DE Talk | The Hidden Benefits of Remote Work

Season 4 • Episode 2

Recruit Rooster is back with another DE Talk takeover! While remote work has historically had a bad reputation, the last few years have changed both employer and employee views, making it a shining light in the midst of the pandemic. In this episode, Sales Manager Ruth Toombs and Senior Sales Engineer Steven Apostolidis sit down to chat about the hidden benefits of remote work that are changing workers’ lives for the better, while also leading to positive results for employers. They also share where the U.S. sits currently in terms of remote job availability, reasons why some employers are resistant to remote work, and things to consider when determining if remote work is right for your workforce.

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About DE Talk

For DirectEmployers, it’s all about valuable connections and meaningful conversations. This monthly podcast features honest and open dialogue between powerhouse industry experts on a variety of HR topics ranging from OFCCP compliance advice to emerging recruitment marketing trends, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and insightful solutions that help infuse new life into your HR strategies.

Hosted by Candee Chambers, Executive Director of DirectEmployers Association.

Episode Guests

Episode Transcript

Candee Chambers:
Get ready, the DE Talk podcast starts now. Insightful conversations and dialogue helping you put the human factor back in HR.

Ruth Toombs:
So today we have another Recruit Rooster takeover, where our flock will be sharing the hidden benefits of remote work. Where the nation sits currently. Why employees want to work remotely? Why some companies are resisting, and considerations to take when looking to level up and change your workforce to follow the times.

Hi, this is Ruth Toombs, and I, this is my second podcast, which is really exciting where we’re doing a takeover. I am as a refresher, a sales manager here at Recruit Rooster, and here with me, I have Steven Apostolidis.

Steven Apostolidis:
Thanks, Ruth. I’m Steven Apostolidis, I’m a Senior Sales Engineer on the Recruit Rooster team, and this is my first time getting to join the podcast so we’ll see where this goes.

Ruth Toombs:
So to be perfectly honest I drafted him. One of our fellow roosters actually welcomed a new addition to their family, so last minute, Steven was willing to just take the spot. So kudos to you for that.

All right, so I like to get warmed up before we even dig into the meat of this, which is of course the hidden benefits of remote work and a little bit more about remote work in general.

So rapid-fire question time, get ready with a twist. We’re both playing, so just say the first thing that comes to mind. So when are you most productive?

Steven Apostolidis:
It’s evenings for sure.

Ruth Toombs:
Evenings?

Steven Apostolidis:
Absolutely. Although it’s worse, I’m a huge procrastinator so I need a deadline.

Ruth Toombs:
Okay, okay.

Steven Apostolidis:
So Seth always used to joke from 4:30 to five, when most people are worthless at work, I know that car ride’s coming so I would just do every single email in that last 30 minutes. Just rapid-fire.

Ruth Toombs:
That is impressive, and not something I could even remotely think of doing. So I’m definitely a morning person.

I used to not get up very early, periods of time. However, recently I’m getting up really early in the morning, but I’m absolutely most productive I would say between eight and noon. I knock everything out in that four hours, for the most part.

Steven Apostolidis:
There you go. Yeah, I’m not a Jocko Willink fan. I can’t do the morning, 4:30 AM, look at me getting after it picture every day. That’s usually when my eyes are still blurry and I can’t even think about focusing on something.

Ruth Toombs:
So all right, so question two. Summer or winter? I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this, but go ahead and tell everyone else. It’s going to make you sad.

Steven Apostolidis:
Do you tend to go a little bit more winter? I know you’re waiting for fall. I think it’s a happy medium. It’s a cheap question these days, what is this, like the 1600s?

If I want summer I’m four hours away on an airplane, so it doesn’t even matter anymore. It could be in the middle of the winter and you just go to Cancun. So that’s a trick question.

Ruth Toombs:
Okay, that’s true. That’s very true.

For me, summer. Gosh, I just hate the thought of being crammed up. And especially we live in the Midwest, we’re in Indiana. So we do have some dicey winter days, so definitely summer. I’m going to miss the pool, even the super-hot days.

Now, I probably again know this answer, but what was your first job?

Steven Apostolidis:
First real job that I’d actually qualify, let’s go with I was a waiter at a pancake house.

Ruth Toombs:
I was thinking, I was thinking, he definitely worked in food service at some point.

Steven Apostolidis:
Did that and construction around the same time. But we had an interesting pancake house in Fishers that was old and tucked out of the way, and we used to get just like these strangest people in there. So Reggie Miller from the Pacers used to sneak into his own section and basically got the same thing every time, you knew he was there. He’d always sit in the back corner of the section that I had, and always tipped well.

Ruth Toombs:
I love it, that’s cool. I did think, I thought at some point we never discussed that, but I figured. We worked together, what? Eight years. So my first job was very interesting. So I was home educated so I quote graduated very early. So I actually worked at a horticultural orchard essentially. So it did horticultural growings, plants, and then also this huge apple orchard.

So I know just about everything there is to know about apples, and there’s nothing better than just standing up in a tree all day listening to music, picking apples. It was amazing.

Steven Apostolidis:
So all the weird plant facts suddenly make more sense. I was wondering why you had such a green thumb.

Ruth Toombs:
And I think we can move on from these. These are great questions, we can always do some more at the end if we feel like it.

But we’ve really been looking at over the past well, three years now, including us, we were a company that worked as a hybrid, at least one to two days at home, and then suddenly everybody’s at home.

So this has raised a lot of questions and some anxiety with employers and even employees. And as far as looking at the current remote space, it used to have such a terrible reputation. Don’t you agree?

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, absolutely. And there’s entire industries that have been born from it, all the different software to make sure that you can actually track whether or not somebody’s mouse is moving. Everybody was always suspicious and dreading the idea that they didn’t have somebody to hold them accountable.

But it’s really proven, especially even through the anecdotes we can give about Recruit Rooster DirectEmployers, it doesn’t really seem to actually come to fruition the way people thought it would. So it’s been very productive on our end. I know we’ve had some of the best years these last two years.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely, and you mentioned something that was the biggest thing, it’s a lack of trust with your employees. And I think that puts a lot of pressure on the interview process. Instead of just crossing your fingers and sending employees home and thinking, well, are they going to work or not? Have a much better interview process and onboarding process so you can know, well, this is the person that I’ve hired versus I don’t know who I’ve hired.

Steven Apostolidis:
Most definitely, and that’s what I’ve always thought too, is if you’re going to hire somebody in, you either trust them or you don’t. If you think they had the work ethic that was actually worthy of you turning them into a full-time employee, at that point you should show them that same respect and say, “Hey, I thought you were qualified. I still think you’re qualified. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt to do your job.”

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely, and that’s a way to definitely allow your employees to thrive. If you feel trusted, you feel valued. If you don’t trust your employees, that employee’s not going to feel valued. So that’s just opinion only, so we can look at some data here.

Remote work, according to projections in Forbes, 25% of all professional jobs in North America will be remote by the end of 2022. And that does not take into account, of course, global. And remote opportunities will continue to increase through 2023. That’s an incredible stat, so a quarter of the workforce is going to be working from home. So sounds like employers probably got to get on board.

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, and especially when they start seeing some of these savings. I know there’s a lot of companies, even in our area, we’re in the office today, but even the surrounding office park, a lot of them are still sitting empty. And that’s a lot of hemorrhaged lease money every single month going into some of these buildings.

Ruth Toombs:
100%, and that takes us to that. There was a survey done and it was about a thousand full-time employees, and 505 of whom who were remote employees throughout the US about their work habits and their productivity.

So the results indicate that remote workers are actually more productive than their office based counterparts. So the study found the following. So I’ll let you hit number one.

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, absolutely. So the first study point that we’ve got here, remote employees actually wind up working an additional 1.4 days per month more than their in-office counterparts. And that’s adding up to almost 17 free days essentially that you’re getting out of that employee that you wouldn’t have been had they been in the office.

Ruth Toombs:
Would you say too, so I just look at it, again, I can personalize this because we work remote. I would say that if I’m sitting there at my desk or whatever, and an email comes in at five, typically if I’m done with the day I’ll log off at five. But obviously if there’s things that need to be taken care of I’ll stay longer.

But if I was in an office, I go, “Oh my gosh, I got to get the kids. I got to get the dog. I’ve got to fix dinner.” There I can actually finish that task because I’m right there. It makes me much more less stressed and much more capable to get things done that I need to get done.

Steven Apostolidis:
No, absolutely. As somebody who just professed being a little bit more productive later in the day, it’s actually helped me out a lot because at the end of the day, I might have wrapped up a few tasks, had something on my mind and said, “Well, I’m looking at an hour drive home in traffic.”

Ruth Toombs:
Yes.

Steven Apostolidis:
Or I used to have that problem. Now, if there’s still something on my plate and I don’t want to wait until the next morning, I don’t have that hour drive. I just go ahead and take care of it that evening, and use that time I would’ve been on the road anyway.

So I actually tend to fall into that camp as well, if it’s the end of the day and I usually would’ve clocked out, I actually still take care of that.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely, and I can remember when we were in the office almost full-time, there would be times where you wouldn’t even make it into the office due to traffic because you live so far away. I wouldn’t say even that far, it was just traffic’s very thick from where you live.

Distance-wise, it’s a little bit, but you would be an hour late sometimes. And it would happen frequently because of accidents and traffic.

Steven Apostolidis:
Absolutely, there’s still so much construction, especially out in Fishers where I’m at, they’re continuing to expand. And even on the way in today, they’re doing both construction on the interstate to get to the highway and the highway.

So for the first I’d say third of my trip today, I was doing about 18 to 19 miles an hour.

Ruth Toombs:
And I’m a road rager, I don’t know if I can handle it. Maybe that’s why I’m more calm now. I’m at home and I’m not yelling at people in traffic.

So this piece, this stat is a little bit front-loaded. It sounds negative, so hear me out. Remote employees take longer breaks on average than office employees. So hear this. So 22 minutes versus 18 minutes respectively, but they work an additional 10 minutes every day. So it balances out.

So it used to, I would just feel stiff at my desk in the office. I’m under florescent lights. It’s a social atmosphere too, people will come and chit chat and I’ll chit chat with them. I would have to escape and just walk around or go for a walk.

Well, now I’m at home. I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to throw the laundry in.” And it takes me 30 seconds, and I like, “Oh, I’ll get back to work.”

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, I would say that’s the big piece that most people don’t actually think about is it might say that you’re taking longer breaks, but you have to think about all of the quote unquote non breaks that happen throughout the day when you’re in the office. Because you’ll be walking by somebody’s office, the next thing you know, I’ve wasted 40 minutes with Tom Eckhart talking about the ducks outside of his window.

Ruth Toombs:
Guilty as charged.

Steven Apostolidis:
Which doesn’t happen at home. I’m not just going to randomly sit there and chat up a neighbor.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely.

So office workers are unproductive for an average of 37 minutes a day, not including lunch breaks, whereas remote employees are unproductive for only 27 minutes. So that compliments what we said earlier.

Steven Apostolidis:
I was going to say, there you go. That’s your 40 minutes talking to ducks with Tom Eckhart.

Ruth Toombs:
That’s completely correct. So yeah, I’ll let you take the last one there.

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, we did also see that 15% of remote workers also said that they tend to get distracted by their boss of all people actually while they’re at work, which is less than 22% office-based employees reported the same thing.

Ruth Toombs:
I got you, yeah. I would say for the opposite. For my boss, I’m definitely her distraction, not the other way around. But yes, I can see how it could be that way.

Steven Apostolidis:
I say, luckily our team’s still pretty tight knit and we don’t really have an overbearing boss in Heather, so she’s not one that hounds you down and micromanages you throughout the day.

Ruth Toombs:
I definitely least bit.

Steven Apostolidis:
So we can’t say we fall into that 15%.

Ruth Toombs:
Not at all. So we’ve covered the current remote space. So now learning more, it seems like it would be obvious why we want to work remote. But I was one of those people early on that was really uncomfortable with not being around a very close-knit work community. So let’s dig into there.

Kevin O’Leary had a LinkedIn post that I thought was really interesting, and there was 10 different reasons why people want to work remote. So I’m going to take the first five and then I’ll hand those off to you, Steven.

So one was, some of these are a little, not something you might think of, but one was do not want to increase their carbon footprint by having to commute. Two, they don’t want to work in high rises where the air is poison. I know it sounds a little hokey, but I get it as far as just taking it down a notch being in your home in a safe, familiar environment, right?

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, even if you’ve seen some of those areas continue to change and between all the construction downtown, it can be rough. I mean, there’s a lot of people that have asthma these days. There’s always dust in the air. There is definitely something to consider on that.

Ruth Toombs:
No, that’s very true. I was just thinking about going out for something over the weekend and there’s an area where it’s under construction. I feel like forever and you have to roll your windows up. It’s a toxic smell. It’s dust that would literally coat. So I would imagine you have somebody who’s asthma doing the constant

Steven Apostolidis:
Commute. Can you about that? Driving into Chicago? I mean, there’s not a time that you’re not getting coded in dust as you go by every sidewalk there.

Ruth Toombs:
So true. So number three have already proven that they can be productive remotely. And like we had early on said the bad reputation with no management eyes and distractions. We are proving as a society and from a global perspective that you can be very productive remotely. This is a big one. And Steven has a young daughter rather raise a family in affordable communities, hundreds of miles away from headquarter. You’re not hundreds of miles, but you have the opportunity,

Steven Apostolidis:
I wouldn’t say hundred miles for sure. But yeah, it is nice. You get a little bit more space for your dollar. You obviously want to have room for your kids to be able to play you’re out by a lot more parks. It just definitely makes it a little bit more convenient than being in the iron jungle. As I always used to say, and just having concrete everywhere.

Ruth Toombs:
So true. Five, this is one I hadn’t really thought about, but we work here at recruit rooster globally with global organizations. And so lots of different time zones that we’re working with and many team members are already working at other countries. So it’s difficult if you’re in an office and you have somebody who is located overseas and you to really have all of the equipment maybe, or the connectivity, whatever it is, or maybe you would miss them if you were commuting home, but you could be stuck in the office till seven or eight.

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve actually seen this one firsthand. So one of my best friends, wife is actually from Thailand and her mother just ended up having surgery and they wanted to make sure that she’s being well taken care of. So her employer actually permitted her to go work remote in Thailand for the next three months. And they shifted her hours, which now actually gives them more coverage. So she gets the benefit of being able to help her mom. They get the benefit of extra hours in the evening to help cover the hours that nobody would’ve actually been there to begin with.

Ruth Toombs:
That’s incredible. And that’s insightful from the employer’s perspective, looking at it and their benefiting from it. All right. So I’ll let you take the next five.

Steven Apostolidis:
Absolutely. So number five, they found that many team members were already, oh, that was you can’t follow along. Number six, actually. So not interested in paying for office wardrobe.

Ruth Toombs:
I can get behind this. Okay.

Steven Apostolidis:
That one I know I’ve definitely got a couple suits sitting around. I’m a weird one that has a child. I always, he’s such

Ruth Toombs:
A snappy dresser, everybody.

Steven Apostolidis:
So that one, I can’t totally agree with suit in a mustache. That’s what happens when you’ve got a Greek dad and uncles.

Ruth Toombs:
I love it.

Steven Apostolidis:
So number seven, they’ve seen a lot of large cities. We talked about those big problems, but New York, Chicago, San Francisco listed as war zones. I don’t know that I’d call them little intense

Ruth Toombs:
There. Little such language there. Kevin, O’Leary

Steven Apostolidis:
A little unsafe at times for sure. Yeah.

Ruth Toombs:
And I can definitely understand why people would have trepidation because of that. Especially if you’re in a rural area and you’re not used to that. And you’re trying to move to the big city for the good corporate job. Well now you don’t have to,

Steven Apostolidis:
Most definitely. I’d like to say number eight applies to us, but Indiana’s a little bit behind on this one. So they won’t ride subways, trains or buses. That’s true where they’ll get the latest variant of COVID. So not a lot of public transit here in there.

Ruth Toombs:
Speak of what is the bus line that we have? What do we have the

Steven Apostolidis:
Red line? They do have the red line. So they’re trying to expand that a little bit.

Ruth Toombs:
Yeah, I agree. But I think health in general from the entire overarching perspective is important to people. Now, I think COVID really put that into perspective. If you don’t have your health, you really don’t have much. So why not take extra precautions to keep you and your family safe?

Steven Apostolidis:
Absolutely. And yet another way you could be getting free days out of employees, because you’re not having to worry about them getting ill and missing work.

Ruth Toombs:
How often now, even working remote that I’ve had a little sniffle and I’m like, well, I don’t need to take a sick day, but I would need to take a sick day if I was around a bunch of my coworkers.

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, absolutely. There’s days that I would’ve said I need to stay conscious of it and not get others sick. I mean, we’ve all got families. You don’t want to risk taking somebody out if they’ve got children to take care of where I can still work at home.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely.

Steven Apostolidis:
So number nine, not interested in paying the cost of commuting or wasting time. That one I’m definitely behind as much as I love my two hours with podcast a day, I’d rather be at home than stuck in traffic.

Ruth Toombs:
And just think about those people who commute really long distances. And like you said, if you’re just sitting there idling your car half for half an hour, just trying to get there. I mean it’s wear and tear in your vehicle anyway.

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah. Not to mention a lot of us had the added benefit of not actually having to really feel the full brunt of those increased gas prices this last year because you weren’t wasting two hours a day of it.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely.

Steven Apostolidis:
So number 10 meals too expensive at HQ, they would rather prepare better cheaper food at home. I know you and I were literally just talking about this, but I mean I’ve managed to both save money and shed over 20 pounds just by cooking meals instead of eating fast food while we’ve been remote.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely. When my daughter was younger, I was very scheduled regimen and cook and cooked a lot. And once she became an adult and moved out and then I was just like, well, I’m going to eat this baloney sandwich over the sink before bed. It’s kind of sad. So if anything, during the pandemic, during quarantine, I sat there and I relearn to cook. I grow my own herbs and I buy from the local butcher in the farmer’s market. It’s made a difference in energy and weight and everything.

So we’re going to move along here because I have tendency to long winded. So sorry about that, Steven. So let’s move on to why are companies resisting? So there’s a number of areas. A few I hadn’t really thought about. So I’ll take one and two and then I’ll let you take three, four and five. So one is, we’ve kind of discussed this already, that fear of lack of productivity in their employees. It’s about FaceTime. So when your manager sees you, he or she feels that you’re being productive, that’s kind of the mindset and that segues into two, right? I’m a manager. I don’t want to behave this way, but I can see why, but middle and senior managers, jobs feel threatened. Part of your job is making sure this person took their PTO correctly and making sure that they’re on the clock. So I can imagine that maybe some individuals in those positions might feel threatened by that.

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah. I can definitely see where this trepidation would be there. You’d have to imagine. It’d be finding a shepherd and telling them their flock’s going to go off without them. Their whole job is managing that flock. So as a manager, there’s a great way of looking at it. You don’t have them in front of you, you feel as if you’re not actually fulfilling your part of that duty, even though they’re still being productive.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely. Correct.

Steven Apostolidis:
Cool. So jumping into number three companies have invested in expensive office. You just said that. So we’ve definitely seen that here. I know we had the unfortunate reality of building a brand new campus right before we were all sent home for the pandemic.

Ruth Toombs:
I mean literally eight, 10 months, 10 months maybe.

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, absolutely. And even again, looking at downtown Indianapolis, Salesforce had just recently purchased eight floors of the tallest building in Indianapolis and sent everybody home after decking out that building and putting signage on it

Ruth Toombs:
And just, we have a pretty awesome office. We had kombucha and nitric cul brew on tap and don’t get me wrong. The space does not go wasted. There are people who pop in and out and we have get togethers and stuff here, but I can see why a lot of organizations, they have tons more space. That’s not even being utilized at all.

Steven Apostolidis:
Absolutely. Number four is one I know a lot of companies are trying to tackle heart. So maintaining and creating that strong sense of culture and team spirit. So we were even just out at a baseball game yesterday, know we still try to stay engaged virtually, have happy hours. I’ve heard of companies even doing retreats now where yes, you’ll do a one week, bring everybody into a hotel, make sure that engagement’s still there. Get those bonds stronger than ever. Then let everybody go back in remote. And once you start feeling the diminishing returns, bring them all back in and have another retreat again. So there’s definitely a lot of people testing the waters on how to keep that strong.

Ruth Toombs:
I think that’s a really smart thing. And for every organization to consider on some level, as you mentioned, we are very connected. We are a small but mighty team. What is it? The roosters, what 19 is there 19? Yeah. Something like that. I think it’s around 19.

Steven Apostolidis:
It’s right about there at this point. Yeah.

Ruth Toombs:
Yeah. So we’re really good about staying in contact with each other. Even one on one zoom meetings, we’re all very close. Not every company has that opportunity. It doesn’t mean you can’t start creating little pockets of culture. You don’t have to be in person all the time to make sure that you’re staying connected to your team and to your leadership. I’ve seen a couple of recent advertisements where it’s actually training for managers. How do I create a positive remote work culture? So I would always be interested to, into that. I think anybody would want to be interested to learn how do I better facilitate better conversations and better interactions when we’re remote? So I think it’s just putting in the work.

Steven Apostolidis:
Absolutely. And it is a little bit of a different skillset as well. I mean, there’s a lot of people that can be extremely personable when they got eye contact with you, but it is a bit of an unnatural feeling. We’re a little bit more accustomed to it since we’ve had a lot of telesales background, but yeah, I can understand it. That does make things a little bit more awkward and jarring sometimes because you don’t have that human connection.

Ruth Toombs:
I agree for sure.

Steven Apostolidis:
Then number five again, after having just built a brand new city of the art office, this one won’t really apply to us, but there’s a lot of companies out there that haven’t actually invested in teleconferencing or telework tech to actually support the remote workers. So we’re actually under the benefit of every employee having their own laptop, being able to actually send them home with what they need software wise and hardware wise. So we were ahead of the curve on that one.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely. So we’ve kind of seen a little bit like, where companies are resisting and I’m curious what everybody else, if they agree with that. So why should companies obviously that have the right business model and capabilities consider remote? And before we kind of jump into these, I want to preface this with at recruit rooster, we have consultative conversations with employers and potential employers, really nitty gritty from what they’re experiencing, not just about their hiring acquisition or their talent acquisition process, but things that they’re really struggling with and things that quite possibly keep them up at night. And one is, Hey, I can’t retain the workforce that I have. And I can’t actually open up that pipeline because upper level leadership is stuck in their ways by saying we were not going to allow remote. We’re going to bring everybody back in. So I really want to be able to share why companies should consider remote if you’re capable of doing that because companies are losing talent. They’re just like you said, hemorrhaging talent because of this.

Steven Apostolidis:
Absolutely. And that’s going to be one that either you’re ahead of the curve and you’re not going to resist the change or you’re going to really hate yourself for it down the road. And you’re going to be playing catch up because like it or not remote, I believe is here to stay at this point. And yes, a lot of companies are proving that

Ruth Toombs:
And it is a complaint that I hear consist least once a week where confidently, well, I wish we offered remote. We could offer remote. All right. So there’s reasons why we should so adopting a remote working policy can save companies money by removing the need for expensive office space or satellite offices. We kind of touched on that as far as what you’re going to lose out on, but this is where you’re going to gain. You’re not going to be spending all that money on empty space.

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, no, I’ve actually got a friend that runs two sales teams, one here in Indianapolis and one in Louisville, Kentucky for Canon. And he actually eliminated the Kentucky office because every time he goes in, he actually stays at the Marriott and he was like, well, all of my sales reps are in the field anyway. I want them out there selling. Yeah. When I come, he is just using the conference room at the anyway, the amount of money he just saved on not having that second satellite office is well worth the bonuses.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely. No, I can imagine that makes a lot of sense. I’ll let you take the second one then.

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah. So allowing workers, the freedom to actually create their own schedules and work from wherever we’ve talked about that a little bit, right as that Thailand example, maybe sometimes you’re going to go out on vacation and I’ve actually even thought about this too. Say you go back a time zone and get a lot done in the morning. Even if you jump forward time zone, you can actually do your work and still have your vacation at the same time, just by playing around with what time zone you’re actually in that way, you can cover your hours and still have a vacation at the same time.

Ruth Toombs:
I love it. So my best friend lives in Reno and they’re of course, three hours behind us here in the Midwest. And it’s awesome. I’m going to knock out all my work before she even gets out of bed. A good portion of it. So I love this last point here. And I think this was in Forbes as well. Some studies suggest that workers would even take up to a 10% pay cut that.

Steven Apostolidis:
That one I’m always skeptical of though

Ruth Toombs:
Are you?

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah, I don’t know that I would be willing…

Ruth Toombs:
 I would be willing to…

Steven Apostolidis:
I think most people would be willing to take 10% less pay upfront, but I don’t see them giving it back up.

Ruth Toombs
Okay, you can’t take my 10% since you already gave it to me. Okay. That’s fair. That’s fair. That’s definitely fair. Yeah. So do you have anything that you would add to this at all? I mean, why should companies consider remote?

Steven Apostolidis:
Yeah. At this point, I mean, we’ve talked about the labor market shortage. There’s a lot of talent in different places, but you also have to remember while internet infrastructure is blossoming. At this point, you had a lot of countries where maybe remote work wouldn’t have been a possibility and that would’ve been a labor market. You wouldn’t even consider because the speeds weren’t there. That’s true. Now that broadband and fiber, and you’ve got things like satellite networks going up through Elon Musk’s latest project, you can actually get employees all over the world that you might not have actually been able to tap into. And now not only are you getting a new employee, they’re getting opportunities, they didn’t have either as well.

Ruth Toombs:
Agreed. Well, this has been a pleasure having this conversation this last minute step in with Steven. Apostol always great. So in closing and thank you all for joining us, we’ve covered so much ground today and we’ve found one theme throughout this remote work really appears to work. So with anything in life, there are pros and cons, but if you look at the stats of employee happiness related to productivity and work quality, the benefits far outweigh the cons in this scenario. And if you’re a forward looking employer, you’re going, you’re doing everything you can to set yourself apart in this tough hiring market. And this might be a shameless plug, but we can help you stand out even further by making improvements to your digital footprint, namely your career website. So we’re always open to sharing ideas and brainstorming what could be so feel free to reach out to myself or to Stephen. And you can start the conversation at RecruitRooster.com.

Candee Chambers:
Thank you for tuning in for another episode of the DE Talk Podcast. Stay connected with DirectEmployers on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and subscribe to our emails by visiting DirectEmployers.org/subscribe to receive notifications of new episodes, webinars, events, and more.