A growing number of tech startups are hiring talent from around the world as COVID-19 prompts a revolution in remote working.
With millions around the world forced to work from home due to the pandemic, research suggests broad support for making that shift permanent and altering hiring patterns.
According to a survey of 764 business leaders and employees in the UK tech scene, conducted by HR startup Remote, 62% believe that recruiting the best talent in the world – regardless of location – will drive greater creativity and innovation.
And 63% agreed that entrepreneurs need to look beyond their own cities if they want to find the best talent in the world, while a massive 79% said they would consider moving abroad if they were able to retain the same job and salary.
Speaking to Business Insider, Iggy Bassi, founder and CEO of London-based earth science startup Cervest, said the benefits were obvious.
"Without the need to commute to the office each day, we realized we could open up our search for talent well-beyond those in reach of the M25," he said. "For example, we actually just hired a climate scientist in Italy. She's an invaluable addition who we'd never have found if we still limited our search to London."
Asked about the legal and administrative practicalities of hiring more people abroad, Bassi said Cervest had "outsourced those challenges to a trusted partner organisation".
Likewise, Kentaro Kawamori, CEO of Arizona-based carbon-tracking startup Persefoni, said bureaucratic challenges were "at an all-time low" thanks to a number of firms set up to help make hiring abroad easier.
"[COVID-19] absolutely changed our approach to hiring," Kawamori added. "We were already very remote-friendly, but the new normals of a COVID-19-impacted world simply meant we could lean even harder into this model."
Or Arbel, CTO of Tel Aviv-based "design to code" startup, agrees: "It's amazing, we've got talent everywhere," he said while counting off countries: "The US, Israel, Spain, Australia, Morocco ... We probably wouldn't have done that in normal times."
The firm has even instituted a global "happy hour" in which every employee is delivered beer courtesy of the company, no matter where they are, some Arbel describes as "good for morale."
This shift to remote work could have major ramifications for tech hiring more broadly.
As Business Insider's Rob Price notes, smaller startups may have a better shot at competing for talent against big firms such as Facebook and Google.
And almost a quarter of US tech companies plan a complete shift to remote working in the future, according to a survey from Remote and Sapio Research, previously reported by Business Insider. The same survey found that nearly three-quarters of US tech employees would move abroad if they could do their job remotely, with northern Europe the most popular destination for would-be expats.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly