From soul-crushing workforce management to hectic process handling, remote employees are amazing. Isn’t it? Of course, you may not have to manage these employees, offer them regular rewards, or even spend a considerable amount of time in orientation.

However, it comes at a price – a number of challenges. 

When hiring remote IT staff, the team manager needs to take extra care. They need to improve their communication channels, management skills, and allow the remote staff to nurture and grow in their organization. A few things, which are simple and natural when in a workplace setting.

In this article, we will discuss the challenges faced when hiring remote IT staff. Let’s see what are the challenges and how you can mitigate these challenges.

Challenges Faced When Hiring Remote IT Staff

IT project management is a critical activity, which often becomes the responsibility of multiple company stakeholders. There are so many factors involved, especially for small businesses (such as money and time), which make remote hiring seems like the best option. 

When working with remote employees, here are the challenges that you may face:

1.    Security Challenges

When your team is spread across the continent or in multiple countries, ensuring secure network access is almost impossible. 

Let’s see some of the considerations in this case:

•    Is the home WiFi or internet connection adequate?
•    Are the workers using company devices? If so, then what type of sensitive data is stored in this device?
•    Are remote workers using personal devices? If so, then how safe are these devices? Do these devices implement proper security such as malware?
•    Are the remote workers correctly using company email for transmitting sensitive data over the internet?

Fortunately, it is not entirely impossible to mitigate security challenges. The company needs a remote working policy, a proper structure such as secure company email access, and other similar measures. 

2.    Support Issues

The IT support team of the office is already burdened with multiple issues. Any time any employee can drop in their puzzling issues, which the IT support team has to handle. In between all this, requests of the remote team can further make the support team’s task harder.

This is keeping in mind that not every company’s software and technologies offer remote access as easily as we would like them to. Many of the on-site software need additional configuration to provide remote access. This additional configuration is definitely a hurdle for the IT support team.

3.    Communication

Communication is the top issue faced by multiple organizations. Since the remote team or remote employee is not working on-site, the communication gap is unavoidable without proper structure.

There are multiple factors which contribute to this:

•    Lack of proper communication channels.
•    Time-zone difference.
•    Poor soft-skills.

All these factors plague communication and make it hard for the IT team to achieve anything.

4.    Consistency

Consistency doesn’t always involve having all the employees on-site. The concept of consistency is better than we may way have anticipated. It means correct onboarding, knowledge, and training. Even when your employees are not present in the office, they should have a clear understanding of office goals, business objectives, and your vision. 

Regularly maintaining this knowledge is the key consistency. Many times, organizations fail to achieve this when the employees are not present on-site.  

5.    Visibility and Transparency

Visibility and work transparency are both extremely necessary for the workplace. Without understanding the performance and work deliverables, how can an organization gain value from this employee?

This visibility is still easier with an on-site employee. In remote working, lack of personal contact through meetings and office presence can reduce visibility and transparency. 

Conclusion

 
Even with all the challenges, remote workers still provide valuable services. In fact, for startups and small businesses, remote employees offer undeniable benefits, which can’t be overlooked. Hence, understand these challenges and move towards mitigating these risks. You can also utilize remote working services by Experttal. We are not like any other remote services; we provide one of the best industry resources. At Experttal, we nurture these resources to become valuable consultants. Contact us for more details.