Globally, staff in fast-growing regions, like the Philippines and South America are earning more by working from home for global companies than they could ever earn on-shore.
The rules for work have changed for good. At the dawn of the post-pandemic era, office workers woke up, stretched their limbs and shrugged off the remnants of painful memories.
Winston Ong, the Chief Executive Officer of leading global outsourcing company BruntWork, recalls about his usual work week prior to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
“Traffic jams, long commutes on crowded buses and trains, unhealthy and expensive lunches in the city Central Business District. For someone who requires focus to be productive, being accosted by co-workers in an open plan office was a particularly painful experience.”
BruntWork’s chief is a self-confessed home worker
With decades of experience in digital marketing, his tasks consisted of work that he could always accomplish from any location with an Internet connection and a phone.
All the companies Ong worked for had a portion of workers located overseas as employers realized the considerable talent pools available in countries like the Philippines, where wages are significantly less than first world countries like the USA or Canada.
Over one hundred million employees are working from home and many will never go back.
Employers are scrambling to figure out what that means for their balance sheets, office leases, fit-outs and corporate culture. And many savvy business owners are seeing the opportunity to cut costs by relocating back-office roles to cheaper international jurisdictions.
BruntWork revolutionizing work since the pandemic
Since the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Ong saw a future where companies did not offer workers an office to go to, which begged the question “what comes next” for businesses that sell products and services online in an increasingly globalized world.
“The world is changing. We are at a turning point where the technology, employers, customers and staff are more than ready to redefine the interaction between life and employment.”
“We had been planning extended trips living overseas, and I realized the best way to help people live their perfect life was to lead a company revolutionizing remote work.”
At the dawn of this new era of working from home, managers and entrepreneurs are waking up to an utterly amazing realization. Jobs that were reserved for office workers can be done better from home and there is no longer any requirement to recruit staff locally.
Indeed organisations can recruit staff nationally or if need be, internationally so as to find the best candidates for a particular role, no matter the location and in this process, companies are able to dramatically increase productivity and most importantly, profitability.
Ong suggests that the average company can cut 70% out of their labor bill by moving to remote first, and hiring from international labor pools such as the Philippines.
The chance that many workers are willing to commute regularly in the future is zero.
The process is too inefficient. And while workers and employers are somewhat split on where they stand on the question of remote toil, the COVID-19 pandemic has permanently shaken up the working world and thus no society is going back to the pre-COVID normal.
To support droves of workers sticking to distance-labor instead of returning to offices, BruntWork recorded revenue growth in excess of 700% during the pandemic and provides a solution to quickly get remote workers embedded in any company as quickly as possible.
“I knew that we were onto a winning strategy when our business model morphed from small and medium enterprises looking for one or two virtual assistants to listed companies looking to outsource entire sections of their operations. The growth has been simply explosive.”
What’s ahead for BruntWork?
Per its Chief Executive Officer, the company wants to grow its staff by five-fold this year.
And unsurprisingly, BruntWork furthermore, intends to hew to its remote roots, meaning that the company will not be looking for workers based in a single geographic region.
The staff it intends to hire for companies will be in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. They will build more enterprise-friendly features, allowing it to target big customers.
