Recruitment and teleworking: the challenges for HR in 2024

Between the last half of 2019 and the first half of 2020, the practice of telecommuting jumped by more than 30% in French companies.

It's THE HR and recruitment topic of the moment. This phenomenon has been called a revolution. If you type "telecommuting 2020" into Google, the first result is an article entitled 2020, year1 of the telecommuting era... Obviously, the health crisis and successive confinements were decisive factors. For those who hadn't already done so, HR professionals had to adapt to recruiting from a distance. Candidates have (re)discovered the stress of the video interview...

But is it really a revolution? In reality, telecommuting was already on the increase in French companies. Especially since the 2017 reform of the Labor Code, whose ordinances provided for greater flexibility in the use of telecommuting in companies. The health crisis simply acted as a gas pedal for the phenomenon, since employees could no longer work from their business premises.

In 2021, telecommuting is more a necessary adaptation than a simple revolution in work organization. An adaptation to the economic and social context, an adaptation to new professional uses (such as the emergence of digital tools), but also an adaptation to the new aspirations of candidates, eager for flexibility and a better work-life balance.

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Telecommuting and recruitment: a necessary adaptation to candidates' aspirations

Telecommuting as it was introduced in 2020 (i.e. in the emergency of the crisis) has largely affected the balance of relationships between employees, candidates and companies. It has also, and above all, affected everyone's professional expectations and personal aspirations.

In concrete terms, what are the challenges of telecommuting for HR professionals in the famous post-war world?

A better work-life balance

According to a study conducted by the paris-jetequitte.com platform, 54% of people living in the Paris region said they wanted to move to another region in May 2020, compared with 38% just a few months earlier. In terms of job applicants, 42% of Parisians looking for work in September 2020 were looking outside the Paris region, according to a study by Hellowork.

So, while the majority of Parisians want to leave the region, less than half are prepared to relocate their jobs.

What does this have to do with telecommuting?
These figures show the impact of telecommuting on the changing needs and expectations of the French workforce. It has opened up new possibilities for work organization. Today's working people are looking for a better quality of life, a less stressful daily routine and a more attractive cost of living. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're willing to give up a job they find meaningful. To reconcile the two, telecommuting seems an obvious solution.

For example, telecommuting enables an employee to follow his/her spouse in the event of a move, while keeping his/her job.

A more flexible hybrid organizational model

Not everyone wants to go 100% telecommuting! According to a study published by Apec in December 2020, 81% of managers say they want to continue teleworking, but 72% of them want to do so on an occasional basis.

The majority of employees and candidates are therefore not looking for a full telecommuting job, but simply want more flexibility in work organization.

A personalized, adaptable candidate path

This desire for flexibility did not originate with the COVID-19 crisis. The digital transformation of companies, underway for several decades, had already paved the way.

The ultra-agile operation of start-ups and the arrival on the job market of new generations in search of meaning in their work have also largely contributed to this change in mentality. It's precisely these "Generation Y and Z" candidates who are now putting their personal aspirations first, right from stage 1 of the recruitment process!

Indeed, even before applying for a job, these candidates find out about the company: its activity, its values, its organization, the benefits on offer... and if telecommuting is an option! Many job boards, such as Indeed or RégionsJob, allow recruiters to indicate whether a position is available for telecommuting, or whether the company allows this practice.

This knowledge enables candidates to be more selective! In sectors facing a shortage of candidates, such as the IT sector where competition is fierce, talent will prefer to turn to companies that offer them the possibility of teleworking.
To avoid this pitfall, it is essential to ensure the quality of the candidate experience. It's one of the pillars of your company's employer brand: the transparency of the candidate's career path determines the company's image, the quality of applications and the motivation of the talents who apply!

Not convinced? Keep in mind that over 30% of candidates terminate an application before the end of the recruitment process if it is deemed too long, or not adapted to their needs and constraints, according to a study published by Robert Walters.

Recruitment and teleworking: how to make teleworking a factor in HR attractiveness?

What does this mean for HR professionals? How do you recruit from home, without meeting candidates? What organization is needed to maintain the same quality of recruitment, integration and collaboration with a teleworking employee?

1. Clearly define the telecommuting recruitment framework

Recruiting a telecommuting candidate without a face-to-face interview, and without any exchanges with the teams involved in the recruitment, is a real paradigm shift. Trust and transparency are essential to successful recruitment.

So, before you publish a telecommuting job offer for a remote recruitment, you need to define the telecommuting framework. If this framework has not already been defined by a collective agreement or an internal company charter, you can formalize it individually with your potential future recruit.

Next, establish the work organization arrangements. Each company must adapt telecommuting to its own needs and constraints. Telecommuting can take various forms:

• partial
• sedentary (the employee works solely from home, or from a shared workspace)
• alternating (the employee can work alternating hours, from home and at the workplace)
• nomadic (the employee is not assigned to his or her home or a specific workspace, but can work from any location using suitable equipment).

2. Establish the typical profile of a telecommuting employee

How do you recruit remotely? Some HR professionals feel that a remote recruitment interview is not as effective as a face-to-face interview in identifying the personality and motivations of the candidate.

The first thing to do to overcome these fears is to define your candidate persona, i.e. the profile of your ideal candidate. When it comes to telecommuting and online recruitment, there are certain qualities and skills you need to prioritize. Indeed, while digital tools now make communication and information sharing between employees much more fluid, telecommuting employees are the sole masters of their own organization and working time management.

You should therefore focus your telecommuting job interviews on specific points such as :

• ability to work independently ;
• taking initiative ;
• responsiveness
• ability to concentrate and motivation.

3. Create a telecommuting candidate path

Now that you've defined the telecommuting framework and the typical profile of a candidate working remotely, it's time to... recruit the rare pearl!

Here again, there's the fear of a "half-hearted" video job interview, unable to pinpoint the candidate's strengths and limitations, particularly his or her interpersonal and technical skills. However, digital tools such as the Beetween recruitment software now offer numerous possibilities for better understanding candidates and determining their qualities and skills.

• Video conferencing for recruitment: we won't go into the advantages and disadvantages of video recruitment, a subject that has been widely discussed. But video tools are indeed an effective solution for recruiting from a distance and collaborating with a telecommuting employee.
  
  
• Deferred video interviewing: deferred video is an interesting tool for pre-selecting candidates, particularly for gaining a better understanding of a talent's personality and motivations. The way it works is simple: you send a list of questions to the candidate, who must answer them on video by recording his or her answers on a deferred video platform . You can then consult this video as often as you like, and share it with your colleagues according to your validation processes!
  
  
• Candidate questionnaire: this tool allows you to send a questionnaire to candidates to gather certain information (skills, personality, motivation, writing skills, etc.). When coupled with ATS software such as Beetween, the answers to the questions are directly integrated into the candidate's file in your online CV library!
  
  
• Personality test: the personality test also consists of sending a list of questions to candidates, focusing in particular on their personality, their ability to work in a team or their managerial profile. The aim is to establish a "typical profile" of the candidate, to understand how he or she interacts with colleagues, what his or her strengths and weaknesses are, what his or her professional aspirations are, and so on.

4. Onboard your new recruit remotely

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Remote onboarding of a new employee is certainly the most crucial stage in telecommuting recruitment. Their motivation depends on the quality of their welcome. To avoid "losing" your new recruit, you need to devote time to him or her, and set up personalized onboarding actions.

• Assigning mentors: a mentor helps centralize information. New arrivals always have questions during the first few days. So they have someone to turn to.
  
  
• Integration into processes: are you using an internal communication tool like Slack or Google Hangouts? Do you organize weekly department meetings? Invite newcomers into these processes so that they feel part of the team, for example by allowing them to take part in videoconference meetings.
  
  
• Discovery day: don't overlook the importance of the first day. If your new telecommuting recruit feels "abandoned" from the outset, his or her long-term experience as an employee is bound to be disappointing. Take care to support your new employee during the first few days, so that he or she integrates quickly and becomes operational more easily. You could, for example, organize informal meetings with each of his or her colleagues to introduce them to their missions, the various cross-functional tasks they'll have to take on, and so on.

Is telecommuting a revolution? No, it's an evolution in work organization.

Although the health crisis was a gas pedal, the introduction of more flexible organizations was already being studied in many companies. Today, telecommuting appears to be the right answer to companies' needs and employees' aspirations.

Coupled with a well-managed employer brand, it is a significant factor in attracting qualified candidates, especially for companies suffering from a shortage of candidates and strong competition.

Sponsored article. Expert contributors are authors independent of the Appvizer editorial team. Their comments and positions are their own.

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