bottom Line
The benefits of building a global talent pool and hiring remotely the finest talents can give your business the competitive edge you need to get a leg up on your competition.
Besides engaging world-class talent, a global talent pool can also improve your recruitment process by reducing time per hire and cost per hire.
Plus, cutting down on costs associated with renting traditional office space will allow you to redirect those funds toward increasing your market share.
Instead of restricting recruiting to only local communities, now is the time to seize this opportunity to invest in growth and contribute to advancing both your workforce and your business’s most important objectives.
As a leader in virtual office solutions, B2B HQ offers premium office space and services located right in the heart of Melbourne. We’ve helped Australian businesses establish a professional presence in one of Australia’s top cities and appeal to top talent from around the world. Contact us today and find out how we can help your business thrive in a remote working environment.
