Situation: A company must acquire new engineering talent to sustain its growth. However, there are few local engineers who are experienced in company’s key technologies, and the cost of living in the company’s location makes it difficult to bring in new talent. The CEO is considering developing a remote office where there are experienced engineers that they could attract to the company. How do you develop and retain talent in a competitive market?
Advice from the CEOs:
- There are a number of issues to consider: location, management of the culture, leadership and potential unintended consequences that must be mitigated.
- The COVID pandemic has forced companies to adapt to remote employees. Has this been considered as an option?
- High definition, large screen systems can be set up for $2-3,000 per site.
- Web cams, projectors, etc. can be set up for several hundreds of dollars per site.
- Add to this design and analysis tools, with technology for prototyping.
- Consider where within the organization the remote people will fit?
- How will the organizational structure impact the integration of design engineering and manufacturing engineering?
- What policies and procedures are needed to assure that there is no clash?
- How will leadership be implemented for the remote group?
- One CEO feels that there must be a sponsor from the home office to assure smooth and consistent transfer of company culture to the remote operation. This may take 1-2 years to achieve.
- Another CEO hired a qualified individual locally for their remote operation. The important point was that this company has a very tight process and found that they could package this process sufficiently so that the new individual could pick it up quickly.
- Look at developing a remote office as essentially the same challenge as a mini-acquisition. Like an acquisition, the key resource being gained is new talent. Think through the integration process and trade-offs as though it were a new acquisition.
- Developing a remote location can be a good solution for advancing the company’s ability to outsource. It will teach the company:
- How to design using a combination of internal and remote resources,
- What infrastructure is needed in terms of policies and protocols around designs, and
- What works from a communications standpoint to assure knowledge transfer between sites.
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