The social enterprise Grow Remote was established in 2018 to encourage and grow remote working throughout Ireland.  Its founders were concerned for the long-term sustainability of local communities, as too many people were moving to urban centres for employment, leading to the gradual economic and social decline of rural areas.  

A key challenge for Grow Remote was to make remote working opportunities more visible and accessible.  The organisation needed to be able to clearly demonstrate where remote work was taking place and make people aware of the employers that hire remotely in Ireland.  Graham Harron, Community Facilitator at Grow Remote, had the idea of sharing this information on a map, but didn’t know where to start.   

Greater visibility of remote working
Constantly expanding, the Map of Remote includes details of over 1,000 remote workers, clearly showing that remote working is well-established and widespread across Ireland.  “Our Map of Remote is raising awareness of the opportunities that are available to skilled people who want to remain in and work from their rural communities,” says Harron.  

Improved access to remote employment 
People can use the Map of Remote to open pop-up boxes about over 400 businesses that offer remote employment opportunities.  They can, therefore, find more jobs that they can do from rural locations, more easily.  As Harron explains, “In every community there are people who want jobs or would like a career change.  The Map of Remote will help them find employers and consider a wider range of employment options.”

A positive impact on local communities
Grow Remote anticipates that the Map of Remote will play a key role in helping it to expand remote working in Ireland and thereby sustain rural communities.  “If our map creates more remote jobs, as we hope it will, it will lead to higher levels of employment in rural communities, less commuting and improvements in local economies,” Harron says.  “By growing remote working, employees benefit, employers benefit and communities benefit.” 

Focused support for remote workers and employers  
 Grow Remote can use the Map of Remote to identify clusters of remote workers and offer local networking events.  Equally, it can focus on the companies that employ large numbers of remote workers and offer them training programmes on managing remote teams.  According to Harron, the Map of Remote is a way of “facilitating local connections,” and supporting both remote workers and their employers.  

Effective publicity and funding applications
Staff at Grow Remote use summary statistics, generated by ArcGIS Online, to support publicity and funding applications.  For example, the organisation has published the names of the top five counties for remote working and the top ten employers for remote working.  Sharing data like this can help raise the profile of Grow Remote and stimulate more in-depth conversations about the benefits of remote working.