Would you hire someone you’ll never meet?

Remote hiring is a strategy few managers would have considered before Coronavirus, but with working from anywhere now a core part of businesses’ operations, it reflects the ‘new normal’. Whereas more than half of work (51%) was conducted in an office or on-site before the pandemic, this has since dropped to 39%, according to our Future of Work study.

Respondents resoundingly agreed that investing in the workforce is critical or contingent to long-term profitability. While a third have added to their employee base in the past year, nearly half lost staff amid emergency measures such as furlough.

A significant majority of business leaders (70%) said they are expecting to boost the number of employees in the year ahead. For many businesses the transition to flexible and remote working practices poses new challenges around hiring and managing staff, but it also comes with the potential to broaden the pool of candidates available to hire on a global scale.

Three challenges of hiring remotely and how to overcome them

1. Sourcing talent

Pandemic travel restrictions may have put the brakes on international travel, but some employers are compensating by hiring staff in the countries in which they do business, according to Thomas Kochan, a Professor of Management and Post-Tenure of Work and Employment Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

“The biggest cross-border challenge involves how to attract and service customers in a travel-constrained environment,” he explains. “This appears to be leading some multinational firms to reassess their talent pools, giving more emphasis on developing talented employees close to their customers.”

Online job posting boards and recruitment apps can help companies to source staff for short-term contract work as well as permanent positions, but for those who are hesitant about hiring blind, asking for referrals can be an additional way of sourcing a network of trusted candidates, recommends recruitment platform Workable.

2. Screening potential employees

Another hurdle for companies is around how to screen potential new hires remotely. Luckily there are lots of technologies out there to help.

To conduct interviews remotely, Workable lists applications such as Spark Hire, which helps recruiters record interviews and compare answers. Jobma can also help business leaders to vet candidates quickly by allowing them to answer questions via video in their own time. HireVue similarly enables candidates to self-schedule interviews if participants are in different time zones.

3. Creating and maintaining an attractive work culture

How do companies make employees who are working remotely feel more valued and engaged?

Improving diversity was a priority for a quarter of the business leaders in our survey. To avoid creating silos where the people who attend the office are those most likely to be promoted – and who are also likely to be able-bodied and not primary carers – leaders must also take steps to nurture staff who work remotely. There is technology available to help, such as ambient voice technology that tracks employees' mood by the intonation in their voice, according to Futurist Andrew Grill, and Human, an AI product that claims to remove unconscious bias in hiring decisions, but ultimately the onus is on managers to make staff feel included.

While technology can connect employers with potential employees in the virtual world, but Professor Kochan believes that it won’t replace the personal touch that identifies and nurtures creativity in the workplace: “We may see more use of temporary, contract employment of professionals who have skills in immediate demand but over the longer haul I envision a strong desire for organisations to want to build personal relationships with their employees. Otherwise, we might see a decline in the pace of innovation.”

HSBC Navigator: The Future of Work

The Navigator: Future of Work survey was conducted by FTI Consulting on behalf of HSBC. Research was conducted online from 3rd to 8th August 2021 with 2,130 respondents who are involved in or influence strategic direction for their company in 10 markets: UK, USA, UAE, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Mexico, Australia and Germany.