With droves now relying on remote workers to keep businesses running, demand for these skills continues to rise.
With droves now relying on remote workers to keep businesses running, we expect to experience unprecedented demand for tech workers across the board.
Scores of articles have surfaced over the past few days from professional remote workers: those who have done it for 10 or 20 years. Many come from developers or those closely tied to tech or e-commerce start-ups. While their content generally speaks to tips from working from home (important, yes), what this also speaks to is the ability to rely on technology and drive a successful business outside of a traditional office.
We’ve seen an unprecedented demand for tech workers, both temporary remote and permanent remote, in the following roles:
The demand for tech workers isn’t new; in fact, we observed this uptick late in 2019. According to the Australian Computer Society in their report Australia’s Digital Pulse 2019, they estimated 100,000 new IT roles will be created by 2024. This brings the total number of IT roles close to one million.
The current lockdown seems to have accelerated this boom. Tech is an industry with a propensity for flexibility and its workers are adept at technology-related reskilling. In a time of market uncertainty where most stocks are plunging, the stocks of many tech platforms, such as Zoom, are soaring.
Most workplaces are already equipped with office chat groups or remote access to CRM tools. If you need more heavy-duty tech platforms to support your connectedness, you’re in luck.
What’s unique to the world right now is that even though we are in isolation, we are more connected and more community-minded than ever. Collaboration platforms like Slack, Zoom and Microsoft are now offering the use of their tools free of charge. This can help to onboard any remote workers and mimics the face-to-face time often required to brief a new job (or build team rapport).
New skills are often required to address new problems.
If you’re a business new to remote working, having the ability to tap into a resource who has a different background—perhaps an agency or a large multinational—to solve problems they have experience with.
Workforce planning can be difficult in the best of times. Over the coming weeks, you might need resources to patch over employee sick leave or to stem unplanned work. Similarly, you might experience a downturn. Remote-based tech workers, especially those with 10 or 20 years under their belts, have the adaptability to pick things up quickly. In a lot of ways, it’s like an outsourced, personalised support team.
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