Progressive corporates, tech companies and start-ups that already offer remote and flexible working options as ‘the norm’ will see far less disruption to their businesses as Coronavirus continues to spread.

Even organisations with more traditional operating models are realising the importance of being able to provide remote working options to their employees and are making use of video conferencing for internal and external meetings. This may well lead to faster adoption of remote working more broadly going forward.

Video conference provider Zoom has reported better-than-expected quarterly results as well as a surge in user numbers due to the Coronavirus outbreak, making it one of the few listed companies to see a boost from the ongoing crisis.

Who’s embracing remote working?

Twitter’s Jack Dorsey has announced that his company is embracing remote working. His recent post said, "While this is a big change for us, we have already been moving towards a more distributed workforce that's increasingly remote. We're a global service and we're committed to enabling anyone, anywhere to work at Twitter."

Google has recommended that its 100,000 plus employees in North America work remotely and have created a fund to enable all its contract and temporary workers globally to take paid sick leave if they have potential symptoms or are in quarantine which is great to see.

How are we supporting our customers?

We consider ourselves well equipped at Stanton House, in that we are fully set up for remote working and are able to continue servicing our clients and candidates should there be cases of self-isolation. 

We already conduct our internal and external meetings through a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines workplace chat, video meetings, file storage, and application integration.

We use this platform to connect with our colleagues across the globe, meet and interview new candidates and feedback to clients. Many of the employers I speak to are also adopting these online communication methods for their own interviews, which I’d encourage in order to keep hiring and growth plans on track. 

In this climate it’s really important that employers keep communication channels open and are flexible and open minded when it comes to engaging with candidates. We are already helping our clients with this and are able to facilitate video interviewing. We are finding that it has a number of benefits including:

• Enhancing the candidate experience as it engages them quickly
• Reducing the time to hire and expanding the talent pool at interview stage
• Positioning the employer as one that embraces technology 

I believe that these challenging times present an opportunity for employers to build networks and meet fantastic people (virtually), solidify plans for the year ahead and ensure they are ready to move quickly once any freezes or immobility gets lifted. 

Advice to contractors

I truly sympathise that this is a particularly challenging time, especially with the added complexity of IR35. My advice would be to continue to engage with your network, maintain a positive mindset, ensure you have the correct technology setup and partner with recruiters that are able to facilitate that for you.