RecruitmentRevolution, the company that pioneered the online recruitment agency fifteen years ago, has launched a new full service brand, Remoteably, to help companies to benefit from the shift to remote-working and attract the most talented individuals, irrespective of location.

Over the past decade, recruitment veteran, Jamie Mistlin, has been tracking the growing trend towards remote working flexibility, which has been accelerated by social distancing during the pandemic. He co-founded Remoteably to provide a service to help employers to identify where they can adapt roles to offer flexible working, enabling them to look further afield for the best employees.

Remoteably’s service focuses on helping sectors which have significant skills shortages, including cyber security, software engineering, IT, digital operations, digital marketing, and business growth roles.

As an example, research into the UK cyber security sector, carried out on behalf of the Department of Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) revealed that 68% of cyber sector businesses had tried to recruit for a cyber role within the last three years and found that 35% of vacancies were hard to fill. Senior staff with three to five years’ experience and principal level staff with six to nine years’ experience were the most difficult to recruit. DCMS data identified 393,257 cyber security-related job postings over the past three years, with cyber security hotspots including London, the West Midlands, the South West, Edinburgh and Belfast

Mistlin cites the example of two companies, both based in Faringdon in Oxfordshire, who were trying to recruit experienced software developers. The first company hired a talented coder within two weeks because it offered the option to work remotely for up to four days a week. The second company wanted its developers to be based in the office full time and took almost three months to find the right person.

After identifying whether employers can offer remote flexibility and to what degree, Mistlin and his team researches transport links and nationwide hotspots of talent in technology, coding, cyber security, marketing and sales to determine the target search locations to find the most appropriate candidates. Using this methodology, Remoteably has vastly shortened the recruitment cycles for clients and often opened up roles to candidates living in areas that have higher unemployment rates.

A London company was able to fill a technology post that had been vacant for five months after Remoteably targeted Birmingham-based talent. A Bristol-based scented wax brand, which has rapidly grown from kitchen table start-up to a 5000 square foot commercial space, found its first wholesales sales person 96 miles away using Remoteably’s methodology.

“Our mission is to help companies to unlock access to a nationwide talent pool by encouraging them to become more remote-friendly, whether that involves offering a few remote-working days a month, right up to fully-remote roles,” says Mistlin. “We believe that the sweet spot is to offer a combination of remote and office-based employment. A recent LinkedIn poll of 10,291 people found that 6,326 favoured an 80/20 remote/office-based split. With the right connectivity and flexibility, companies can start to think outside of their post code and recruit the very best candidates.”

Key points:

• Gartner predicts that 40% of organisations will have applied ‘Anywhere Operations’ by the end of 2023 to provide a blend of virtual and physical presence that optimises experiences for customers and enables employees everywhere.
• The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports that, “jobs based in workplaces in London and the South-East are much more likely to be possible to do from home compared with the rest of the UK”.
• ONS analysis has found that jobs with higher salaries are more likely to be able to be adapted to remote-working.
• Research from the Department of Culture Media & Sport revealed that 68% of cyber sector businesses had tried to recruit for a cyber role within the last three years and found that 35% of vacancies were hard to fill
• Lloyds bank calculated in September 2019 that the average commuter spends 492 days and £37,399 travelling to work over the course of his or her career
• The IoD surveyed 958 British Businesses in September 2020 and found that 74% wish to retain home-working post-pandemic, with more than four out of ten reporting that working from home was more effective than their previous arrangement.
• ONS figures reveal that 1.7 million people reported working mainly from home in 2019 (5% of the workforce). A further 8.7 million people (27%) said they worked from home at least once, and 2.9 million people (9%) used home as a base.  In July 2020, 27% of adults had worked exclusively at home in the previous week.