You have no doubt seen the changes that ‘work-from-home’ has made in your own practice.…
By John Borrowman, CPC
Borrowman Baker, LLC, BV Staffing + Consulting
Gallatin, TN
There was a time, and not that long ago, when remote working was one perk in a basket of perks. But things can change when you don’t have a choice. A year in, patterns are developing in remote working. Here is what we see.
There is a fundamental shift in practice leader willingness to hire remote from day one. Permanent remote status has always been a reward to proven team members who needed to relocate for family. Day one remote was rare. No longer.
The readiness to hire remote does grant an edge. You have access to a larger slice of the universe of those ready to move at any given time. You still must reach them with your story, however.
The threshold of minimum experience that employers require for a remote role also serves as a marker for the maturity and accountability needed in a remote situation. So far, that threshold is settling around the four to the five-year mark.
New hires may not recognize the risk of joining a practice in a remote role. As a leader yourself, you know that the way to the top in both leadership and comp is to evolve from a doer to a doer-seller. The doer that you hire in a remote role might be someone who could easily make that leap. Without the close-in coaching and mentoring, though, the odds are not high for it to happen. The new hire eventually hits a comp ceiling. Even so, there is a universe of people for whom that is an acceptable trade-off.
A different twist showing up in the remote-hire world adds someone already in a doer-seller role who can leverage newly available staff to bring more work to the pipeline and establish a broader footprint. It will take at least a year or two of performance for practices to assess the return on this investment.
It seems paradoxical that dealing with change triggers more change. When it comes to staffing your practice, those changes have only begun.
John Borrowman
