To remain competitive, Planet Propaganda offers a tight-knit company culture and more reasonable hours than large companies based on the east and west coasts typically do, Steele said.
Ripple Effects
There’s a domino effect from the work-from-anywhere revolution.
Those able to get a big-city salary spend the extra cash at stores, restaurants and gyms, a windfall for the local economy. But they’re also driving up housing prices, and leaving many local workers struggling to keep up.
“There’s a whole series of ripple effects that occur from this,” said Ross DeVol, president and chief executive officer of Heartland Forward, a nonprofit think tank focused on economic performance in the center of the US.
Poonam Kahlon, 36, made the switch to a fully remote role in February. The mother of two young children had moved near Wilmington, North Carolina, in June 2019 to be head of human resources at a local company. Now she works for a firm headquartered in New Jersey. The main driver for her was work-life balance — but she also got a raise.
Employees like her are pushing local companies to offer hybrid options and higher wages.
Lisa Leath, founder of a Wilmington-based HR consulting firm that primarily serves businesses in Southeast North Carolina, said remote work has also helped attract talent from all over the country, lured by the lifestyle and the beaches.
“We’re having to look at compensation basically every month or every other month to make sure that we're on track with market because it's hard enough to find folks,” she said. “So when you get your team whole, you want to make sure that you retain them.”
Poaching Engineers
Almost 1,000 miles away in Little Rock, Arkansas, nonprofit grid operator Southwest Power Pool is also having a hard time retaining workers lured by remote job offers from far-flung employers.
Southwest Power Pool, which serves almost 19 million people across more than a dozen states, has seen company-wide turnover roughly double to about 8% to 9%, Chief Executive Officer Barbara Sugg said.