Your next job will be remote

According to a McKinsey survey of 800 managers worldwide in September 2020, 70% said they plan to become more dependent on freelancers and contract workers.

With the advent of COVID-19, tens of millions of employees were equipped with laptops and other digital technologies to go home and start working. Some employers intend to increase the number of employees working remotely, at least for some time, at a level well below the levels seen during downtime and quarantine.

The potential for telecommuting is very concentrated in a few sectors such as information technology, finance and insurance, and administration. Managers in these sectors are eager to have telecommuting staff. Approximately 34% of information technology respondents have at least one-tenth of their employees working remotely two days a week after COVID-19, compared to 22% of sector managers cross-examined before the pandemic. He said he was expecting that.

Most companies that have announced plans for more telework among their employees belong to the financial technology sector, especially Facebook, Twitter and Hitachi. For example, the Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company recently announced that it had closed five offices in a small US city, and employees will work remotely. Similarly, Morgan Stanley and Mondelez have stated that they will use a hybrid working model in the future. As leaders of these companies develop new expectations about how and where they work, teleworking can be a way to reduce real estate costs and compete for talent.

Companies need a new set of tools to address this unique situation. It is a chance to eliminate what we never liked to do: updating daily spreadsheets with payroll data and collecting a range of contractors’ data, including numerous agreements, NDA and HR surveys. All this has to be outsourced or even automated today. Haven’t you done it yet?

Check our recent study on SaaS tools for managing international contractors in 2021.