You’ve made the decision to outsource some of your business processes – now what? Before you jump straight into outsourcing, it’s important to consider team integration, your existing team and whether they’re ready to take the next step with you.
Ensuring your business’s outsourcing success requires flexibility, agility and a willingness to adapt. You may encounter challenges along the way – including whether your onshore team is ready to embrace an offshore team.
Outsourcing will significantly change the way your team works. While some may fully embrace the idea of an offshore team, you may have others who are skeptical or feel like outsourcing puts their job at risk. Understanding how to reassure your team that outsourcing is there to support them by enabling them to do their job more efficiently, providing them with more free time is crucial to its success. It’s vital to present the message in a logical way to your onshore staff.
Here are five points to discuss with your team to help them understand outsourcing’s benefits and foster team integration:
1. Job security
Working with a distributed workforce isn’t a new concept. Still, in-house teams tend to feel anxious about the changes that come about from outsourcing offshore. One of the most common fears is that they might lose their job. They may think that by outsourcing your business, the onshore team’s jobs are at risk.
It’s essential you explain the reasoning behind your outsourcing initiative and provide your team with a ‘big picture view’. Here are a few questions to answer:
- Are you struggling to recruit talented, highly skilled professionals in your local area?
- Is the business struggling to match pace with growing customer demands?
Thoroughly explaining your outsourcing initiative’s driving force and the benefits of implementing an offshore team will be critical to its success. Ideally, it would promote internal growth through additional supervisory positions for your internal team – solidifying your commitment to your existing team while promoting team integration.
2. Communication
If you want both your onshore and offshore teams to work well together, know that effective communication is vital. Without proper communication, expect problems to arise. Implementing comprehensive communication tools will facilitate team cohesion and ensure there aren’t any barriers to working together.
There are many misconceptions when it comes to team integration during outsourcing. Often, we’re asked if remote teams can communicate clearly and effectively in English or whether there will be cultural differences that hinder collaboration.
To combat these challenges, it’s essential that your teams use more than text-based communication. Video conferencing allows your onshore team to get to know your offshore team, and understand that they’re talented, valued members of your organization. Good communication makes a huge difference and will lead to better cooperation.
3. Authority
Your top onshore staff may be experts in certain elements of your company and could be extremely attached to the work that they do. In some cases, they might not be willing to pass on the work or information to others. What happens now?
Give your onshore team the right perspective and explain to them how outsourcing could benefit not just them but the entire company. By improving your business processes, they can spend more time doing valuable work and learning new skills. Giving your local team more time and control allows them to work on the ideas that would help the business grow.
4. Technology
Is your offshore team going to use the same hardware and software that your onshore team is using to share files and track projects? This may be one of the concerns of your in-house staff.
A quality outsourcing provider such as Cloudstaff can match your business requirements. In most cases, the tools and technology will not be an issue when outsourcing.
Your onshore team should be able to reach out to your remote team and collaborate without any barriers. Using innovative technology or software leads to seamless outsourcing and eliminates communication challenges, encouraging your staff to cooperate with your outsourcing plans.
5. Organization
Even if team integration is achieved, your outsourcing strategy can still encounter problems without proper organization.
To prevent this, you need the right tools and systems. Using free and readily available platforms such as Skype or Slack to set up regular meetings with your team can help promote collaboration. Organizing video conferences with your team can help them work on a project in a more efficient manner. Just make sure that it doesn’t get overwhelming for them.
Outsourcing with Cloudstaff
For over 10 years, Cloudstaff has helped businesses across the global achieve their goals by sourcing knowledgeable, high-performance offshore teams. Whether you’re looking to create efficiencies in your business processes or improve customer experience with 24/7 availability and free up time for your onshore teams to focus on growing your business.
With a talent pool featuring thousands of qualified candidates, we have the staff you need to achieve success and the tools to promote successful team integration during outsourcing. Contact our team today to find out more.