water drain1Many business owners know that the growth of their businesses is limited by one person: themselves. Try as they might, eventually every business owner is frustrated by their own limitations.

As busy entrepreneurs we often delay strategically important work, while low-value tasks such crowd out our schedules.

To get around this, the most obvious strategy is to work longer hours. Nonetheless, organisations such as Stanford, the Economist and Harvard Business Review have shown that longer hours don't actually increase output.

For example, the Economist recently showed that output remained stable after about 48 hours per week. Longer hours are a drain on productivity and not the smartest way to get everything done.

 

We need to work smarter, not harder

Outsourcing provides a low-cost way to free up valuable time in your business. This can then provide the opportunity to focus on the more important, high-value activities that will sustain your business in the long term.

The advantages of outsourcing are many: with low value work taken care of you can focus on developing capabilities throughout the business, establishing networks, strategising about marketing and other strategically important activities that require your expertise.

Otherwise called 'Business Process Outsourcing', many businesses in Australia today are sending work to contractors locally and in other countries, rather than recruiting a local employee - the cost of getting started with outsourcing is low and technology has now enabled highly productive working relationships. Some businesses I know have employed full-time staff for less than five Australian dollars per hour.

Businesses in Australia are joining the global rush to outsource business processes. The trend is driven by a huge demand for technical talent and expertise, particularly in IT, human resources, recruitment and finance. Outsourcing in Australia has also grown to include legal, article writing, and translation services.

 

Business process outsourcing is growing

Business process outsourcing grew 3.3% from 2010 to become worth $24.8 billion Australian dollars in 2015.

There are several preferred ways to outsource. The first type of outsourcing people tried by many is task-based outsourcing. Employers hire an outsourced worker for small parcels of work, through sites like OutsourcelyFiverr, Upwork, Freelancer and Service Seeking.

The second option is role-based outsourcing, which is when a role is outsourced on a part-time or full-time basis.

If you're concerned that outsourcing is taking away Australian jobs, a 2014 report by Australian company Salmat showed that nearly 80% of businesses using offshore resources had retained or increased their local staff, with an average increase in their domestic workforce of more than 200%. Rather than taking away local jobs, outsourcing is enabling Australian businesses to thrive so that they grow and spend more on local employment.

Many business owners have a poor experience with outsourcing. One business owner I know pays for the work to be done twice by two different contractors so that he can take the best of both attempts and combine them to achieve a decent result. To my mind, performance that only meets the mark half of the time is not worth the time at all.

How can you achieve your expectations of normal performance and even exceed those expectations to achieve a high performing virtual team?

It is possible to have a great high-performing outsourced team. This is my own experience - I work daily with my executive assistant based in the Philippines and I regularly manage outsourced projects with workers based in the USA, India and Eastern Europe. I achieve these high-performing virtual teams by paying particular attention to five unique factors.

 

Want to know more about how to block the drain on your productivity through high-performance outsourcing? Join me on Friday 20 November 2015 for a webinar on High Performance Outsourcing.

The webinar will cover:

  • Whether high-performance outsourcing is right for you and your business;
  • The five unique factors that help you get the best results from your outsourced team;
  • Ten quick steps to start accessing the advantages of outsourcing.

 

This webinar will help you to decide whether outsourcing would help in your business, roles in your business that can be outsourced and which type of outsourcing is right for you.

You will also learn exactly what I do in my business to ensure I have a high-performing outsourced team.

 

About Nina Sochon
Nina Sochon is the CEO of Transformed Teams - a training, coaching and consulting firm creating incredibly successful professional teams. Receive your free Team Health Check for Conventional and Virtual Teams.