How tech can create a borderless talent pool

An Aus­tralian head­ing human resources for a Nor­we­gian com­pa­ny in Ams­ter­dam. An Ital­ian lead­ing growth of a San Fran­cis­co-head­quar­tered firm from Italy. An Eston­ian start­up founder lead­ing the charge in bring­ing dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to inter­na­tion­al immi­gra­tion sys­tems. And they’re all women.

These are exam­ples of how access to a glob­al tal­ent pool is play­ing out in busi­ness. A bur­geon­ing shift pre-coro­n­avirus, it’s now steadi­ly gain­ing momen­tum in our new pan­dem­i­cal­ly punc­tu­at­ed, remote-work­ing times.

“When it comes to recruit­ing tal­ent, COVID-19 has giv­en busi­ness­es a new lens through which to view mod­ern work­ing. Tech­nol­o­gy has accel­er­at­ed the trans­for­ma­tion of busi­ness­es glob­al­ly, enabled teams to grow, diver­si­fy and social­ly con­nect, regard­less of loca­tion,” says Xena Lap­pin, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of trans­for­ma­tion and inno­va­tion at Teleper­for­mance.

The remote-work­ing spe­cial­ist com­pa­ny has expand­ed roll­out of its Cloud Cam­pus remote client ser­vice hubs to accom­mo­date an increas­ing­ly remote, glob­al­ly agile work­force. The rise of remote work­ing is open­ing up a wealth of glob­al tal­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties for both com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als lib­er­at­ed by a bor­der­less recruit­ing process.

Redefining what it takes to be a “tech nation”

Belief that eco­nom­ic hubs like Lon­don and Sil­i­con Val­ley are no longer the source of the best tal­ent is grow­ing, as shared by 57 per cent of respon­dents in glob­al human resources and pay­roll plat­form Remote’s lat­est Glob­al Work­force Rev­o­lu­tion study. Around 62 per cent felt entre­pre­neurs should look beyond these areas to find the best glob­al tal­ent and 42 per cent felt inter­na­tion­al remote work­ing would unlock a greater tal­ent pool.

Most impor­tant­ly, 63 per cent agree that the best per­son for the job is the right per­son, regard­less of where in the world they are.

“Peo­ple want to be close to their fam­i­lies. They want to be close to their age­ing par­ents. They want to be some­where their kids can have a bet­ter child­hood. All these met­rics need to be tak­en into account when design­ing an attrac­tive employ­ee ben­e­fits pack­age,” says Remote’s head of growth Elisa Rossi, who recent­ly returned to her native Italy with her young fam­i­ly after 15 years in San Fran­cis­co.

With a mis­sion to “dri­ve the remote econ­o­my” against the com­plex­i­ties of glob­al employ­ment, tax and immi­gra­tion rules, Rossi says Remote is see­ing a spike in demand from com­pa­nies of all sizes. Desired roles sourced from a glob­al tal­ent pool range from data sci­en­tists, to mar­keters, heads of HR, up to the C‑suite, even chief exec­u­tives. “Now, all of a sud­den, there’s this democ­ra­ti­sa­tion of glob­al employ­ment,” she says.

How remote recruiting is breaking down barriers

Per­haps the biggest impact is on diver­si­ty and inclu­sion. Some 45 per cent of respon­dents in Remote’s report agreed a greater lev­el of inter­na­tion­al remote work­ing could make the tech indus­try more inclu­sive, with 30 per cent believ­ing remote work could help build eth­nic diver­si­ty and 25 per cent say­ing it would improve gen­der diver­si­ty.

The con­cept of bor­der­less tal­ent is even set to be “the great­est lever for diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion”, argues Jes­si­ca Hayes, vice pres­i­dent of peo­ple and tal­ent at Where­by.

“In our lead­er­ship team, we have more women than men and we have a strong approach to work­ing fam­i­lies. We have plen­ty of work­ing mums and also shared parental capac­i­ty with fathers,” she says.

“We have a long way to go in terms of eth­nic diver­si­ty, because we’ve pret­ty much exclu­sive­ly recruit­ed out of Nor­way for the last two years. But this year one of our goals is to spread the geo­graph­ic loca­tions of our teams.”

A remote-first com­pa­ny that offers a video-call­ing alter­na­tive to the likes of Zoom, Where­by is now doing just that, using Remote to recruit more read­i­ly from a glob­al tal­ent pool. Hayes has just hired a Toron­to-based exec­u­tive and, in anoth­er process, the final three can­di­dates are based in the UK, Spain and the Nether­lands in Ams­ter­dam, where Hayes now lives.

Shifting the balance of work in the UK and beyond

Com­ing from a small town in rur­al Aus­tralia, Hayes believes the growth of the remote econ­o­my will in turn rein­ject local region­al economies.

“We have a strong eth­i­cal under­pin­ning in terms of open­ing up the eco­nom­ics of small com­mu­ni­ties, rather than glob­al hubs,” says Hayes.

“We believe tal­ent is equal­ly dis­trib­uted across the world, while the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do your best work is not. I am now per­fect­ly capa­ble of going back to my home town and work­ing there if I want to and I like­ly will when I have chil­dren.”

A boost to region­al hubs fuelled by bor­der­less glob­al tal­ent is some­thing Michael Cock­burn, co-founder of work­space book­ing plat­form Desana, is back­ing. Demand for the Desana plat­form is play­ing into the work-from-home trend evolv­ing into work near home, con­nect­ing employ­ers and employ­ers with book­able, flex­i­ble work­spaces world­wide.

We believe tal­ent is equal­ly dis­trib­uted across the world, while the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do your best work is not

Edin­burgh-based Desana is rolling out pilot pro­grammes with two house­hold names. It is also work­ing with a social media plat­form with a new man­date of hir­ing the best tal­ent wher­ev­er it is.

“This has accel­er­at­ed the busi­ness case for facil­i­tat­ing peo­ple work­ing close to home and COVID has accel­er­at­ed the num­ber of com­pa­nies we’re talk­ing to about facil­i­tat­ing that. With­out com­mit­ting to an office, or one brand of office-space provider, com­pa­nies can use this large net­work of space glob­al­ly,” says Cock­burn.

Desana part­ners with inde­pen­dent work­space providers that are con­sid­er­ing acquir­ing new region­al real estate to accom­mo­date an expand­ing bor­der­less, glob­al tal­ent pool.

“We’re see­ing the decen­tral­i­sa­tion of every indus­try. So why should­n’t we be focus­ing on how we cre­ate decen­tralised hubs that pro­vide the resources we need to be hap­py and ful­filled in where we’re work­ing, in a well-estab­lished work­space peo­ple can walk or cycle to from where they live?” he ques­tions.

Sourcing Tier‑1 talent from emerging markets

Such decen­tral­i­sa­tion is also open­ing doors for tal­ent in emerg­ing mar­kets, with new plat­forms such as Andela and Remote­ly sup­ply­ing remote soft­ware engi­neer­ing teams out of Africa and Latin Amer­i­ca. Remote has also part­nered with Pesto, a tal­ent accel­er­a­tor for Indi­an soft­ware engi­neers, and Micro­verse, a cod­ing pro­gram focused on Latin Amer­i­can and African stu­dents.

While this may do won­ders for improv­ing diver­si­ty, Whereby’s Hayes warns of the need for eth­i­cal pay scales. “Many busi­ness­es work­ing in a dis­trib­uted fash­ion are nat­u­ral­ly reluc­tant to sub­mit to com­pen­sat­ing their team accord­ing to ‘big city’ salaries,” she says. “But, if you do not have a com­pre­hen­sive and egal­i­tar­i­an com­pen­sa­tion struc­ture, busi­ness­es are more like­ly to fall into a trap of pay gaps or tak­ing advan­tage of emerg­ing mar­kets.

“If you are a HR peo­ple leader in a dis­trib­uted work­place, you must pri­ori­tise devel­op­ing a com­pen­sa­tion method­ol­o­gy which takes these facts into account. Pre­pare for them ear­ly; do not let your­selves fall into unsus­tain­able or uneth­i­cal pay prac­tices.”

Whether this means dri­ving down Lon­don salaries in favour of region­al pay or some kind of equi­lib­ri­um remains to be seen. But Karoli Hin­driks, founder of glob­al immi­gra­tion plat­form Job­bat­i­cal, believes salaries may become less geo­graph­i­cal­ly dri­ven and more about a price tag for a cer­tain skillset and lev­el of exper­tise.

Bringing digital technologies to the immigration process

Either way, Tallin-based Hin­driks, who helped pio­neer the devel­op­ment of the world’s first dig­i­tal nomad visa, allow­ing remote work­ers to be legal­ly based in Esto­nia, says a wide­spread adop­tion of bor­der­less tal­ent is depen­dent on inter­na­tion­al immi­gra­tion sys­tems becom­ing more open and effi­cient.

“We can build as much tech as pos­si­ble, but if poli­cies don’t change, we can’t real­ly help com­pa­nies,” she says.

Hin­driks has been called on to advise the Croa­t­ian gov­ern­ment, which is look­ing to plug its COVID tourism gap with remote work­ers and has worked with immi­gra­tion author­i­ties in Berlin on sub­mit­ting appli­ca­tions dig­i­tal­ly via Job­bat­i­cal, cut­ting pro­cess­ing time from nine­ty days to five.

“We are hav­ing sim­i­lar dis­cus­sions with oth­er gov­ern­ments, but things aren’t going to change overnight. We need coun­tries like Ger­many, Spain, Italy, Unit­ed States and the UK to fol­low suit,” she says. “The biggest prob­lem is the whole immi­gra­tion indus­try is out­dat­ed. Maybe this pan­dem­ic will make the pub­lic sec­tor think about effi­cien­cy more.”

While Whereby’s Hayes agrees immi­gra­tion and employ­ment law need to catch up, Remote’s Rossi says bor­der­less tal­ent and the remote econ­o­my is a macro trend and there’s no going back.

As Desana’s Cock­burn con­cludes: “Now people’s expec­ta­tion is to be able to work where they want and com­pa­nies just have to facil­i­tate that.”

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