After a perplexing year, business owners and marketing teams globally are searching to boost their growth over the following 12 months. During this year, the focus should be to increase your team’s performance while at the same time doing so on a budget.
Welcome to the world of outsourcing, and virtual assistance. Virtual assistants are the cost-effective staffing solution that is a game-changer for many businesses around the world.
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Comment by Daniel M., from Southpoint Media
“When we set off to expand our team, we had to learn a lot of lessons the hard way. Lessons like: Finding the right people is hard, finding the wrong people costs a tremendous amount of time and money; and, most importantly, finding someone who can help with all of your staffing needs is a game-changer. Mads and his team have helped our business find the right staff to fit our needs and improve our staffing-related processes. Their insight and knowledge have been invaluable in helping our hiring from the top down and we are so grateful for their help in managing the team.” (Daniel M., from Southpoint Media, review of Aristo Sourcing).
How can outsourcing help your business?
The comment by Daniel sums it up – outsourcing is a game-changer that can help a business upscale faster. But let’s go into a bit more detail about the five key benefits of outsourcing.
Focus on core tasks
A business’s back-office operations will grow as the company grows; however this growth could demand hiring more onsite staff. This equates to greater business expenses, ranging from more salaries, additional work stations and equipment, to more work for your HR department, or even to creating one. Still, the back-office operations are needed to keep the business running successfully.
If a company outsources these laborious and boring yet important tasks to a virtual assistant, the in-house staff can focus on their core tasks. The costs of completing these admin-based tasks will be lower than having your in-house staff complete them. In addition, removing this type of work from your core staff’s workload will increase their productivity. Moreover, they will not then be drained by work they were not originally hired to complete.
Maintain lower costs
Although mentioned before, an important point to remind of is the cost savings. The reality is that spending funds on additional equipment. These can include items such as laptops, company phones, desks and chairs, not to mention stationary, which always seems to disappear from the office, eats into the budget. Add to this the need to rent a larger office space to accommodate all your employees, and the amounts become ridiculous.
In contrast, outsourcing allows the company to grow by using virtual assistants working remotely from their own home office, using their own equipment. There is also no need to spend any funds to accommodate offsite staff. More so, this is a massive savings for the business. This approach can also work for companies wanting to downsize somewhat. Many companies are opting for smaller teams to work for them. These would be highly skilled professionals who would command really respectable salaries and excellent benefits. To counter this expense, some businesses are outsourcing their admin work to remote assistants. Such costs are much lower than having an onsite worker. As such, the savings are used to cover the high wages paid to the core team.
Additionally, some companies are opting to outsource selected departments such as their HR department to remote assistants. This is simply because HR may not be the focus of the company. It reduces expenses to outsource the HR. All the HR work is thus completed, but at a lower cost.
Promote growth
The business overhead expenses of some tasks are extremely high. Nonetheless, such expenses are needed to offer the client great service and to expand the company or even to be competitive. Here outsourcing can be an excellent choice not only to reduce these costs, but to gain access to much-needed talent, thus ensuring the success of the projects. Moreover, this can assist to increase the efficiency of the business, thus making the business stronger than its competitors. For instance, when a business outsources its customer service department, it ensures that the clients are well looked after. At the same time, the company saves money, not having to hire onsite workers demanding higher salaries and benefits.
Preserve operational control
Outsourcing should be considered for tasks that demand mounting costs. Certain departments could have developed over time into disorderly and badly managed spaces. What an outsourcing company would do is to offer the right candidates who can correct these departments through onboarding the skills needed to restructure and develop the company. For example, this could be the HR department or IT department. Outsourcing, for instance the IT to a freelance assistant, means that the work is completed as it should be and the processes can be returned to their stable best.
Provide staffing flexibility
Outsourcing permits tasks or departments that have recurring difficulties to gain access to additional resources when needed. Moreover, outsourcing some tasks means that the company can quickly and with flexibility make any necessary changes. For instance, during tax season a company might need accounting skills; outsourcing allows the business to onboard these skills solely for the season. Once not needed, the skilled workers can be dismissed.
Offer stability and risk management
Times of high worker turnover can add ambiguity and unpredictability to any company. Outsourcing offers a level of continuity to the business while decreasing the risk that a substandard level of work could bring about, even over a brief period. For example, the HR manager could be on a lengthy medical leave and the admin assistant then leaves the company. Outsourcing the HR duties eases risk and permits the business to keep functioning despite the manager being absent. It similarly offers you time to employ a new associate instead of rushing an assessment, the office being short-staffed.
Grow internal staff
A vast project can need skills that your workers might not have, which is where outsourcing can help. For instance, if a business requires a new website, a website designer can be onboarded to complete the tasks of setting up the website. With outsourcing, a company can onboard the skills needed to assist the current staff to complete their work. You are free to facilitate onboarding and offboarding with no fear of hurt feelings or reprisals.