The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT) and the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DLIR) announced the release of a new website that consolidates programs for residents seeking remote work opportunities and employers looking to hire Hawaii residents for remote work.

This new website, invest.hawaii.gov/remote, provides residents with direct links to partners of the Hawaii Remote Work Pilot Project and the local American Job Center (AJC). Registering on this site sends an automated message that notifies the AJC that Hawaii residents are interested in remote work opportunities in their county of residence.

Current remote work partners providing opportunities for Hawaii’s residents include:

• Instant Teams – Remote Ready Hawaii Project, building a team of locally based workers who are qualified residents, to address remote customer service needs through paid training, internship and placement on a team.
• Nexrep – Selecting workers from Hawaii to provide customer service solutions.  

The new website provides businesses located outside of Hawaii with labor law information for hiring or employing a remote Hawaii workforce; including Unemployment Insurance, Prepaid Healthcare, Temporary Disability Insurance and Workers Compensation.

“The Hawaii Remote Work Pilot Project website creates a digital online presence that is helping to pivot the State towards a digital economy and focus on creative and technology innovation as  part of the Hawaii 2.0 Pillars and Goals. This website brings together economic and workforce development opportunities to best serve the current and future needs of our communities as we build a stronger, more resilient economy for the future for our keiki”, said Gov. Ige. “Coupled with the launch of AWS Cloud Based Training in April of this year, this is another tool targeted at expanding the export of professional services to increase Hawaii’s economic resilience.”

“The new Hawaii Remote Work Pilot Project website consolidates all of DBEDT’s remote work demonstration projects in one convenient online site for both Hawaii’s residents and businesses interested in hiring Hawaii residents.” said Mike McCartney, director of DBEDT. “The vision for this new site is to create an online presence for current and future remote work and digital livelihood opportunities such as the new partnership with NexRep, that brings together remote work opportunities, remote business hiring opportunities and is linked with the WDC’s Workforce Resiliency Initiative that provides both digital assessment and training opportunities for the residents of Hawaii.”

Residents will also have access to a new partnership with NexRep on the website. The intention of including Nexrep is to employ a high quality, high performing virtual workforce. NexRep offers a proprietary digital platform for work-at-home agents by providing the tools, processes and knowledge required to consistently deliver world-class customer engagements. According to NexRep CEO Teddy Liaw, “For twelve years, NexRep has offered the ability to work from home and choose their own schedule. We’re proud of the expertise we’ve developed in supporting remote opportunities and we continue to be inspired by the many ways these opportunities positively impact thousands of lives every day.”

NIC Hawaii worked closely with DBEDT staff to design the new website.