What is outsourcing?

Outsourcing is a term, which refers to a company trying to hire people outside their company that have the services that the former doesn’t have. For example, web design companies who don’t have their own graphics design team may hire the services of a graphic design company to do some of the work for them. Another form of outsourcing is when a company is still capable of doing the tasks such as customer service, yet chooses to hire the services of an external or independent customer service agency to do the work for them.

Why do people outsource?

The main reason why people outsource is that it’s cheaper. The outsourced company only has to provide minimal overhead expenses and can do the tasks at a lesser price. Instead of hiring in-house tech-supports, a company can choose to outsource that particular task or service to another company in another country, depending on the outsourcing service available. For tech-support and customer-support services, large companies hire call centres to do the work for them. This is a common scenario in countries like India and Philippines, and it is actually a win-win situation for both the company and the outsourced company.

How to train your outsourced employees

Training your outsourced employees is completely the same and different as training an employee locally. One thing that makes it different is that you don’t have to get a training room hire because the employees may not be in the same country as you are, unless you actually travel to the country and train them personally.

Regardless, here’s how you can train your employees:

1. Personal visits – Speaking from experience, most of the clients of outsourcing service providers visit the country just to provide training for the employees or the trainers. For technical products like routers and other computer paraphernalia, clients usually send one of their personnel to train the tech-support people in an outsourcing company.
2. Video conferencing – This is close to personal visit because it still allows a client to train employees in real time, even with the different time zone. The only downside here is that technical issues such as Internet or power interruptions can disrupt the training process.
3. Train trainers – When training employees may look overwhelming, a client can hire or focus on teaching trainers on how to train their employees. Most call-centre agencies actually have trainers for each account, so the task is properly delegated and the client does not need to fly in and out of the country every time there’s a new hire.

Outsourcing is not a new thing and is used by big companies like Apple, Microsoft, and the likes. It has a lot of advantages, yet it is not without disadvantages. However, outsourcing is still a good way for you to run your business and help it grow, regardless of your industry and/or niche.