The option to work remotely remains a top attraction among job seekers. In a survey of 1,702 workers in the United States by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Research Institute, 48% of the respondents said they want a remote position for their next job. The survey also revealed that in-office or on-site roles need to pay more (as much as 20% more) to make it equally attractive as an equivalent remote role.
These findings are consistent with McKinsey’s American Opportunity Survey (third edition). According to this study, most employees would rather work remotely if they could, with 87% of the 25,000 respondents saying they chose to work remotely when their employers offered them the opportunity.
The above data should tell you one thing: Remote work is here to stay. Put another way, if you want to attract and retain talent, you have to be open to allowing your employees to work remotely.
Fortunately, this is not the compromise you might think it is. In truth, the remote work arrangement has opened the door for efficiency-enhancing practices, such as outsourcing in the Philippines (and other cost-competitive markets). The productivity tools, software, and systems that enable remote work arrangements have also enhanced the viability of building remote offshore teams to serve your business functions.
The Benefits of Building an Offshore Remote Team
Outsourcing work to a remote team offshore has many benefits.
1. Cost Savings
When you work with an offshore team, you can reduce your labor costs, which means significant operational cost savings. Talent comparable to the ones available in your home country (e.g., the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom) typically costs less to hire in another country (e.g., the Philippines). Specifically, wages and benefits cost lower in typical offshore locations.
Likewise, if you build your offshore team in a less expensive location, you can save on rent. Offshore locations can give you more premium workspace options for less than it costs at home.
2. Access to Talent
McKinsey says there is a talent shortage. What may not be evident from generic global figures is that talent scarcity is not equally spread worldwide. Even if there’s a talent shortage everywhere, the deficit is less drastic in some places than in others.
By building a remote team offshore, you can leverage these talent shortage differentials to close your company’s hard-to-fill open roles. Additionally, you can cast a wider recruitment net, freeing yourself from the geographical limitations of your local talent pool.
3. Increased Productivity and Improved Redundancy
Your offshore team can work in a different time zone than your team at headquarters. This can improve productivity as your company can operate 24 hours a day.
The availability of a remote team during off hours can also mean fewer downtimes; you’ll have a team available around the clock to deal with your (and your clients’ or customers’) technical concerns.
4. Flexibility
You can scale your workforce up or down by outsourcing to a remote offshore team.
5. Cultural Diversity
A series of McKinsey reports (2015, 2018, and 2020) shows a clear business case for diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. A recurring theme is how diversity, in particular, is correlated with business performance. To wit, companies with diverse (ethnically diverse) executive teams are more likely to outperform companies with non-diverse executive teams.
An offshore team exposes your executive team and the rest of your company to different cultures and values, and this can help bring new perspectives and ideas that can lead to innovative solutions.
The Challenges of Creating an Offshore Team
Of course, offshore staffing also comes with significant challenges.
1. Communication Challenges
Language and cultural barriers, plus time zone differences, can affect how effectively you and your team at home can work together with your offshore team. However, this should not be too much of a concern if you choose the right location.
As a case in point, in the Philippines, English is one of the official languages, the language used in commerce, and the primary medium of instruction in schools and universities; there should be no language barrier between you and your offshore team. The time zone difference should not be a problem, either, because your offshoring partner will make sure your remote staff is available in whichever time zone you require.
Issues may arise because of cultural differences, particularly in the cultural nuances of the language and how you and your team members offshore understand and use certain words and phrases. However, this is something some cultural immersion and training will easily address.
2. Managing Remote Teams
There are also logistics problems, primarily operating and managing your remote team efficiently and effectively when you’re not physically present.
3. Lack of Trust
Even companies hiring remote workers in the same city and country have trust issues. One of the concerns employers (and their in-office employees) have is that remote employees work less or are less productive than their in-office counterparts. In fact, the SHRM research cited earlier underscored this perception about remote workers.
Understandably, companies might think they’re not getting maximum productivity from their remote hires. This perception can be difficult to overcome, especially in offshore outsourcing, because it is harder to build personal relationships with globally distributed team members.
4. Legal and Regulatory Issues
When you hire talent offshore, you open yourself to potential legal and regulatory issues, such as compliance with local labor laws and your country’s data privacy and intellectual property laws.
Offshore Staffing: Bridging the Gap
Working with an offshore staffing agency can help you maximize the benefits and minimize the challenges of remote outsourcing and remote staffing.
Flexible Staffing
Offshore staffing agencies can provide customized and flexible staffing solutions.
They can build a dedicated, managed team and provide outsourcing solutions in the interim. If you already have remote workers in your target offshore location, they can provide turnkey workspace or work-from-home solutions; the former gives you plug-and-play convenience, while the latter ensures enterprise-grade data security and data loss prevention for your remote hires and freelancers.
End-to-End Solutions
An offshore staffing firm can recruit your team members, set up their workspace or office, equip your office according to your requirements, and put your dedicated team to work where and as needed. Essentially, the offshore staffing company will hire and put a team together for you, but that unit will work exclusively for you.
You won’t need to worry about payroll, information technology (IT), and day-to-day operations (who’s filing for sick leave, getting employee insurance, etc.). You don’t even have to worry about monitoring and ensuring productivity and communicating your goals to your offshore team.
As such, there’s no need to dwell on remote worker trust issues. Cultural and language barriers, as well as time zone differences, will cease to matter because you have a local management partner you can rely on to take care of all these things on your behalf. Instead, you can just enjoy the boost in productivity a dedicated team can bring to your operations.
Compliance
The offshore staffing company is the employer on record for your dedicated offshore team. This should protect you from regulatory and compliance issues in your offshore location.
The right staffing company will also use enterprise-grade security and ensure your operations do not violate intellectual property rights. This should protect you from compliance and regulatory issues in your home country.
Build a Remote Offshore Team
The prevalence of remote work arrangements means you can take advantage of offshore staffing to fill your skills shortages, save on labor costs, improve redundancy, and increase diversity in your company. However, it is not without its challenges. Working with an offshore staffing agency can help you overcome these difficulties.
