Despite difficulties created in talent attraction and retention, lots of businesses are still instituting return-to-office policies. It’s easy to understand why senior leaders might want this; keeping your team where you can see them makes it easier to keep an eye on their work. But for many, hybrid work seems to be sticking around in some capacity or another.

That’s not what we’re here to talk about today, however – comparisons between hybrid work and full-time office life have been done to death in the last few years. We want to talk a bit about going the other way. That’s right, we mean fully remote.

It’s a big leap, but once you stop requiring people to be in the office, the world opens up. Quite literally – since a commute is no longer part of the equation, you can hire people on the other side of the country, the other side of the sea, even the other side of the planet!

But… why would you? And, just as importantly, why wouldn’t you? The pros and cons of a globalised, cross-functional workforce are complex, so let’s break it down.

The Positives

Access to Talent

This is the most obvious positive of casting your net wider: a skills pool becomes a skills ocean. Without having to fall into a certain radius from your HQ, your selection of potential candidates is simply better. This obviously helps with sourcing rare skillsets, but it also is a huge boon for increasing the diversity in your business.

For example, 1000 days after software company Atlassian instituted their “Team Anywhere” policy, they released a report on how it was going. Long story short, it works pretty well. On the talent side, Atlassian reports double the number of applicants for any given role compared to previously, with an increase of 20% in offer acceptance. On the diversity side, they also reported double the representation of women in certain geographies, while in an article with Time they reported increases in Black and disabled talent.

You see, opening up your talent pool is just one side of the see-saw. It’s great for you to get access to this talent, but it’s also fantastic for them to get access to you. Plenty of people face challenges that make commuting to an office – even just once or twice a week – completely infeasible. This might include working parents, people with disabilities, people who simply live in hard-to-reach places with few opportunities nearby. These professionals are just as skilled, capable and motivated as your other employees, save the difference that opportunities are much rarer. It’s a whole category of hidden talent that you’re missing out on. As Atlassian’s co-CEO Scott Farquhar said, “Now we can hire them and provide a career that was previously unattainable because we’ve removed the restraints of physical location.”

Productivity & Collaboration

Who remembers the old saying, “The sun never sets on the British Empire”? At the height of the empire, this was literally true: there was never a time of day when the Sun wasn’t shining on one of the British colonies. But why are we bringing this up?

In a globally distributed workforce, teams can “follow the sun”, essentially working together around the clock. A manager in the States can assign a project to someone working in Japan before they leave for the day and come in the next morning with the project completed.

This sort of model doesn’t work for everyone as it requires teams to be able to work autonomously. But, for those businesses for whom it does work, it irons out creases in productivity, helping to smooth out project management in a unique way.

Returning to Atlassian, they report that a staggering 92% of their workforce say the “Team Anywhere” policy allows them to do their best work. They say that, when they stopped focusing on when work got done, it allowed them to hone in on how it got done.

Government Adoption

The emergence of Work Anywhere policies and “digital nomad-ism” has given the world’s governments a bit of a kick up the bum. Especially in the wake of the pandemic, lots of countries are trying to tempt professionals over so they can spend their hard-earned cash within their borders. Now, they’re turning their attention to these digital nomads and figuring out how to make the practice work for everyone – including employers.

Namely, in June 2025 the ICC proposed a 60-day ‘safe harbour’ to exempt employers from permanent establishment (PE) risks as well as other obligations in order to make it easier for them to allow employees to work temporarily overseas for whatever reason. If this proposal makes progress, offering a true Work Anywhere policy to your employees will become far simpler.

This comes a year after KPMG reported that an EU taskforce was put together to work out how to address the taxation of cross-border teleworking. So, while this can still go either way and is worth keeping an eye on, there’s a chance that Work Anywhere policies will soon become much more workable for everyone involved.

The Negatives

Complexity

If it isn’t already immediately apparent from what we’ve said so far, running a globalised team is complicated. Even if you keep the team within the borders of your own country, coordinating the collaboration of different business functions, all in entirely separate locations, is a Herculean task.

A major part of this is the slowing down of communication. As mentioned in Harvard Business Review’s recent (and damningly titled) article, ‘Hybrid Still Isn’t Working’, remote colleagues can’t stop by each other’s desks to get a quick reply. Instead, they’ll need to message each other on Teams or Slack, where people simply have the option not to respond. Similarly, meetings go from a simple “let’s all sit in a room and chat” to an event that must be scheduled in a calendar and is often fraught with issues like bad internet connections and people who can’t be bothered to turn on their camera.

And then there’s the issues you’re presented with if you have employees overseas. From international tax compliance to differences in time zones, coordinating a team across international borders is famously difficult and is not something to be undertaken lightly. (That said, you’ll find plenty of businesses at HR Technologies UK who can help you navigate these challenges much more easily!)

Cultural & Social Friction

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s harder to maintain a cohesive company culture with an asynchronous team. Without chance encounters at the coffee machine and a shared lunchroom to chat and laugh in, those little moments that make a big difference simply don’t happen. A 2023 edition of The CMO Survey claimed over a third of leaders report their culture has been weakened by remote work.

This isn’t the only issue either. New employees struggle to integrate in remote roles, finding it difficult to feel welcomed by a team they’ve never really met. If only some of your team is fully remote, you’ll also experience instances of proximity bias, where opportunities will be disproportionately offered to those who come into the office, simply because managers spend more time with them and know them better.

And again, if you have teams in other countries, you run the risk of clashes in national culture. Ways of working differ drastically depending on where you are in the world; some countries take pride in working as much as possible, whereas others prioritise their wellbeing by being stricter about taking breaks. Neither of these perspectives presents an objective moral failing, but the difference can cause friction between employees in either location. There are plenty of other examples like this, some professional and some social, that HR teams must keep a close eye on to maintain a positive work environment for all.

How to Tackle Remote

The simple solution to a lot of these issues is hybrid work. That’s why it’s so popular, of course – bringing people into the office a couple days a week means you can get the best of both worlds. However, if the main draw of remote for you is the ability to hire further afield, this kind of hybrid schedule just isn’t an option. So, what do you do?

Less Frequent Office Days

If your teams are still comparatively local (we’re talking trains over planes), you have the option of monthly office days – or even quarterly for those further away. These days can serve as a bit of an anchor, reminding your remote employees of what your business looks like in person while giving them the chance to have some meaningful face-to-face interactions with their colleagues. These days absolutely must be intentionally designed, however. To break the fourth wall for a moment, my brother when at his old job would describe his frustration of commuting into the office once a month as required. He’d make the journey only to be met with an empty office and a workday no different to what he would have had at home. When face-to-face engagement is rarer, it has to feel important when it happens.

Brian Elliott recommends prioritising “moments that matter” in his MIT Sloan column. These moments centre face-to-face engagements around the bigger, more influential moments in a person’s work. That might be quarterly strategy meetings, onboarding a new hire, undergoing training, kicking off major initiatives or even just the big Christmas parties. If it’s going to be more of an effort for someone to come in, it has to feel worth it when they do, and not just like they’re ticking a box.

Spotlighting Virtual Meetings

In instances where getting someone to the office even once a month isn’t doable, virtual meetings become the only touchpoint they have for live interaction with their colleagues. That makes those meetings vital to their working life, so they must be treated with care and respect.

Making it a general blanket rule for employees to turn their cameras on in any given meeting, for example, might be met with some grumbles initially. But, once it becomes habit, it makes these meetings far more engaging, and helps fully remote employees feel a lot less isolated.

Community Comms Campaigns

There’s a common pitfall when building culture in a fully remote company. This pitfall involves trying to force remote employees into social events that take place entirely on Teams or Zoom. This might be virtual pub quizzes, bingo, or any number of games and activities designed to recreate the fun of an in-office culture with a remote workforce.

Unfortunately, when someone takes a fully remote role, it’s often because this is exactly the kind of thing they want to avoid. And for those that would appreciate more social interaction, these initiatives often backfire as a reminder of their isolation.

Instead, take an adapted approach to community building that focuses more on comms. Run a friendly sweepstakes for the World Cup. Start a book club. Run a monthly “Getting to know…” interview with remote employees. Design campaigns that draw people together and introduce them to others organically. That’s how you make someone feel like a part of something, not apart from it.

Conclusion

Ultimately, whether or not having fully remote workers will be beneficial for you depends on a lot of factors. It’s affected massively by what it is the company does, which roles you’re hiring for, and the overall culture of your business.

In a highly collaborative team full of extroverted people in creative, perhaps more subjective roles, the drawbacks of fully remote work would show plainly. The reduction in immediate communication and the lack of socialisation would risk stemming the creative juices and producing feelings of isolation.

However, in a team that exercises more independence and autonomy, where tasks are clearly set out, measurable and straightforward, remote could work brilliantly. The lack of an office for the right person could simply mean a lack of distractions, allowing them to focus and get on with their work on their own terms.

If you do decide to give fully remote a try, GitLab has a great handbook available with helpful policy templates to get you started.

As with everything in the world of HR, it’s swings and roundabouts. There are huge benefits available if you decide to open up your hiring to fully remote, but also equally sized potential drawbacks. Before you make any decisions one way or the other, you need to analyse the staff you already have and ask the question – does an office environment really help them thrive?

We have a great bunch of exhibitors at HR Technologies UK who specialise in remote and global work. Make sure you register your interest to attend in April so you can explore your opportunities together.