Remote employees can be a huge asset to your company, but you need to hire the right people for your business. Follow the simple advice below to find out how
Recent years have seen a significant rise in the amount of companies hiring remote employees. After all, it allows for a wider pool of talent, unfettered by geographical limitations, and can save you a lot of money in office rent and equipment. It is also a highly competitive market, meaning that prices have been driven down to the benefit of employers. However, the sheer number of people advertising their talents has meant that more than a few dishonest opportunists have managed to slip through the net, which can result in subpar service, or even theft and data breaches. To ensure that your remote team consists of only the most reliable talent, follow the advice listed below,
Hire through a reputable agency
Sometimes you have to put security above price in your list of priorities. If a company or individual is advertising services for 80-90% cheaper than any local hiring, you have to ask yourself whether it’s possible to deliver great service at that cost. Most of the time, it is not, so it’s best to seek out remote agencies with an established reputation, who have almost as much to lose from a badly done project as you do. They might be more expensive, but at least you’ll be sure of results.
Take care with freelancers
Most cases of fraud that come via remote hiring are the result of ad hoc setups where people with little experience or malicious intent advertise their services as ‘freelance’ or ’boutique’. While there are many genuine, talented freelancers out there, it’s often difficult to verify their credentials before hiring them. It is always better for data protection purposes to hire people from resources you can trust.
Establish a code of conduct
You might be hiring people from all over the country, or even different countries altogether, who may have vastly different work practices and policies. If they’re working for you, they need to work to your specifications, so draw up a uniform organisational policy for everyone to follow, to create a safer, more secure work culture among your employees.
Create tiered access of data
Sharing data with remote employees on a strictly ‘need to know’ basis significantly limits the danger of a major security breach. Since you won’t be able to keep an eye on your remote employees in the same way you would in-house staff, it’s best to be cautious with what they’re sent. Sometimes people are careless, but by limiting the data people have access to, you will be more easily able to contain any breach.
Cloud storage
Following on from the previous point, Cloud storage makes it very simple to attach permissions to specific data. It also enables you to share data instantly with remote employees, while making it hard for them to steal data from outside the company. Investing in the Cloud will make your business run seamlessly and more safely overall.
Sign an airtight NDA
Staff in the EU and US are bound by certain rules and regulations to ensure their validity, but if you are hiring from elsewhere, it’s best to sign an airtight non-disclosure agreement which is valid and legally binding in the country from which you are hiring. It is standard practise among most valid remote staffing companies to sign legally binding NDAs and non-compete agreements with every employee they hire. If a certain company does not offer to do this, try looking elsewhere.
