September 2, 2020 – San Francisco, CA – It’s clear the future of work involves agile, flexible, and collaborative environments with distributed teams. The past few months have proved it’s not only possible, but in many cases, optimal. Following SmartRecruiters’ pivot to a fully remote workforce and its subsequent best H1 results in company history, it became clear the ability to “work from anywhere” was the best policy for its employees and the planet. Starting today, SmartRecruiters transitions to a remote-first company forever and will be a core part of the company’s DNA for its employees, hiring strategy, and product innovations for customers.
As a global tech company, SmartRecruiters has always supported a global customer base and many remote workers as part of its own employee base, which includes 300 Smartians representing 20 nationalities in 10 different countries. At the start of the pandemic, the organization utilized a remote-first approach to protect both employees and customers. In addition to successfully transitioning to a full remote workforce for health and safety, all R&D efforts pivoted to build the functionalities needed to optimize for remote hiring for customers. The results included the widely praised Q2 release with the SmartMessage texting solution, Workflow and Task management, and Remote Jobs functionality, a +44 eNPS, and the company’s best first half performance ever.
When the leadership team reflected on what the future of the work looked like at SmartRecruiters, it was clear that a remote first mindset would be the north star. “Employees now have full flexibility to work in whatever healthy, safe and productive environment suits them best, whether at home or the office. The company also remains committed to in-person socialization and plans to revamp our offices into open collaboration spaces,” says Sarah Wilson, Head of People at SmartRecruiters. The company will also divert funds from the traditional tech perks like lunches and snacks and reinvest in tools and resources for remote workers (initiatives under consideration include ergonomic assessments, wellness reimbursements, collaboration tools, and professional coaches for managers on navigating remote management).
Since offices are no longer a requirement for any employee, it means talent is no longer limited to office locations. SmartRecruiters plans to hire remote positions around the world, which will ~10x the access to talent and further the company’s plans to become an anti-racist force in the recruiting market. Wider talent pools open unprecedented access to underrepresented communities not traditionally found in major city centers. To support this growth, the company is investing in the necessary technology and processes for collaboration.
The remote first-mindset is also critical to support customers’ evolving hiring functions. “The future of all work environments is possible from anywhere, and that starts with hiring. If we can hire from anywhere, we can work from anywhere. But you cannot achieve this without the right collaboration and supporting tools. SmartRecruiters will focus and invest in optimizing the remote experience so our customers can thrive in the new world of remote hiring,” says CEO, Jerome Ternynck.
