Are You Ready for Outsourcing?
Inside the outsourcing process: make sure your employees understand what remote teams are really all about first.
Are you ready for outsourcing? The BPO process comes in many forms. This question about readiness is aimed at your organization’s attitude toward what’s known as the “blended workforce.”
Your Noon Dalton coordinators will take care of all the logistics that connect you with your remote teams. But are your in-house people ready for this new turn? Here are some things to get people thinking about during the outsourcing process:
Outsourcing is Blended
The first place to start in getting everyone in your company on board with the benefits of outsourcing is to make sure they understand what’s happening to businesses all over the world.
Many companies have already given up on the idea of traditional employment, where all team members are full-time workers with an office, a salary, and paid benefits. Today’s most successful and innovative organizations have blended workforces. They combine full-time employees with:
- Part-time workers
- Contractors
- Freelancers
What to communicate: a blended workforce isn’t necessarily a way to reduce staff.
In fact, it can actually increase the number of people who work for an organization. These people are highly skilled. What’s more, some don’t want a full-time job.
The number of people with full-time employment is dropping fast. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 40% of the American workforce will get a 1099 Form instead of a W-2, indicating a rise in contract work. Tuning your organization to adapt to human resources trends is a necessity in today’s business environment.
The “O-Word”
To many employees, outsourcing is a negative thing. They view it as a threat to their jobs. They’ve probably read that between 2000 and 2015, over 3.2 million jobs moved offshore.
Some individuals assume that reducing costs to maximize profits means people losing work to economical overseas labor. If this is the way outsourcing is viewed within your organization, you’ve got some educational and rebranding work ahead of you.
What to communicate: outsourcing shouldn’t be a threat to your employees.
What you may know isn’t obvious to your employees. Outsourcing done right isn’t about replacing people; it makes workers even more valuable because they can focus on what they do best.
A survey conducted by the software company AtTask (now called Workfront) found that employees say they can only spend about 45% of their time at work focused on their primary job duties. The rest of that time is spent on administrative items. And 26% of that time is spent on email and other routine tasks.
A Global Outsourcing Movement
Did you know that only 5% of the world’s consumers and workers live in the United States? Even many small businesses now need to do business globally. So that 5% footprint isn’t realistic if you want to compete for supply and demand.
What to communicate: outsourcing puts people who represent your company in any place in the world.
In our globalized economy, collaboration is a necessity. When your company competes internationally, outsourcing is a natural consequence.
The rest of the world is outsourcing, as well. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa already eclipse the U.S. in terms of the proportions of their outsourced workforces. It’s a trillion-dollar industry.
Is It Your Core Competency?
One way to help everyone understand the most powerful benefit of outsourcing is to ask them to stop and think about what they do best. What are the things that prevent them from doing more of that?
Remote teams can assume those to-do items. They can complete those administrative tasks more efficiently. If they can do it better, faster, and for less, why are your in-house workers spending valuable time doing it?
What to communicate: businesses can’t compete if they’re inefficient.
When employees gain more time to apply the talent and skills they were hired for, organizations start to see exponential growth. It’s not about saving money on salaries. It’s about freeing human resources to fuel growth and innovation.
As standards of living continue to catch up and even out around the world, labor costs are going to be less of a reason to look at outsourcing for a top-performing workforce. There’ll be more important cost-drivers, such as:
- Rapid deployment teams that come together and then disband to get a new product or service to market
- Individuals or teams with exclusive, special skills will be needed for a short period to perform a one-time service
- New technology will be introduced to organizations, requiring a temporary support staff
Thoughtful Outsourcing Preparation
The transition to a blended workforce with our coordination during the outsourcing process is free of headaches or bumps in the road. We provide our clients skilled, experienced, and professional remote teams. Work gets done better, faster, and at less cost.
The blended workforce is in your future. The BPO process works better for everybody when they’re no longer afraid of the “O-Word.” Let your employees know how adding a remote team will make their lives easier and improve productivity, and they’ll get on board with the idea. We can show you how it’s done.
Read our case studies to see how we’ve helped businesses save time and money with our remote teams.
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