Recruitment and teleworking: the challenges for HR in 2024

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

It's THE HR and recruitment issue of the moment. This phenomenon has been called a revolution. If you type "teleworking 2020" into Google, the first result is an article entitled 2020, the year1 of the teleworking 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 video interviews...

But is this really a revolution? In reality, teleworking was already on the increase in French companies. Especially since the reform of the Labour Code in 2017, whose ordinances provided for greater flexibility in the use of teleworking in companies. The health crisis simply accelerated the phenomenon, as employees were no longer able to work from their business premises.

In 2021, teleworking is therefore more a necessary adaptation than a simple revolution in work organisation. It is an adaptation to the economic and social context, an adaptation to new professional practices (such as the emergence of digital tools), but also an adaptation to the new aspirations of candidates, eager for flexibility and wanting to better reconcile their professional and personal lives.

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Teleworking and recruitment: a necessary adaptation to candidates' aspirations

Teleworking as it was introduced in 2020 (i.e. in the emergency of the crisis) has largely affected the balance of relations 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 teleworking 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 Paris Region residents looking for work in September 2020 were looking outside the Paris Region, according to a study by Hellowork.

The majority of people living in the Paris Region want to leave the region, but less than half are prepared to relocate their jobs.

What does this have to do with teleworking?
These figures show the impact of teleworking on the changing needs and expectations of the French workforce. It has given job applicants a glimpse of new ways of organising their work. 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 want to give up a job they find meaningful. To reconcile the two, teleworking seems an obvious solution.

For example, teleworking allows employees to follow their spouse if they move house while keeping their job.

A more flexible hybrid organisational model

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

So the majority of employees and candidates are not looking for a full teleworking job, but simply want more flexibility in the way they organise their work.

A personalised and adaptable candidate pathway

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

The ultra-agile way in which start-ups operate and the arrival on the job market of new generations in search of meaning in their jobs have also largely led to a change in mentality. It is precisely these candidates from 'generations Y and Z' who are now putting their personal aspirations to the fore, right from stage 1 of the recruitment process!

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

This knowledge enables candidates to be more selective! In sectors where there is a shortage of candidates, such as the IT sector where competition is fierce, talented people will prefer to turn to companies that offer them the possibility of teleworking.
To avoid this pitfall, it is essential to take care with the quality of the candidate experience. It's one of the pillars of your company's employer brand: the image of the company, the quality of applications and the motivation of the talent that applies depend on the transparency of the candidate process!

Not convinced? Bear in mind that more than 30% of candidates terminate an application before the end of the recruitment process if it is deemed to be 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 an attractive factor in HR?

What does this mean for HR professionals? How do you recruit from home without meeting the candidates? What organisation should be put in place to maintain the same quality of recruitment, integration and collaboration with a teleworking employee?

1. Clearly define the teleworking recruitment framework

Recruiting a teleworking candidate without a face-to-face interview, and without any discussion 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 teleworking job advert for remote recruitment, you need to define the teleworking framework clearly. If this framework has not already been defined by a collective agreement or an internal company charter, you can formalise it individually with your potential future recruit.

Next, establish how the work will be organised. Each company must adapt teleworking to its needs and constraints. It can take various forms:

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

2. Establish the typical profile of a teleworking employee

How do you recruit remotely? Some HR professionals feel that a distance recruitment interview is not as easy as a face-to-face interview to get to grips with a candidate's personality and motivations.

The first thing to do to allay these fears is to define your candidate persona, i.e. the typical profile of the ideal candidate. In the context of teleworking and online recruitment, certain qualities and skills need to be prioritised. Although digital tools now make it easier for employees to communicate and share information with each other, teleworking employees are the sole masters of their own organisation and working time management.

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

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

3. Create a teleworking candidate path

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

Here again there is the fear of a "half-hearted" video job interview, with no way of identifying the candidate's strengths and limitations, particularly their interpersonal and technical skills. However, digital tools such as Beetween recruitment software now offer many ways of 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 working with a teleworking employee.
  
  
• The deferred video interview: deferred video is an interesting tool for shortlisting candidates, particularly for gaining a better understanding of the personality and motivations of talented individuals. The way it works is simple: you send a list of questions to the candidate, who has to 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 in line with 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.). If it is coupled with ATS software such as Beetween, the answers to the questions are integrated directly into the candidate 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 the candidate's "typical profile" in order to understand how they interact with their colleagues, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what their career aspirations are, and so on.

4. Remote onboarding of your new recruit

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Remote onboarding of a new employee is certainly the most crucial stage in teleworking recruitment. Their motivation depends on the quality of their induction. To avoid "losing" your new recruit, you need to devote time to them, and put in place personalised induction measures.

• Assigning mentors: a mentor is a way of centralising information. New arrivals always have questions during the first few days. This means they have a dedicated contact to turn to.
  
  
• Integration into processes: do you use an internal communication tool like Slack or Google Hangouts? Do you organise weekly department meetings? Involve new arrivals in 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 teleworking 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 they integrate quickly and become operational more easily. You could, for example, organise informal meetings with each of their colleagues to explain their tasks and the various cross-functional tasks they will have to carry out, etc.

Is teleworking a revolution? No, it's an evolution in work organisation.

Although the health crisis was a catalyst, the introduction of more flexible working arrangements was already being studied in many companies. Today, teleworking is emerging as a response tailored to the needs of companies and the aspirations of employees.

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

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

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