FlexJobs Names Top 100 Companies to Watch for Remote Jobs in 2014

PRWEB.COM Newswire

Boulder, CO (PRWEB) January 06, 2014

FlexJobs has just released a list of the top 100 companies most likely to hire for telecommuting and remote jobs in 2014, based on analysis of their database of over 25,000 companies and their job posting history. Many of these companies are leaders in their fields and their successes are highlighting the way current remote workforce technology can help their companies grow and thrive.
"The great news is remote work options are – and have been – on the upswing within companies. But the bad news is that it is still really difficult for most job-seekers to find these legitimate job opportunities amidst the scam, junk, and ads mixed in on most job boards out there. With this list, we want to help guide job-seekers to some of the leading, trusted companies that have shown that they incorporate telecommuting in their hiring practices," says Sara Sutton Fell, Founder and CEO of FlexJobs. "We hope this list can be a useful tool to help job-seekers know which companies to keep an eye on during their job search."
The top industries offering telecommuting arrangements include healthcare, information technology, education, nonprofit and philanthropy, and sales and marketing, according to the analysis. Job titles like Sales Representative, Senior Analyst, Nurse Case Manager, Account Executive, Web or Software Developer, Accountant, and Virtual Teacher are some of the most commonly found when searching for jobs that offer remote work.
"We are definitely noticing the trend of more companies who truly embrace flexibility," shared Kelly Kirby, Director of Research. "And even though we've researched thousands of jobs, we are still surprised daily by some of the positions we come across."
Overall, 2014 is poised to be the best year yet for professionals interested in remote, telecommuting, and work-from-home jobs, and congratulations to these employers who are leading the charge.
For the complete list the Top 100 Companies to Watch in 2014 for Remote Jobs, visit:http://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/100-top-companies-for-remote-jobs/.
About FlexJobs
FlexJobs is the leading online service for professionals seeking telecommuting, flexible schedule, part-time, and freelance jobs. With job listings in over 50 career categories and opportunities ranging from entry-level to executive, freelance to full-time, FlexJobs offers job seekers a safe, easy, and efficient way to find professional and legitimate flexible job listings. Having helped over a half million people in their job searches, FlexJobs has been featured on CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Good Morning America, among hundreds of other trusted media outlets and is a proud partner in the 1 Million for Work Flexibility initiative.
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/01/prweb11462250.htm

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37Signal's Jason Fried Dishes on Controlling Remote Workers

Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of 37signals, says he realized that the best way to keep top talent was to let them work from anywhere.

Long before the uproar over Yahoo Inc.’s ban on telecommuting, Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of Chicago-based Web development firm 37signals, realized that the best way to keep top talent was to let them work from anywhere. More than half of the firm’s 40 employees telecommute from far-flung locales like Oregon and Russia.

Fried recently co-authored “Remote,” a book to help employers understand their options. Workforce talked with Fried about working remotely.

Jason Fried is co-founder of Chicago-based Web-development firm 37signals.

Workforce: Marissa Mayer’s ban on telecommuting last year brought the issue to light, but you started working on the book months before that. What prompted you to write it?
Jason Fried: People have been hearing about how we work remotely and asking, ‘How do you do that? Or, how can you do that or, how do you know work is getting done?’ A light bulb went off and we said, ‘Let’s put all this together in a book because we keep getting the same questions over and over again from so many different people.’

WF: So, why and how do you do it at 37signals?
Fried: What’s most important to us is hiring the best people we can find. It’s unlikely that the best people for the job happen to live down the street. When you limit yourself to hiring just people who live nearby, you’re limiting your ability to hire the best in the world.

WF: Why are many employers so reluctant to let people telecommute?
Fried: The No. 1 concern is, ‘How do you know someone is doing their job when you can’t see them?’ Seeing someone has nothing to do with whether or not they are doing their work. There are so many people who are in the office all day long not doing their work. The answer is you look at the work. Most work today can be shared remotely. All those things can be reviewed remotely, critiqued and discussed remotely.

WF: What role does company culture play in the success or failure of telecommuting?
Fried: If you care about culture, then you must care about trust. But if you don’t trust people to get their work done unless you’re watching them, then you really don’t trust them. These facts don’t line up. You must trust the people that you are hiring. As long as work is engaging and interesting, people will be happy to do the work. The reason people think an employee might slack off is because they are not being given interesting work. But people are going to slack off wherever they are.  

WF: You write about co-worker jealousy around telecommuting — an issue that we’ve written about. What can an employer do to prevent this?
Fried: Remote working has to be available to everybody. Everybody needs to have the option unless you physically can’t because your job requires physical interaction with a customer. Offer it to everybody but say, ‘Let’s try it one day a month and see what happens.’ When you find the company isn’t going out of business, then take it up to two days a month and then one day a week. You find a balance.

Rita Pyrillis is a Workforce senior editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Pyrillis on Twitter at @RitaPyrillis.

http://www.workforce.com/articles/20162-signals-jason-fried-dishes-on-controlling-remote-workers

Telecommuting in the Cloud: A Channel Perspective

December 17, 2013 // Knowledge, op Ed, Op Ed, Opinion, SR 12-22 Original

Ali Din

by Ali Din is Sr. Vice President and CMO at dinCloud

As a reseller or Managed Service Provider (MSP), we know that mobility is on the rise. Whether that manifests itself as a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy or in some other form – we know that end users are becoming more mobile, carrying more devices and are no longer chained to their desks. According to Forrester Research, 34 million Americans work from home (at least occasionally) today and they expect that number will rise to 63 million by 2016; Gartner predicts that this drive to mobility will become a $1 trillion market in the next four years.

Telecommuting, or working from a location anywhere outside of a centralized organizational work place has benefits, including the ability to attract talent beyond the company’s local geography. And of course, that in turn further requires the need to support mobility in the enterprise.

Some stats say that 1 in 4 end-customers are going to move to the cloud. While some customers aren’t 100% convinced, here are a few benefits that you can share with potential end users and current customers.

Why Cloud for Remote Employees

The telecommuting movement drives a great deal of interest in cloud computing. Cloud can better serve a workforce that’s as likely to work at the local Starbucks as the corner conference room because they can push processing, storage, and enterprise applications to a middle tier between the company and the user. In other words, connectivity, security, capacity management, and resiliency become somebody else’s problem (e.g. the MSP).

Anywhere Access

As cloud computing and mobile technology continues to mature, more employers and employees are enjoying the benefits of telecommuting. The days of IT departments setting up VPNs so people can work from home are no longer a necessity. With solutions like hosted virtual desktops, remote employees can have immediate access to all their files and applications from anywhere, anytime, using any device.

Built-in Business Continuity

Cloud computing helps organizations meet their business continuity and disaster recovery needs, and support remote employees by providing a secure way to access corporate data, even if corporate headquarters is affected by a disastrous event.

Secure Access to Network

The traditional way of providing remote access to these employees increased complexity and security issues. Many a sleepless night was had by IT administrators cringing that some remote user would spread a worm or Trojan through the entire organization. However, with cloud hosted desktops for example, organizations can provide secure remote access to their remote employees, and virus outbreaks are no longer a headache in a hosted desktop environment.

Cash Flow Management

When considering cloud services, the cash flow for an organization is less stringent. The need for large capital expenditures goes down, maintenance costs are reduced, and companies can pay monthly. Most cloud services also offer flexibility as the company expands or contracts to adjust its spending. This flexibility and enhanced cash flow allows the business to compete and invest directly in the marketplace rather than spend time and energy on operations.

Positioning Cloud Services to Customers

Many organizations are already implementing or expanding cloud solutions, an ideal technology to support telecommuting efforts. The journey to the cloud is not simple – customers need assessments and guidance. This is where a reseller or MSP can become a consultant to the customer.

Encourage your customers to look at cloud holistically. Adding a service for hosted virtual servers for one application might be helpful, but running a server infrastructure completely in the cloud creates better connectivity and resilience in the environment. Similarly, evaluating other cloud-based services, such as hosted virtual desktops, provides a way to move the business to the cloud (through “business provisioning”) instead of just a workload or application.

Once the decision is made to move to the cloud, the consultant partner should also assist customers with data migration. This can be a big task to take on depending on the amount of data involved, and threshold for downtime to replicate data.

Lastly, cloud services enable resellers and MSPs with a recurring revenue stream, not just from the subscription to the cloud, but also from providing value-added services. These can range from monitoring services, to ongoing maintenance and support. It allows the partner to become an extension of the customer’s IT organization while still giving the customer control and visibility to their virtual private data center. Customers can enjoy the best of both worlds, control and security, while offloading the day-to-day management headaches of running IT operations.

For customers that are on the go, cloud is an excellent prescription for a pain point that they can’t resolve on their own.

http://www.telecomreseller.com/2013/12/17/telecommuting-in-the-cloud-a-channel-perspective/