Remote working is nothing new. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have been doing some variation of remote working depending on circumstances. For example, companies who have just expanded to another country or market where setting up a full office is not feasible yet, or companies hiring freelancers, companies with sales teams covering a vast geographical territory, or even companies who simply offer remote working several days a month as an added benefit.
It was during 2020’s global lockdowns, though, that really brought the conversation about remote working forward as big and small companies start adapting to this shift — a shift that is looking to be a norm as more and more employers. and employees realise the benefits of remote teams, such as no geographical constraints in finding talent, no hefty office space rentals, easy accessibility to teams across international borders, and flexible working hours.
The big question is: how does one go about hiring remote employees?
Helping founders build just the right remote team for business growth and scalability
To empower startup founders and entrepreneurs with the right knowledge to hire the right team members for their remote teams, Deel recently conducted a one-hour webinar featuring AI and cloud service company CloudMile and chat & messaging company Sendbird to delve deeper into the topic of building remote teams for startup scalability and growth in Southeast Asia.
The topic of the session was “Scaling your startup across borders: A closer look at building your local entity and remote team” and was held virtually on 6th July. The main focus of the webinar was building a remote team and practical things founders need to know in choosing the new members of their team. It features a panel that includes Abhinav Krishna, Head of Expansion APAC of Deel; Dara Lee, HR Manager at CloudMile; and Sanghee Lee, Country Manager for Korea, Sendbird; in a session moderated by Meltem Kuran, Head of Growth at Deel.
Leveraging relevant industry experiences to understand the nuances of remote teams
The panellists and the moderator of the webinar brought in decades of relevant industry experience and leveraged their knowledge to explain the nuances of hiring the best team member for a remote team.
An NUS graduate, Deel’s Abhinav comes with elaborate experience in entrepreneurship and handling business across international borders. Prior to working at Deel, Abhinav founded an Enterprise Healthcare platform OurHealthMate where he went on to work with clients like Airbus, Colgate and Sony among others for eight years. His time at OurHealthMate gave him insights into the struggles of working with remote teams.
Also read: Scaling your startup: A closer look at building your local entity and remote teams
Dara from CloudMile is a cross-field HR with a financial background. With more than five years of experience in the HR industry, she once served as a recruiter for a large foreign bank and also has experience in recruiting for a startup company. With a keen focus on the execution of HR strategy for startups to assist in business growth rapidly, she sees value in remote teams and has hands-on experience in hiring remote teams.
The third panellist, Sanghee from SendBird- the world’s leading chat & messaging platform as a service in addition to voice and video, comes with a lot of industry knowledge and expertise, too. This former McKinsey and Ticket Monster business strategist has helped Sendbird grow from a revenue of $59 into millions with $120 million of funding from the top Silicon Valley VCs (up to Series B).
Moderator Meltem Kuran has been a part of Deel for over a year now. She specializes in digital marketing and business development and brings over nine years of industry experience to the table.
Where to start: Setting up a manpower plan for remote teams
Unlike many global companies with regional operations, SendBird first started its business in Korea and later opened its US headquarters. So, their regional offices don’t just have sales offices but a suite of functionalities, such as designs, HR, finance and engineering among others. This helps foster a robust team on the ground in all regions. Sanghee believes that it is important to have constant feedback between global headquarters and local executives.
CloudMile’s Dara believes that HR planning is mainly about finding the right people at the right time and for the right position. These people should be able to meet the specific business needs of each market. So, when creating a manpower plan, the company needs to look at the local market, and come up with unique hiring plans for each market.
Deel’s Abhinav shares that another key element to look at is the size of the company and knowing how many people the business is looking to hire. He added that companies, especially, startups need to ask the following questions:
- Do we meet all compliance needs?
- How do we hire and where do we hire from?
- Which team are we looking to hire and what is our priority list: for example, a tech startup can be a tech team followed by DevOps, then customer success and eventually content teams.
Successful hires: What to look for in a remote team member?
Sanghee shares that some of SendBird’s first few successful remote hires were from Singapore, Bengaluru (India), and the UK. “Our rationale behind this decision was approximated around customers. Sendbird has customers all over the world in over 150 different countries and customer support is one of our main focus areas. So, we first decided to create customer success, account management and sales teams in remote locations.” He added, “Self-motivated and self-fulfilling people make up the best remote employees because they have to be driven.”
Also read: Fintechs ushering in a new era for a more digital India
Speaking on remote teams’ significance in the post-pandemic world, Dara shared that over 48 per cent of the global workforce will continue to work from home or remotely even after things open up. CloudMile looks at traits like professional competence, agility, team spirit and self-motivation when hiring remote team members. “Work is nor more a place, it is the team”, said Dara
To this point, Abhinav added that he goes for people who have ambitions and zero ego can contribute to healthy and constructive company culture and that’s what Deel goes for when creating a roadmap for new hires.
Leveraging technology for solving conflicts in remote teams
Given people are not physically together, office politics has been eliminated in the remote working scene. Plus, there is the advantage of digital trails. Abhinav feels that acknowledgement and appreciation go a long way. Leveraging tech solutions like Slack to foster better communication is vital when handling remote teams.
Dara believes that conflict can have a big impact on the work culture. And this is where technology solutions like Google workspace, more collaboration at work is a possibility even with remote teams. Meltem also emphasises the importance of clear communication.
With remote teams increasingly becoming the norm, startups, SMEs and big enterprises must have the tools and solutions to be ready to hire the workforce of tomorrow. This is where Deel is stepping up – a newly-crowned unicorn startup helping companies with international payroll, benefits, taxes, and compliance in some 150 countries. With their Series C of $156 million raised, Deel’s valuation has reached $1.25 billion in just under 24 months.
Also read: How Malaysia’s ServisHero transforms Southeast Asia’s home service market
Interested to take the jump and scale beyond borders? Learn more about Deel their official page. If you are an e27 member, get special discounts with Deel. Visit https://e27.co.
This session followed the first webinar in this series where the main focus was on knowing when to grow your remote team, whether to hire a local team or a contractor, and factors to consider when building your team. Watch out for the upcoming third and final episode, which you can sign up for here.
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