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Driving Ireland's Remote Working Revolution Forward
BY ZOE KEANE (Recruit Ireland) and CLAIRE LOOBY (Irish Times Training) | 2021
The remote working revolution continues to bring new opportunities and challenges to both employers and staff. Central to the remote working revolution is how we build employee's skills, especially as the pace of the trend towards digitally-based activity has quickened exponentially.
Recruit Ireland's Zoe Keane looked into how the Grow Remote advisory panel will strive to support those making remote work local.
New Advisory Panel Comes Together To Drive
Ireland's Remote Work Revolution Forward
This month Grow Remote announced the launch of their advisory panel, which will advise them on their mission of making remote work local.
The Grow Remote Advisory Panel, supported by Enterprise Ireland, includes leaders from some of Ireland’s most successful home-grown remote companies and thought-leaders from the public and non-profit sectors.
This group of community people started a WhatsApp group in 2018 when they were curious about remote work and how that could help their communities.
Building off the momentum of the new working from home trend brought on by the pandemic, they expanded into 4 countries, a CLG (Not for Profit), and have over sixty local chapter leads using remote work as a tool for community development.
Some of the companies Grow Remote has partnered with include Shopify, HubSpot, Glofox, and Ebay.
With the support of Enterprise Ireland and funded through the Regional Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) Grow Remote is a social enterprise that enables people to work, live and participate locally by making remote work visible and accessible to everyone. Remote work, once an option only available to the very few, has now become the norm as a result of the global pandemic.
As Ireland moves into a post-lock-down world, a collaborative and cross-sectoral approach is needed in order to sustain this momentum and to realise the full potential of remote work for people, for-profit, and for the planet. This is the reason behind the creation of the Grow Remote Advisory Panel.
Having recruited their first employee only 6 months ago, Grow Remote has seen a significant increase in the demand for their services and estimates they will have a team of at least 10 employees by the end of 2021. This growth has been enabled by funding of €500,000 received from Enterprise Ireland last year.
Grow Remote and Enterprise Ireland believes that there is huge potential to build a best-in-class remote working ecosystem in Ireland, enhancing our competitiveness in the global market.
Mark Christal, Divisional Manager, Regions and Entrepreneurship, Enterprise Ireland said: “The Regional Enterprise Development Fund and Border Enterprise Development Fund are designed to support collaborative and innovative initiatives such as Grow Remote to strengthen and grow our regions – to date, €117m in funding has been approved for projects in every county in Ireland. In order to grow and scale start-ups and exporting companies, Enterprise Ireland is committed to delivering a remote working action plan while increasing the number of co-working and incubation spaces as part of our ‘Powering the Regions’ strategy. As companies increase digital adoption, Grow Remote will facilitate people to take advantage of new ways of working.”
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