Gartner defines borderless workforce as talent working remotely from different countries based on an employment contract made across national borders. As this trend continues to expand, the survey also found that 27% of leaders are currently exploring hiring borderless tech employees.
A Gartner survey reveals that 58% of organisations report having at least some technology talent working in a fully remote borderless arrangement. This number has doubled in the past three years.
“This is no surprise that the rate of hiring borderless technology staff doubled in the last three years as increasing retention and hiring has risen to the No. 3 priority for CEOs this year and 2023,” said Gabriela Vogel, senior director analyst at Gartner.
She explained that the COVID-19 pandemic also accelerated borderless hiring, and what began as an exception, is no longer.
“Today in the professional world, location is fluid, the market is global, and the talent competition is agnostic as we are all competing under the same flag, technology. Consequently, countries are losing talent to other countries, the public sector is losing talent to the private sector, and all the verticals are in the same situation.”
Gabriela Vogel
There are no more competition boundaries, and business and IT leaders hire borderless staff where they have the biggest competitive advantage – what we call the “borderless zone,” added Vogel.
The survey found that among organisations that have borderless talent, 19% of their IT workforce is borderless.
“Hiring borderless staff requires business and IT leaders to make significant adjustments to their operational model, including revising their management techniques, infrastructure and technology, cybersecurity and data protection, and pay equity,” said Vogel.
Most sought positions
The top two areas of expertise that CIOs and IT leaders are looking at borderless talent for are software engineering/application development (62% of survey respondents) and application support (55% of survey respondents).
While 71% of surveyed organisations said it is critical to factor in the specific needs of borderless tech workers in their workplace strategy, 50% of organisations said they have fully implemented tools related to collaboration and productivity such as cloud office suites, workstream collaboration, meeting solutions and digital whiteboarding.
Constraints hindering adoption
However, borderless is not for every organisation.
“There are certain constraints that hinder the adoption and expansion of a borderless operation and they range from complexity of administration support, culture issues to security and legality concerns,” said Daniel Sanchez-Reina, VP analyst at Gartner.
