As economies continue to move toward globalization, companies continue to be on the lookout for new and better ways to expand their reach, establish their products and services and leverage skills, talents and resources to improve and save on their operations. Offshore staff leasing has become an integral part of this phenomenon.
What is Offshore Staff Leasing?
Offshore staff leasing is increasingly becoming a popular option for businesses that are looking to ensure efficiency in their workforce. Since the leased staff can handle numerous back-office functions, including data entry, accounting, and recruitment, businesses can focus on handling and improving their core competencies, while also saving time and money.
Offshoring, in general, is a common practice of businesses in all sizes. These businesses relocate some of their company’s processes and services overseas to take advantage of lower costs.
However, offshore staff leasing is not a one-size-fits-all solution for all business woes. If you are considering using offshore staff leasing as a part of your business toolkit, you would be able to get the most out of the deal if you apply these three best practices:
1. Needs Assessment
You need to have the right reasons before you decide to lease staff offshore. Just because your competitors are doing it does not mean you should too. To know if this is indeed the best solution for your business do not just look at the costs you can save. Instead, you should evaluate your existing resources that include your infrastructure and employees.
Are they enough to keep your operations going? Are more and better systems and workforce necessary to ensure your business growth? The result of an assessment like this should give you a good idea of whether you need to lease an offshore staff or not.
Apart from your resources, it is equally important to assess what you want your offshore staff would bring to the table. Is it to reduce overhead costs? Improve productivity and efficiency? Minimize the workload? By doing this, you will be able to determine what you want to get out of the deal. You will also be able to establish realistic goals for your business.
2. Detailed Contract
A contract is important to any business deal, and an offshore staff is not an exemption. When drawing up a contract, make sure that it covers everything from expected output and deadlines to payment schedules, staff responsibilities, and contingencies.
If the outsourcer would be the one to provide the contract, do not sign on the dotted line unless everything is clear and you know what you are getting yourself into. Remember, a staff leasing deal is one big decision for your business, so you want to make sure that everything important to you and your company is in writing.
3. Ongoing Management and Performance Evaluation
Once your leased offshore team has been set up, you want to ensure they are properly guided and meet your work expectations. As such, it is necessary that you or someone in your company manages the team to keep your business humming. If possible invest heavily in your leased staff’s training so they will be able to properly carry out the work expected from them.
Open communication should also be exercised to allow the leased staff to feel that they are a part of your team. This will also prevent costly mishaps from occurring. It is also equally important to regularly conduct performance evaluations to monitor the productivity and efficiency of the leased staff and at the same time determine the quality of service the partner firm is providing.
What are the Benefits of Offshore Staff Leasing?
Offshore staff leasing has indeed a handful of merits on your business. This has been a continuous trend for businesses even from different types of industries. If done right, it is one effective way for these businesses to remain competitive in the ever-changing global environment. Furthermore, offshoring in general also has the following benefits:
- Cost Reduction – the cost of hiring a third party is way lower than hiring in-house employees.
- Improve Productivity – offshoring some of your business processes will improve your company’s productivity. This is mainly because you will be able to focus more on your business’s core functions and resources.
- Promote Flexibility – since you are offshoring outside of your country, it also means that you will be working with people from a different time-zone. Your business will have the opportunity to be managed overextended hours. Have the benefit of round-the-clock business operations.
- Access to Skilled Resources – having to offshore frees you from the responsibility of recruiting and training your newly hired employees. Offshoring allows you to acquire services from well-skilled professionals remotely.
Why You Should Offshore to the Philippines?
The BPO industry in the Philippines is consistently thriving with foreign companies that continuously entrust some of their business processes to Filipinos.
While other countries offer staff leasing services, the Philippines has now been the top country that foreigners offshore to for the following reasons:
- The majority of Filipinos speak English fluently. The Philippines is ranked as the third country in Asia in English proficiency.
- Filipinos are hardworking. Filipinos have a high work ethic, and the increasing number of foreign company’s offshoring in the Philippines is its proof.
- The Philippines is immersed in Western Culture. Since the country was colonized by Spaniards and Americans for about 400 years, the country has been well adaptive to both country’s cultures.
- Start-up Friendly. Since offshoring in the Philippines is a cost advantage, it also means that even foreign start-up businesses can also easily offshore to the country.
There are a lot of business management strategies nowadays which you can try. However, finding the right one that will truly work for you and your business is quite hard. Staff leasing services is just one of the options out there. Make sure that before you try it for yourself, you are highly aware of how it works, its advantages and disadvantages and lastly, the staff leasing company you want to work with.
Prime Outsourcing provides a wide range of service delivery models to cater to your business concerns. To know more about the benefits of offshoring and outsourcing that we are offering, kindly proceed on our service page.
