'Despite a loud focus by many employers on return-to-office measures, global, remote hiring continues to climb'
Australia saw an increase in domestic hires in 2023, according to Deel’s State of Global Hiring report.
The report aggregated data from thousands of employee contracts worldwide on the Deel platform between January to December 2023. And in it, Asia Pacific tied with Europe, the Middle East and Africa for first place as the fastest-growing hiring region globally in 2023.
In addition, Australia experienced a 719% increase in domestic hires in 2023, with the most popular job groups hired including finance, recruiting and customer support.
But the report also showed an increase in remote hiring.
“Deel’s latest data indicates that despite a loud focus by many employers on return-to-office measures, global, remote hiring continues to climb and is expanding beyond technical roles to those like sales, customer support and content,” Shannon Karaka, Country Leader, Australia and New Zealand at Deel said in a statement.
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Karaka told HRD Australia that 85% of workers employed through the Deel platform were for remote positions.
“Having a network of remote workers helps businesses gain crucial insight into those particular jurisdictions before they make additional investment into potentially setting up an office,” he said.
“That's a common use case that we see – companies exploring new markets. That might be a first time in those markets as well. They're hiring those workers remotely as a test case to understand whether there is product market fit for their company in that jurisdiction. And then over time, gradually, as they continue to invest and hire more in those regions, potentially exploring some sort of hybrid setup in those particular jurisdictions.”
Karaka further described the value of recruiting for remote positions.
“Having a potentially more flexible and distributed approach to hiring – to your recruitment strategy or sourcing strategy – opens up the scope to the global talent pool for certain hard to find roles that, particularly in Australia, in the tech sector, many companies have struggled to find here locally. “
Karaka went on to discuss the rise in companies looking into flexible working, and how HR teams need to be aware of this trend.
“We're seeing a surge in organisations considering flexible and dynamic, new ways of working on the back of a changing, evolving worker landscape,” he said. “But also the changing demands of businesses that require them to be more flexible in response to the cyclicality of the economy that they're operating within.
“That’s a trend to look out for in the short to medium term. We're still going through a state of flux, where many companies are still trying to work out what their headcount planning strategy should look like and flexibility will be a key a key component of that.”
And while remote positions may be a good stepping stone for many organisations looking to hire globally, Karaka warned that not every role is suited to working remotely.
“You need to take a look at the role and the responsibilities of the role and analyse the technology stack that you're leveraging to enable it,” he said.
