Why does your company have to adopt a remote and flexible work policy?

The change in the way we work is in a real acceleration stage since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, and of course, the Salesforce industry did not stand aside. CEO and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff announced that Salesforce employees could work remotely during 2020. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that from this moment on, a new era of remote working begins. 

Modern talents want their work environment to become more flexible, or even fully remote. GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com data shows that the amount people who regularly work-at-home and who are among the non-self-employed population, has grown by 173% since 2005, 11% faster than the rest of the workforce. 

Personally, I’ve been working with Salesforce as a Consultant for about three years, but for the last year and a half I started to mentor and also recruit Salesforce professionals. 

Every time I propose a contract to a candidate I get the questions: 

“Are there any possibilities to work remotely? At least one or two days per week?” 

 And very often, when the answer was “no”, the candidate wasn’t interested in pursuing the role. 

“Why change the company I work for to have exactly the same conditions?”, they question. 

I’ve noticed how companies struggle to find and retain skilled professionals. Yet they still don’t want to reconsider their work policies, for example, by proposing more flexible working hours. 

Remote and freelancing work are a trend and Salesforce professionals want to be a part of it. Some want to move from big cities to smaller ones and have more time to spend with their families rather than waste it in traffic jams. Others want to get rid of micromanagement, and for others, having geographical freedom and the ability to work from wherever they want becomes a necessity.  

Thanks to the fieldwork with candidates as well as recruiters, I’ve come to understand what is happening in the market, and so the Salesforce Network project was created. The Salesforce community includes professionals looking for flexible, remote, and freelancing positions. They are looking for the future of the work realities. 

However, while candidates aspire for more flexibility, a lot of companies still prefer to have an employee in the office, 5 days of the week, with standard working hours. 

Let’s have a look at what happened on the company’s side.  Firstly, during the COVID-19 crisis, companies didn’t really have a choice and were obliged to work or hire remote resources. However, a lot of companies just stopped recruiting altogether. 

Thus, small and very specific demands came onto the market. This was because companies didn’t want to take the risk of onboarding new candidates as employees, or long-term contractors. 

Instead, they preferred to fix the most urgent of needs. What is the logic behind this? Since the projects and the tasks themselves are short, companies feel comfortable to allow remote working. 

If we don’t take COVID-19 into account with the high rise of remote opportunities, the Salesforce remote and flexible jobs market is still quite small. The majority of long-term full remote contracts on Salesforce are in the USA, and, very often, companies prefer locals as there is a question of time zone differences and probably trust. 

As for Europe, the majority of remote positions are in the UK. The rest of the remote market is mostly hidden. Remote work is considered a privilege, so usually, employees who already build trust within the company renegotiate internally to transform their office contract into a remote one. 

I’ve been working with Salesforce mostly in France, and to be honest, I haven’t seen a lot of remote positions. However, more and more flexible contracts are appearing in the market, with 1, 2, or even 3 days of remote work per week. 

Now, since we know about this trend, which projects or positions in your company you may propose to  Senior skilled profiles who are looking for partially or fully remote options if your company is still not very confident with remote possibilities but still want to try.

Remote Salesforce Support 

I myself used to work with a remote developers team based in Lebanon.

So, the methodology behind it was that I received tickets in the support department, then I pre-qualified them with the client in order to be clear on what was expected. I then described it in a more techno-functional way, so the team could really understand what I was talking about, and pushed it inside ticket management software. When someone took the ticket, I could see the notification and so on. So, that is the great benefit of working remotely. You don’t need to stay behind someone’s back to manage, you don’t even need to have a person in the office. The time for the resolution is estimated in advance, so there are no surprises there. 

Online Salesforce Mentoring 

Training is not a big aspect of the market. Usually, companies ask for training to onboard new people, or to reinforce skills when a new role is taken, or even

to sometimes help juniors not get lost when they start to work onsite with the client. Mentoring is something you don’t really need a person onsite for.

Sometimes, companies still ask for it, but as a Salesforce Admin Trainer, I did 90% of my job online as many schools and coaches in other sectors do right now. 

Agile Salesforce Projects – 100%!

Communication is a key to success when it comes to implementing Salesforce and yet becomes even more important if you work with a remote team.

So, I work on Scrum, one of the most popular agile approaches which are actually based on short cycles, called sprints.

As soon as a feature is delivered, it is tested and then deployed. That is why they are called quick sprints, as they ensure the delivery, let’s say once a week.

So, the concepts of remote and agile for me are on the same level.

Small team projects with clear goals

When the team is quite small and can stay close to each other, communicating smoothly every day is easy to do. At the same time, it is important to be really clear about what is expected from the beginning. I remember I once worked as an online mentor for one learning platform and they just sent me videos about my future task and a huge document to read. Remote doesn’t mean that you digitise everything and leave another person to figure out what is expected. For me, remote working means working closely with each other, even closer than at the office. When you have to wait for the meeting to start, the advantage of remote is that you can use a new communications tool which makes communication something more natural and effective. 

Summary 

As it is so difficult to attract and retain Senior Salesforce professionals, remote and flexible hours at work is the way to become more attractive to candidates and attract talents. It is also proof of being a modern company, which builds internal relationships with employees based on trust. If you’re interested in building your employer branding strategy or need to get a Salesforce professional on board, feel free to get in touch with me.