I don’t know about you, but I have a pretty rotten commute. 110 miles of M25 (round trip). I say rotten, but strangely it is one of the things that I missed when we went into lockdown earlier on in the year. It turns out those seemingly endless miles on the motorway serve as very useful decompression time. My first drive to and from work once lockdown was lifted was like driving home for Christmas, just without the traffic or endless repeats of “Fairytale of New York”.

But, I am one of the few driving to work now and, unlike 6 months ago, it’s not every day. It’s now and then, like most people who are doing the same. I do, naturally, have mixed feelings about this, as someone running a business that is dependent on people travelling to work in their car (or, more specifically, parking their car). But, I am one of many that are enjoying less traffic on the road, a marginally shorter commute and cleaner air.

Most excitingly though for us, the focus to remote working has meant that our hiring radius has just infinitely expanded.

As a leadership team, we recently reviewed the technology that we use to work remotely and we were more or less happy that we’ve got the tools to do the job. We plan on making a change to our choice of video conferencing tool (to better align with our clients and to enable closer collaboration as a team), but by and large, we’re well set up on the tech front.  Evidence of this is that, since lockdown, we’ve made at least one employee hire completely remotely of a colleague who, as of the time of writing, has never been into the office. I don’t think I’ve ever met him in the flesh, and the fact that I’m unsure of this is a testament to how seamless the whole process was, and how well integrated he is into the team. The technology works well enough that, what last year involved various human touchpoints, can now be done completely behind a screen.

From my perspective, that blows the door wide open on attracting new talent. Previously, we had two challenges in this respect.

Location

We are a global business with two offices in the UK. One in Hatfield, the other in Liverpool. Pre-March 2020, like many organisations, a 50 mile radius around the office was our candidate pool. Now, as a company that predominantly works remotely, that radius can be as big as you like it. And so we have recently hired another new start, this time someone who lives an hour and a half a way. Would they have joined us if they had to be in the office 5 days a week? Maybe, but probably not. Now the goal posts have been moved. Wider, much wider. As wide as you want them to be, in fact. Because if you’re talented, able and interested in joining a rapidly growing company, then we would be interested in chatting. I wouldn’t exclude someone for not even living in the UK.

Talent

Rachel Sharp of HR Magazine called out two years ago that the preferences of today’s young talent are changing:

“In the corporate world this means the balance of power is shifting. Once organisations were able to take their pick of top young talent leaving universities and clamouring to secure a coveted spot on a prestigious milkround graduate scheme. But businesses are now being forced to rethink their approaches to graduate hiring.” [Source]

We have experienced this first hand. Let’s be honest, PayByPhone is not (yet) one of the world’s most recognised brands. We don’t have offices like Google’s, and we work in Parking, which, judging by my own anecdotal experience, people do not consider to be one of the most exciting industries (I’m happy to correct them on that point, if they’ve not walked off!). Despite these factors, we continue to pull people from large, globally recognised blue chip organisations. Why? There’s a much longer answer to that (another post to follow) but my succinct answer would be: Most high-potentials care less about the brand they’re working for, and more about the experience and employability that the role will give them.

As a small business therefore, being able to gear up to a more hybrid method of working, we can be on the front foot in attracting this talent as it looks around for new opportunities.

At a time when the global economy is dramatically contracting, we are fortunate that we have a business that is still growing, generating revenue and is agile enough to adapt to the new world we find ourselves in. For me, this shift to a hybrid way of working, not 100% remote, but having a fully remote enabled workplace, opens up new opportunities as we seek to grow our business with some of the best talent out there. And I hope it does for you too. Because if you’re not reacting to this new opportunity that COVID has caused, your competitors certainly will be.