Since the onset of the pandemic, the overall operation of businesses has changed dramatically. From the introduction of working from home, to the need to digitise processes and update systems to facilitate remote work, companies have had to adapt to these new realities anticipated to affect workplace practices post-COVID19.
Now more than ever, organisations are seeking out ways to reduce costs and overheads wherever they can. To thrive in a post-pandemic world, both businesses hit hard by the pandemic's economic impact, along with those who made it through unscathed will need to renew their focus on cost to position themselves for continued success. It's not just managing costs that need to be a business focus, but areas such as staff satisfaction, quality control and improving efficiencies are all important to establishing business continuity.
Outsourcing is a business solution that can help businesses achieve these goals and also remain viable long-term. In this blog, we will address how the new norm of remote work and outsourcing go hand in hand to improve business efficiency and the overall benefits an organisation can expect to receive from engaging an outsourcing provider.
88% of organisations worldwide made it mandatory or encouraged their employees to work from home when COVID-19 became a pandemic. During this time, many organisations were concerned about how employee productivity would be impacted by remote work. What surprised many businesses was that productivity levels actually increase 47%.
Remote working is now an accepted workplace norm, and will continue to be even after the pandemic. A study conducted by Swinburne University identified that three out of four managers believe that their employees will perform more remote work post-COVID-19 if productivity levels continue at this rate. From an employee perspective, 90% of them within the study believed they would continue to work remotely in the future. To add to this, in a survey conducted by Gartner, 80% of company leaders plan to allow employees to work remotely, at least part-time after the pandemic, with 47% allowing them to work from home full-time.
To sustain these productivity increases, businesses need to seriously consider that perhaps not all employees would be better off returning to the pre-pandemic office work routine. In fact, forcing these pre-COVID-19 workplace practices could be detrimental to businesses from an employee satisfaction perspective. Flexjob's survey found that 65% of respondents want to be full-time remote employees post-pandemic, with 31% indicating they’d prefer a hybrid remote work environment: a total of 96% wanting some form of remote work lifestyle.
To add to this, 27% of employees within the same study found that remote work practices are now so important to them that they are even willing to take a 10-20% reduction in their pay to remain working from home. A further 81% believe their loyalty to their employers would increase if their work options were more flexible towards remote work.
So how can outsourcing help sustain these productivity levels, keep staff satisfaction high while reducing employment costs and overheads? Outsourcing is a smarter resourcing strategy where a business engages a third-party organisation to take care of time-consuming and transactional tasks - in another location. For example, a businesses outsourcing provider could be located down the road or in a different country, but both circumstances work around the same function: a remote work model.
As businesses currently have their in-house employees working from home or remotely, it is fair to say that most internal processes, technology and systems are already set up to well-accommodate introducing outsourcing into the business. It's just a matter of managers identifying what tasks can be easily delegated to an outsourced team.
Outsourcing benefits can differ from organisation to organisation as each business will have a different reason to engage an outsourcing provider.
However, some top-level benefits can be applied to most organisations that engage in outsourcing.
Employment costs can average anywhere between 20-50% or more of a business's gross sales, which vary by industry. Depending on your outsourcing provider, outsourcing can significantly reduce these costs by up to 70%. However, this really comes down to the outsourcing provider you choose to engage with. These cost reductions can be a mix of:
These cost savings mean that businesses free up funds to reinvest back into business growth initiatives.
How much more value-add work could be done by your local team if the time-consuming and repetitive tasks were essentially not there for them to do? How familiar is the statement "if I didn't have to do this, I'd have more time to do that" or "I'd rather be working on this than spending my time doing that"? Here is where outsourcing comes in.
Suppose you were to 'get rid' of those tasks causing capacity issues in your existing team. The impact to staff satisfaction and productivity would be immediate. The 'get rid' aspect is to delegate those tasks to an outsourced team that thrive on supporting your local team by taking on those transactional tasks.
Considering outsourcing? Not sure where to start?
Download this ultimate outsourcing toolkit that takes you through, step-by-step, what outsourcing is, what to expect from it, how to choose the right provider and the many benefits your business could receive from outsourcing it’s services.

Gary Culverhouse is the National Sales Manager for Beepo.
Gary’s main goal is to develop strategic partnerships that drive business efficiency and growth within their clients. Beepo is a Probe Group Company, with almost 13,000 people in six different countries working together to deliver exceptional outsourcing services.
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