The remote employee has become a staple in the startup workforce. And for good reason – working from home, or anywhere, offers employees more flexibility and can help businesses access a larger talent pool. However, as the remote workforce has continued to grow, so have the challenges employers face associated with hiring and managing these employees. In this blog post, we will discuss some of the struggles that businesses face and how HR and People Operations teams can overcome them.
One of the biggest challenges associated with hiring remote employees is remaining compliant. With employees working in different states, employers must be up-to-date on the various regulations of each state. This can be a daunting task, especially for small teams that may not have the resources to keep up with changing regulations, the volume of notices sent by government agencies over email and snail mail, and maintaining employee data in HRIS and payroll systems. Employers can face numerous risks if they do not comply with the regulations ranging from blocked payroll to penalties and tax liabilities.
Another challenge is managing payroll. When employees are working in different states, employers must ensure that they are registered to do business there, withholding appropriate taxes from each employee’s paycheck and reporting wages and taxes to the correct agency on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly cadence. This can be a complex and time consuming process. Each state can have up to 4 required registrations to complete. On top of that, once you're set up, states send dozens of notices that leave HR and People Operations teams with the administrative burden of triaging these to make sure they are still compliant.
Last but not least, employers must stay up-to-date on the latest state and federal laws regarding remote work. For example, some states have enacted laws that require employers to provide certain benefits to employees who work remotely, such as paid sick leave, adequate workers' compensation, and specific health insurance requirements. All of these aspects create unique challenges for businesses in the US. Those challenges become even more difficult if you have an international presence, which we will cover in another blog post.
Hiring remote employees has gotten more difficult in recent years, but it’s still possible to find great candidates while staying compliant. Do you have any tips for hiring remote employees? Share them with us!
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This blog post was brought to you by the team at AbstractOps. AbstractOps puts your People Ops on autopilot. We work with your existing tools to centralize employee data and automate state registrations and ongoing compliance.