Launching a business requires a lot of planning, especially in recruitment. Let’s find out how you can effectively cut costs by hiring offshore talent.
In business, partnering up with offshore companies is nothing new. Most times, this is confused with business outsourcing companies.
We talked about what is offshoring and outsourcing and determined the main difference in our last blog “Offshoring vs Outsourcing: What’s the difference?”. If you’re considering building your business using offshore talent, you must first understand what works for you. Let’s do a recap.
In essence, offshoring lets you keep full control of your business processes. Unlike outsourcing, you never have to share any critical or proprietary information with anyone else. This reduces the risk of infringement. With offshoring, your employees might be located in a country where you can save on employment costs.
Outsourcing works by allowing any third party to take an important function in your organization. It has its own advantages and disadvantages. This is pretty useful in production and taking in skilled workers. Outsourcing gained popularity in the 1990s. Companies started to cut non-essential labor costs and started outsourcing jobs in customer service, accounting, HR, and many others.
Now let’s go back to why you should consider using offshore talent. Remember, you have full control over your business processes. But you have to do your homework. What do you need to understand before hiring offshore talent?
Why Use Offshore Talent?
When you are a startup, you have to always consider the business costs. Working out-of-pocket, you have to be smart about where you will spend your money. In this case, working with offshore talent can be an alternative.
Look at it this way, there are a lot of tech startups out there who took advantage of creating an offshore team. Take Skype for example; they created a team based in Estonia. IBM, Apple, Microsoft, and many other software companies actually use offshore talent.
Besides saving on employment costs, you get smart people to work for you. We’re so confident about this, why? We’ve been hiring offshore talent for years! But more on that later. We’ve determined that there is a distinct difference in business processes between outsourcing and offshoring. Let’s take a look at a possible business situation.
Let’s say that you want to hire two software engineers for your next big business idea. You partner up with an outsourcing company with a limited budget. They give you engineers, but after some time their productivity vs. their output just isn’t how you expected it. You’re at a loss and it isn’t feasible to continue with the partnership as they are not delivering as promised.
When you use offshore talent, you are involved from hiring to production. Like we said, total control. You get to know where your team is stuck, how you can improve, and move forward with the project in a timely manner. Also, working with experienced offshore talent will make work easier! What are some of the disadvantages when you use offshoring?
Hiring Offshore talent: Common Concerns for Startups
You want to cut labor costs and get quality employees. Any startup founder would want that. This is actually a strategic move. In essence, you should be smart about where you will spend your money.
Offshoring has lots of advantages for budding businesses. However, it would be good to gain awareness about the disadvantages. Here are some of the disadvantages of offshoring talent:
- Language barrier
- Sociocultural differences
- Time Zone adjustments
- Quality work
- Decreased onshore job opportunities
One of the hot topics in HR right now is work-life balance. How do you do that when you hire offshore talent? You can offer flexible work options while they hold their end of the deal. Your team should deliver and get their work done within an agreed set of parameters.
When COVID-19 hit, many workers considered work flexibility as an important factor. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics tracked the number of hours an average employee works. It is found that 81.7% of employees did some or all of their work onsite, while 23.7% worked at home. Employees that have flexible work arrangements have higher job satisfaction and loyalty to their employers.
How does this apply to business offshoring? Well, before onboarding a new team member, both parties need to agree on a schedule for them to work together.
You can require a 4-hour overlap where you can sync up or for them to do the urgent tasks within your workday. Whatever the purpose is, you have to be clear on what you need and expect from your offshore talent.
Building your Offshoring Team
Just like getting an onshore team to work together, the same workflow goes with an offshore team. Regardless, it is critical that you choose the right offshore talent. What do you need to consider before building the best offshore team?
1. Skills Assessment
As a startup owner, you must already have a vision of your business and where you want to take it. You need to think about the core skills you need to launch your startup. You could require your offshore talent to have specific programming language skills. Best to look for employees who have excellent oral and written communication skills.
2. Business Goal Setting
Build a business strategy with at least 3 core goals. Set reasonable deadlines with the current amount of manpower that you have. Match every milestone with your defined business goals.
3. Secure your Finances
Now it is not new for startups to have this kind of challenge. You need to keep being realistic about where you are spending your money. Keep tabs on where your focus lies in building your business.
4. Set feasible timelines
Getting past every milestone is a big win. So, you have to create realistic and feasible goals for your timelines. Even before launching, you should take into account the time spent on each project. If you need help gauging how long a project takes, you can hire a development manager.
5. Be strategic with business challenges
There will be hundreds of bumps along the way. It is best that you identify the top pain areas and possible risks. Look for an offshore team who will be able to solve those problems for you. Talk about value for your hard-earned startup money. New ideas will brew and you might be surprised to see innovative solutions to your problems.
Offshoring: a Thing Today and Tomorrow
Hiring offshore talent is nothing new. Startups have been using offshoring for years. As a startup founder, you need to partner with qualified offshore talent to help you launch sooner. Taking care of your employees should also be a priority.
Encouraging work-life balance in the workplace will increase productivity, loyalty, and employee satisfaction. Set proper parameters that you and your offshore talent will agree on. The rewards will be endless.
Offshoring will give you opportunities to save on costs without compromising quality. Building your startup will not be a walk in the park, that’s for sure. But making the right decisions helps you along your journey.
If you’re having difficulty looking for quality offshore talent, you may want to hire an offshore company like Full Scale. From recruitment, workforce management, and content development, we got that work covered!
It’s time to shift your focus to where it matters, let us do the rest. We’re always down to work with you. Let us know how we can help you succeed and make your big business goals a reality!
