Using Remote Working to Build a Better Recruitment Team

Before the pandemic, you probably thought remote working was going to work against your business. How could your recruiters keep productivity levels up when they’re working at home in their pyjamas all day?

But studies have really challenged our assumptions: research has shown that productivity levels have increased substantially for most businesses since the world went into lockdown.

So rather than jump at the chance to get your team back into the office as soon as possible, here are some ways you can continue use remote working in some capacity to build a better recruitment team.

Build trust and accountability

With not being in the office, your team have to work more autonomously without asking too many questions or having a manager checking up on them.

And while this kind of autonomy might make you nervous, trusting your recruiters is excellent for their development. It means your team need to think more for themselves and become better problem solvers. They might make a few mistakes along the way but don’t worry too much about that – mistakes are how we all learn.

Building a strong remote recruitment team is all about creating an environment of trust and autonomy that focusses on outcomes rather than outputs. Who cares if they’re making less calls per week than they were before lockdown if their overall figures have increased?

For remote to work to your advantage, it takes a bit of adapting from your side too.

Create balance

The idea of creating a good work-life balance in recruitment might sounds impossible to you, but one of the best things about remote working is that you can genuinely offer this to your recruiters – without impacting results.

And the key to this is again focussing on outcomes (e.g. candidates placed) instead of outputs (e.g. the number of calls your team are making). If you focus on the outcomes, your team will manage their work-life balance themselves.

Working from home also naturally means taking less breaks and this can lead to quicker burnout. Not only does flexibility keep your team happy – remote workers are 45% more productive and have a measured output of almost 5% more than office workers.

So think about the kind of flexible options you could offer your team: Could you use flexitime? Trial a 4-day work week or unlimited holidays?

Read this blog from our CEO Wendy on her journey towards deciding flexible working was the right choice – and this was written before the pandemic!

Improve team communication

If you’ve noticed that communication within your team hasn’t improved in lockdown, it’s likely you’re missing some of the structure required to make it work.

At Firefish, we’ve found that our internal communication has improved massively since going remote – here’s why:

• Meetings are less disruptive to your day and more streamlined when they’re online
• All meetings can be recorded so no one misses out if they can’t be there at the time
• We make checking in more of a thing now: we have daily team standups to and weekly team catchups that focus on our Four ‘Ps’ (progress, plans, problems and positives for the week)
• We’re using communication tools internally that make keeping in touch throughout the day easy.

Using the wrong tools can be a real thorn in the foot so it’s worth doing some shopping around to find tech that does everything you need it to do.

Become the company everyone wants to work for

Most recruitment businesses will go straight back to office working once the pandemic is under control. Are you going to be one of those businesses?

As much as 35% of employees say they’d change jobs tomorrow if it meant they could work remotely, so this could give you a competitive advantage.

Allowing employees to choose how much time they work in the office or even allowing them to continue remotely can really work in your favour as it shows you’re a forward-thinking business that cares about keeping recruiters happy. And this key to attracting and retaining the best recruiters in the industry.

Download the eBook below to find out how a hybrid business model could help your recruitment agency.