Things are changing really fast and in terms of the global workforce which exists in this day and age, the traditional corporate structure seems to be dying out. Yes, some of the biggest corporations and multinational companies still maintain that traditional corporate structure of having a sky-scraping office their employees report to, but those are mostly institutionalised organisations for whom doing things traditionally continues to work for them.
If you’re operating a remotely run business however, the freedom of not having to commute to work is perhaps as good as it gets by way of perks, otherwise, remote operations have their own unique set of challenges. That said, the range of difficulty in the challenges can differ based on tasks and industry. For instance, it may not be as challenging for home-based doctors to take the help of virtual medical assistants to make appointments, schedule visits, and manage the flow of patients for them. Since there are only two people involved, the line of communication will be interrupted. On the contrary, someone who is involved with the cross-border distribution of physical goods would likely face a lot more problems in terms of managing and coordinating with a larger remote workforce.
There have been technological developments to get around these problems; there are now a range of project management tools that organise and manage tasks for the employees. Cloud-based systems will store information about products, tasks and schedules, making it much easier for a team to be in touch from different locations. Using a task management platform, like NetSuite, makes the workflow far more streamlined. Additionally, these software tools keep updating and improving based on user needs. A Netsuite customization according to the company’s needs is likely to be even more convenient for communication between team members who are not in the same location.
That being said, it’s not as easy as just sitting at your computer for one or two hours a day and allocating tasks as part of what you offer to your end clients. Dealing with freelancers whom you’ve likely never even met physically, who are located miles and miles across oceans away from you can be a serious cause for some heightened stress levels. Just imagine if your clients simply expect you to deliver some work by a specific time, unaware of the fact that you in actual fact outsource that work and the members of your global, remote workforce are rather erratic in their adherence to deadlines. That in itself is a mega challenge – finding reliable remote workers.
Sometimes the working relationship starts out very well and things go along swimmingly, but then one day you could wake up to a very unresponsive freelancer who is perhaps even tired of coming up with just one more excuse as to why they’ve not quite completed their allocated work yet. They might even cut off contact entirely and disappear. What do you do then? One possible solution is employing Bond Rees investigators to go out and find this person. Another would be to go to the police, although that may prove to be complicated with all the paperwork involved.
It doesn’t end there, however – there is a lot more and it gets even more challenging!
The growth of the internet and the economic opportunities which come with that growth have not gone unnoticed by those individuals and groups of people who work in the regulatory spheres of our society and rightfully so too if these people are indeed truly concerned about maintaining fairness. This is where things can get a lot trickier for anyone operating a remotely run business, as dynamics such as legal jurisdiction and cross-border/international business law come into effect.
People who hold citizenship of the United States of America get taxed on their worldwide earnings, for example, which would present the employer with a plethora of legal implications should they choose to hire a freelancer from that part of the world. These legal implications go beyond just earnings reporting for tax purposes, spilling over into legal jurisdiction for something like injury law and claims associated with “on-the-job” injuries which may occur.
It can become an expensive exercise just to ascertain how the various laws of each involved country apply to you and your remotely operated business.
