Why choose an offshore colleague instead of a local employee?Waarom kiezen voor een offshore collega in plaats van een lokale werknemer?Varför ska man välja en offshore-kollega istället för att anställa lokalt?Warum ausländische Kollegen ortsansässigen Angestellten vorziehen?
When speaking to software companies in Europe, I often get to hear ‘we want to have people in our office’. This is something I fully understand. Having people in your own office makes it easier for organization than having people in another building or another country. What then, are the reasons to hire an offshore team?
A. Finding the right people
One of the biggest challenges for software companies today is finding the right programmers. In Europe, there is a big shortage of IT people. And the IT companies are all looking to hire the brightest minds. In the years to come, the shortage will become bigger because the population gets grey and very few people do a technical education.
Als ik praat met softwarebedrijven in Europa hoor ik vaak ‘wij willen mensen op kantoor hebben’. Dit begrijp ik volkomen. De organisatie is veel makkelijker als de mensen op kantoor zijn in plaats van wanneer ze zich in een ander land bevinden. Wat zijn dan de redenen om een offshore team in te huren?
A. De juiste mensen vinden
Één van de grootste uitdagingen voor softwarebedrijven vandaag de dag is het vinden van de juiste programmeurs. In Europa is er een enorm tekort aan IT mensen. En IT bedrijven willen alleen de slimste mensen aannemen. In de komende jaren zal het tekort groter worden vanwege de vergrijzing en het feit dat weinig mensen een technische opleiding volgen.
När man talar med mjukvaruföretag i Europa, får jag ofta höra ”Vi vill ha folk på vårt kontor”. Detta är något som jag fullt förstår. Att ha folk på det egna kontoret gör det lättare för organisationen än att ha folk i en annan byggnad eller ett annat land.Vad är då fördelarna med att anlita ett offshore team?
A. Hitta rätt människor
En av de största utmaningarna för mjukvaruföretag idag är att hitta de rätta programmerarna. I Europa råder stor brist på IT – personal, och IT-företagen vill anställa de mest begåvade personerna. Under de kommande åren kommer bristen att öka då befolkningen blir gråare och färre människor genomgår en teknisk utbildning.
Wenn ich mit Softwareunternehmen in Europa spreche, muss ich oft hören: “Wir möchten Leute in unserem Büro haben.“ Das ist etwas für das ich volles Verständnis habe. Die Leute in dem eigenen Büro zu haben, macht die Organisation einfacher, als wenn sich die Leute in einem anderen Gebäude oder in einem anderen Land befinden. Was sind dann die Argumente um ein ausländisches Team anzustellen?
A. Das Finden der richtigen Leute
Eine der größten Herausforderungen für Softwareunternehmen ist heute das Finden der richtigen Programmierer. In Europa gibt es einen großen Mangel an IT-Leuten. Und die IT-Unternehmen sind alle interessiert die besten Leute einzustellen. In den kommenden Jahren wird der Mangel noch größer werden, da die Bevölkerung auf Grund der demografischen Entwicklung älter wird und sehr wenige Leute eine technische Ausbildung erhalten.
By attracting talent offshore or nearshore, you enable your company to involve bright people. The labor pool you are tapping into is substantially larger and there are very motivated people that would love to start working for you tomorrow.
B. Attracting talent
When you tap into a big labor pool, you will be able to attract bright minds, talented people. By involving smart people in your production process, the added value of your services and company goes up.
C. The growth of your company
Because it will become much easier for your organization to attract people, you can grow. Your competitors will face difficulties in attracting sufficient programmers and hence will have to turn down clients. If you always have the capacity and can scale up faster, you will outperform the industry.
D. Profit
People offshore or nearshore earn lower salaries. You save costs on direct labor costs, your margin grows and your company can become more profitable.
E. Flexibility
Labor laws in most European countries are very strict and it’s not easy to scale your resources up or down. You remove this obstacle by involving people abroad, specifically if you work with a supplier.
There are many more reasons to choose an offshore team over local employees. But I believe the single most important reason is: people. There is a real lack of skilled programmers, I face this every day while talking to software companies. In the current recession this is a fact, when the economy goes up, it will be much worse. The companies that start assembling an offshore team and that learn how to manage a team on a distance will be the winners of the future.
If you are interested to learn more about global IT staffing, I recommend you to visit www.bridge-global.com
About Hugo Messer
Hugo Messer is a Dutch entrepreneur, distributed agile team specialist, and author. He is the founder and owner of Bridge Global, a software services provider, and ekipa.co., an agile coaching agency. He has been building and managing teams around the world for the past several years. His passion is to enable people that are spread across cultures, geography and time zones to cooperate. Whether it’s offshoring or nearshoring, he knows what it takes to make global cooperation work.
View all posts by Hugo Messer →
It is difficult to get a reliable help, especially on accounting. And even if you do find someone good, they are going to cost much more than $10 an hour. It’s better to outsource this kind of service because first, you need to have someone who majors on that field. Second, it’s expensive to hire an expert locally than hiring someone from a lower income country. And lastly, if you’re thinking of doing it yourself to save money, you’re just going to waste a lot of time while not having any assurance of having a high quality output.
However, I totally get it why it’s kind of scary to hire someone offshore. You wouldn’t really know if he’s working on the job he is paid to do. But if you hire someone from staff.com, it has a time tracking tool that records the hours worked, sites visited when working and can take screenshots of the staff’s computer screen. You could read this article for more great tips.