What’s Holding Back Remote Hiring?
It’s easy to wonder what’s holding back remote hiring still in 2019. We have the technology to work remotely from just about anywhere on the planet. Yet, most jobs still require physical proximity as a condition of hiring. Why?
Inertia
When it comes to what’s holding back remote hiring, inertia is the first thing that comes to mind. Most of the biggest employers in the enterprise world have been in business for many years.
This long history has certainly led to some calcification in their hiring processes. It’s a lot harder to modify hiring practices when your company size is 10,000 compared to 10. Big companies are slow moving and understandably so.
If a company has grown large, they most likely have been profitable over many years. The larger the company grows, the more difficult it becomes to change. Moreover, change feels riskier as deviation from what’s worked in the past takes a lot of courage.
Put simply, this is the natural human tendency towards loss aversion manifested at an organizational scale. We humans tend to value not losing over gaining something new.
Therefore it seems more prudent to continue hiring people into an office, because that’s the way it’s always been done. But eventually things always change. And we are rapidly approaching an inflection point. One where the inertia of hiring practices will morph into a significant disadvantage.
Hiring is Hard
Hiring has been a notoriously tough nut to crack. From the largest corporation to the small mom and pop shop, finding good employees is one of the most difficult challenges.
It’s a time consuming and expensive process for both companies and candidates. The cost of a bad hire can quickly cause exponential deleterious effects on both the hiring and hired. It’s a process filled with risk for everyone involved.
Part of the problem is the tight coupling of benefits to employment here in the States. This tends to force people into seeking jobs regardless of fit. The alternative is to lose access to affordable health insurance.
Ultimately everyone would be better off if employees needn’t rely on companies for benefits. Then both company and candidate could focus more on role fit. Instead, one side is compelled to get the job at any cost or risk losing health insurance. Unfortunately, we’re still a long way away from realizing this here in the US.
Hiring Managers
We can certainly empathize with the plight of hiring managers. They are tasked with taking on the big problem of hiring. They will also take responsibility for it in spite of its historically intractable nature.
Making a bad hire is something that will reflect poorly on your performance. There is an additional concern though. Did the bad hire look good on paper? In other words, when the bad hire was selected, did the hiring manager have a strong case to present to her director or VP?
Herein lies another key as to what’s holding back remote hiring. Hiring managers take on extra risk when making a hire outside of the traditional path. If a company has traditionally hired in-office, then a hiring manager may perceive hiring a fully remote employee as harder to sell to her boss.
And if the remote employee doesn’t work out, then the hiring manager could be demeritted more greatly than had she hired a vanilla in-office employee.
This is ultimately another big reason why we remote workers need to be top performers. It not only protects ourselves, but ultimately protects our managers who step up and hire us.
To be clear though, we’re talking about traditional companies here. Not the new breed of fully remote companies who have already embraced the new reality. Top level organizational support for remote hiring can solve this dilemma, but most companies are not there yet.
Summary
The lion’s share of companies are not remote-only. This means the bulk of hiring is still being done by in-office centric organizations. This creates a number of friction points when it comes to hiring remote workers.
Inertia plays a big role. It’s just easier for organizations to continue doing what they’ve been doing than it is to change course. The bigger the ship, the harder it is to turn.
Additionally, hiring is fundamentally difficult. Hiring a remote worker may be perceived to be more risky in a traditional company than hiring an in-office individual.
Finally, hiring managers bear responsibility for their hires. In a traditional company, a hiring manager may invite more scrutiny by hiring a remote worker without high-level organizational support.
I believe all of these friction points will eventually fade away. As more and more of these slow-moving companies are surpassed by remote-friendly companies, they will be forced to change or become extinct.