In recent years, Remote has become one of the most disruptive payroll, HR and compliance solutions for remote teams. ‘The gap between talent and employers is definitely getting smaller when following our philosophy’, Job van der Voort, CEO and founder of Remote.com told Recruitment Tech in an interview.
Drastic growth
3 billion. That’s the estimated value of Remote, which technically still falls under the start-up category. Founded in 2019 by Job van der Voort, Marcelo Lebre and Nicholas Macario, in just under four years the company has grown into perhaps the biggest player when it comes to facilitating HR, payroll and compliance for remote workers.
‘We very deliberately built the company this way: first a strong foundation, a super long-term vision, and hard work.’
Remote’s rise has been quite drastic in terms of revenue growth and general usage. What is the main reason behind its success? “It’s the combination of coming up with a solid solution for a challenge that a lot of companies we’re facing”, Van der Voort says. “Being the need for more colleagues and talent, and a global movement to more remote work. It’s not just external factors. We were super intentional about the way we built remote: foundations first, super long-term focus, and hard work.
Narrowing the gap
In recent years, partly due to the COVID pandemic, the principle of remote working has increasingly come into its own. In other words, companies have become increasingly willing to stop limiting recruitment strategies to 15 to 20 kilometres from headquarters. Talent is everywhere and all employee productivity studies confirm the same: remote teams are often more effective than their office counterparts. Yet it is the scarcity discussions that dominate every labour market-related conversation for now. So what goes wrong?
“When looking for new staff in your own region you are simply limiting yourself.”
“When looking for new staff in your own region you are simply limiting yourself”, Van der Voort argues. “There is talent everywhere. We recently did a tech talent survey which showed a lot of companies are still looking in the popular hot-spots for certain specialists; trying to get that one person that everyone is chasing, while there are so many alternatives — likely even better candidates — in other regions. The gap between talent and employers is definitely getting smaller when following our philosophy.”
‘The future of work is about freedom’
That philosophy is based on a key principle of Van der Voort about the future of work. “The future of work is not about work, but about freedom,” Van der Voort argues. While scarcity discussions dominate every labour market-related conversation for now, have enough professionals understood that? “Some, but generally no. I think many people still live to work, whereas that’s not really how I see things.”
“I think many people still live to work, whereas that’s not really how I see things.”
Remote is the only company in the world that has built and fully operates its own global infrastructure to provide international payroll, benefits, tax, stock options and regulatory compliance to companies worldwide. “We have people on the ground in 75+ countries. This gives companies the flexibility to grow further and find talent where it thrives.”
‘Helping modern businesses’
Remote isn’t showing any signs of stopping. So what else is on the roadmap for the disruptive company? “Remote aims to make it simple for any company to manage, employ, and pay anyone, anywhere, so that more individuals are able to build wealth and financial freedom through equal access to employment opportunities in the global economy.”
“In the future, you can expect Remote to continue to expand to new countries, and more, better capabilities to help modern companies manage their entire workforces.”
“We have made tremendous progress in the past four years toward this goal, but we have only scratched the surface of the opportunity. In the future, you can expect Remote to continue to expand to new countries, and more, better capabilities to help modern companies manage their entire workforces.”
