Eight Out of 10 Remote Contractors Feel They're an Integral Part of Their Employers' Team
oDesk, June 2011
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After conducting an Online Work Survey in June 2011, oDesk, the largest and fastest-growing online employment platform, concluded that businesses that are building distributed teams, and the workers engaging in online work relationships, are succeeding in ways that are drastically different from the generations of workers and entrepreneurs before them. In addition, oDesk found, online work is a bright spot in an otherwise troubled economy.
Their survey, conducted during a five-day period, drew over 16,000 responses from employers and contractors worldwide. Approximately one-fifth of respondents were employers.
One of the notable findings was that more than eight out of 10 contractors (87 percent) feel they are an integral part of their employers' staff. There are several reasons for this high level of engagement perception by remote team members, according to the survey:
- 55 percent of employers assign "core" or "critical" work to remote contractors.
- 77 percent of employers communicate with their contractors several times per week.
- 81 percent of contractors reported the same.
The survey also found that employers are increasingly working on building distributed teams, both because top local talent was hard to find (28 percent of firms said this was the primary driver behind distributed teams) and because doing so allowed them to scale up or down quickly to better meet the real-time needs of their businesses (21 percent).
