Since the pandemic, location is increasingly inconsequential to many workers’ job searches. Some people even prefer employers in other cities or countries, to avoid any chance of being called into the office.
This new remote model favors a more humane workplace culture, where workers have more flexibility and freedom in their schedules. It can also be a huge boon to employers who want to hire top talent at more affordable prices. Thanks to technology, hiring remote employees from lower-cost countries is no longer off the table.
If you’re thinking of outsourcing some of your company’s roles or departments, especially globally, read on to learn more. Here’s how you can take advantage of outsourcing to grow your workforce without sacrificing quality or productivity.
1. Don’t Try to Go It Alone
Your current team probably isn’t prepared for the logistically and legally complex process of hiring workers abroad. Hiring overseas is a complex process that differs for each country your prospective employees work in. Understanding the nuances of salaries, benefits, and termination laws in each location can take up weeks of your human resources team’s time.
Even when you’ve got it figured out, you still have to implement new systems for staying compliant and handling all your processes. Calculating taxes and implementing cross-border payroll are just two of the administrative hurdles you’ll be looking at every day.
Instead of trying to make it all happen with your current HR and legal staff, consider working with an employer of record. An EOR is a third-party intermediary that acts as the official employer of a company’s overseas workers. It can administer payroll, tackle local regulatory issues, and handle other localized tasks that might be burdensome for your company.
When you work with an employer of record, all your hiring and employment tasks are streamlined. Instead of dealing with the headache of how and where you can hire, you can think about who and why. An EOR gives you access to a greatly expanded talent pool without local challenges holding you back. It frees you up to hire international employees effectively.
2. Pick and Choose Which Roles to Outsource
Some of the most common jobs to outsource overseas include manufacturing, IT, customer service, content creation, and marketing. Meanwhile, roles that handle more sensitive data — like those in finance and cybersecurity — are usually best kept home. Executive positions should nearly always be kept in-house, as well as those responsible for training and development.
Employees working in-house will get more accurate and more frequent feedback when they work closely with internal leadership. But even remote and overseas employees benefit from companies keeping leadership roles in-house. That’s because leaders with close ties to the company have a better understanding of its culture, values, and trade secrets.
Customer service is one of the most frequent and widely known uses of overseas talent. But it can also be one of the worst ones, and the most likely to cause customer churn. Even the best-trained, hardest-working overseas reps may not understand the nuances of your local language or culture. Outsourcing customer service also exposes call center workers to significant racism and verbal abuse.
Content projects are easy to outsource, especially since they can often be delegated to freelancers. But this is another area where local communication skills can really make a difference. Using sites like Upwork or Fiverr to find freelancers abroad can get you content very inexpensively. But it may need a lot of editorial intervention or be inconsistent with your other messaging.
3. Try Just One or Two Projects to Start
One way to find success while minimizing risk is to outsource iteratively and learn from each attempt. Instead of hiring full-time staff abroad, try using temporary contract workers to complete a specific project. Then you can take any successes and failures and apply those lessons to more projects going forward.
Project-based outsourcing can also save your team time, money, and labor because it can be handled independently of regular staff. Since there’s a limited timeline and specific goals and metrics to achieve, you can train partners to manage the entire project. The nature of this kind of project work means this is one case where it’s actually a good idea to outsource leadership.
One way to implement this principle is via a pilot project like a one-time content overhaul to a large company blog or website. You can hire a few skilled content workers to oversee larger teams of short-term contract or freelance employees abroad. Overseas workers can easily perform repetitive tasks like updating links or optimizing content for SEO, according to a specific set of guidelines.
Once that initial project is complete, it will be easier to determine whether you’d like to move forward with more outsourcing. You’ll have gained a good sense of what it’s like to work with that specific EOR or those particular workers. This kind of simple, project-based assignment is a great low-risk way to determine whether and how outsourcing can work for you.
Communication Tools Are Everything
Two of the main downsides to hiring abroad can be gaps in communication and time zone differences. But with proper preparation and tools, both of these hurdles can actually be amazing assets.
Companies based in only one or two locations will have to choose between downtime or paying overtime. But those with workers in multiple time zones can benefit from round-the-clock coverage without anyone working an overnight shift.
Good project management, instant messaging, and scheduling software can turn a disjointed global workforce into a powerful worldwide network. With the right systems in place, there’s always someone on call to solve problems, both internally and for your customers.
