Considerations for hiring offshore staff

Your staff is one of the most crucial parts of the success of your business.

They do the majority of the work, perform back-office tasks, and efficiently streamline your day-to-day functions, so you won’t necessarily have to.

They take care of a huge chunk of your daily operations, so you should be careful when hiring an offshore team for your business.

Outsourcing partners usually take time to find the right staff for a business to ensure their success and avoid any attritions on their part.

Hiring the right offshore staff is one of the critical factors mentioned by Staff Domain’s Co-Founder and Managing Director Justin Pavsic as he discussed offshore staffing with Outsource Accelerator CEO Derek Gallimore at the Outsource Accelerator podcast.

Hire offshore staff and save cost.

Most companies hire offshore staff primarily to cut costs and save on resources. They enjoy savings at around 70% through this method.

However, in reality, offshoring should do more than help you save money.

There are a lot of reasons why businesses fail in offshoring in the first place. One of them is that they mostly focus on savings, which in return, sacrifices the quality of work they expect to receive.

As Justin mentioned, most of the businesses they interviewed “went that extra mile to save that extra dollar,” only to get dissatisfied in the end.

With that, you should not mainly focus on the savings but also on their long-term benefits to your company and how they could affect you and your in-house team.

Build an offshore software development team

Offshore development offers a high-quality talent pool, cheaper labor costs, and cutting-edge technologies, which are utilized by businesses.

Partnership with the top offshore outsourcing company can ensure project success and sustainability in certain business functions.

Software development teams are one of the most often offshored corporate operations due to the skilled labor and resource-intensive nature of their duties when performed in-house.

Several giant corporates and potential startups retain their competitiveness by offshoring software professionals from nations such as the Philippines as well as from other countries.

Other things to consider when hiring an offshore staff

Justin explained that Staff Domain’s 10 crucial success factors in outsourcing mainly revolve around people and people management.

For that, companies should also consider the following factors when hiring the right staff for offshore staffing needs in any sector, such as in business process outsourcing and recruitment process outsourcing.

Having processes and metrics ready

First, Justin suggests having your “documentation process sooner rather than later.” Offshore teams love processes and documentation to follow.

Having them ready makes it easier for you to hire qualified candidates around the world – since you only have to show them how your business operations work while walking them through a step-by-step process.

Getting a senior staff

Then, it’s better to hire and train senior staff first.  As Justin explains it, a senior staff “becomes your Cornerstone person to help you manage the rest of your team.”

Senior staff is usually a person who can pick up and learn your processes easily. They can also help you train the rest of your offshore staff to have informed decisions better and develop their effective communication skills.

Manager to manage operations

Aside from senior staff, you should also hire a manager who can be a point of contact between you and your team.

A manager also sends you necessary reports including performance progress to see how your team is doing with the job assigned to them.

Starting with a small team

The Staff Domain Co-Founder also mentioned having a staggered approach in hiring your team. Start with a single staff to train and work with you first. Then, continue to hire a few more as your workload increases.

This helps you manage and distribute your workload better without having your employees get burned out from the job.

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Treating offshore staff as an extension of the company

Lastly, consider your offshore staff as a part of a company. As much as possible, get your in-house employees to be comfortable with your offshore team to keep them motivated in their job.

Through their study, Justin found out that companies that have a holistic approach in working with their teams are more successful in offshoring than having a separate team in operations.

How to choose the right offshore staffing agency?

If you discover potential candidates for the project, they will have the enthusiasm and drive to create an exceptional product or provide excellent services.

You must obtain acceptable pricing when selecting an offshore staffing agency that can give you the most significant benefits:

• employ modern equipment
• able to do effective project management
• possess technical knowledge (if you’re seeking developers);
• in-depth understanding of business functions and most current industry practices.

The offshore staffing agency you ought to work with needs to have a comprehensive awareness of the local labor market.

Make sure that they can guide you effortlessly through the employment laws that govern the nation.

When employing a team overseas, an offshore staffing team may make things easier. Because they offer a variety of services based on the client’s workforce requirements and business goals, such as:

• Global employment outsourcing (GEO): Managing off-site and onsite cross-border recruiting in addition to other activities such as managing mergers and acquisitions.
• Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO): Composed of workforce planning, talent analytics, talent mobility, and talent development.
• Managed workforce solutions: These are pre-packaged solutions for managing hiring, onboarding, scheduling, and other support services.

Remember that your selection of an offshore team member is crucial to the success of your offshore recruitment process.

Three excellent tools for offshore team management

Whether you’re operating a startup or a long-established firm, working with an offshore team can help you achieve organizational objectives and expand your company more quickly. However, it is sometimes easier to say than to accomplish.

Management is the primary challenge for most companies worldwide. You cannot stroll over to your team to check on their progress like you would in an office.

To stay up, your offshore staff will require the proper tools to perform properly.

GitHub

Developers utilize GitHub, a collaborative code hosting platform, to store, share, and collaborate on source code files. This service is highly popular, having over 56 million developers.

It allows you to manage repositories, monitor the progress of your offshore development team, and track code modifications.

Microsoft Azure

This offshoring tool is good for project management because of its smooth transition.

It is a collection of centralized, comprehensive, relevant, and seamlessly linked tools that developers use to monitor work, manage code, perform builds, access & deploy applications, and manage testing.

In addition, you get access to several more features, such as:

• Application diagnostics
• Issue monitoring and reference checks
• Planning
• Online storage
• Access control
• API management

Zoom

This offshoring tool is great for communication and collaboration. Zoom is the most popular tool for small to big distant teams to interact.

It enables the connection of up to 1000 people in video conferencing, the simultaneous sharing of screens and annotations, and the recording or creation of meeting transcripts.

With your offshore team, you may also exchange files, send messages, and initiate audio conversations.

How Staff Domain finds the right staff for you

One thing’s for certain: your team should fulfill tasks, reach out to customers, and help you improve the quality of work even when they’re in another part of the world.

It usually takes time, money, and effort especially on your offshoring partner so you can get the best out of your investment.

For Staff Domain, this means having a sophisticated approach in hiring offshore teams. They take time in getting to know their clients’ needs and help them achieve success better.

Justin mentioned that getting a suitable offshore staff for their clients usually takes up to 21 days, right from when a client signs up to finalizing their vetted candidates. This helps them minimize turnovers and increase client satisfaction.

They also practice transparency in their pricing, having separate invoices for employees’ salaries, and fixed pricing for their facilities. This ensures their clients get high-quality, affordable services from them.

To listen to the full episode, listen here. In addition, feel free to check out Staff Domain’s offerings by visiting www.staffdomain.com