Motivating Your Outsourced Offshore Team

By ExecutiveBrief Staff

How do you sustain the interest of your new outsource team? Here are ways to keep the team passionate about providing you with top-quality service.

The success of a business relationship between a company and an outsource vendor depends on how well the delivery team implements projects on-time and on-budget. But while these three items present only the quantitative facet of this relationship, the dedication and professionalism of the outsource team sometimes tell a different story. 

Establishing a new relationship with your new outsource team is important to the success of your venture. How do you sustain the outsource team’s interest in your project? What will keep them passionate about providing you with top-quality service? Will you keep the top outsource performers?

“Human resources, and not technology, are a company’s prime asset,” said Linda Lucas, a psychologist from the New-York based Lucas Research International, when asked about the the need to address the high attrition rate in the BPO industry.

On the Human Resources front, retaining new hires and recruiting top personnel become a real challenge as companies compete for skilled workers. Andreas Bieber, a consultant of Bieber Consultancy, says that BPO companies need to immediately address the challenges of keeping their trained workers from getting hired away by competitors.

The quality of an outsource team’s output is directly proportional to the satisfaction they have in fulfilling the demands of your business. And much of this hinges on how well you value them as workers and their work. How do you make them feel that they are an integral part of your success? How do you make them feel as if they were your employees instead of outsourced consultants and workers?

• Give them a clear idea of your business objectives. Give your outsource team a bird’s eye view of your business goals because knowing these goals promotes accountability for the project. It allows them to align their professional goals with your success. It pushes forward the idea that a successful business is a reflection of the quality of their work.
• Respect them as knowledge workers. Aside from lowering your operating costs, the reason why you hired them in the first place is because of their knowledge and skills. Involve them in brainstorming sessions, ask for their ideas and consult them about process improvements. Most outsource teams do not only see themselves as engineers, communicators, or managers. Prior to your business engagement, they were groomed as consultants. So, picking their brain once in a while is a good exercise.
• Provide training. On top of paychecks, health care, and other fringe benefits, one of the major perks that outsource teams often consider is training. Providing technical trainings enables your outsource team to address the most difficult aspects of your business. Giving them soft skills trainings in business etiquette and communication paves for smoother project management and escalation procedures.  The confidence that comes from knowing that they have the right knowledge and skills to do the job well becomes apparent as the relationship matures.
• Make room for learning curves. Outsource teams need significant learning curves to fully acquaint themselves with the nature of your business, your corporate culture, your own processes, and the technical requirements of your project before they can function effectively. Give them time to learn the ropes and adopt your business culture as theirs.
• Communicate clearly your business and project requirements. Do not assume that once you have given them your requirements document, your team can implement the project right to the last detail. Frustration happens on both sides of the project relationship when requirements are not clearly communicated. Make sure that you have exhausted all channels of communication, and that objectives, designs, and requirements are clearly communicated or interpreted.  Use visual aids, screen shots, charts, and diagrams. Set up Placeware sessions or video conferences.
  
  

  Having an agreement on requirements is especially crucial when your off-shore team resides several time zones away. Email takes at least 12 hours to be addressed, while phone calls require one of you (often the off-shore team) to sacrifice personal time.  And there is nothing that discomforts any worker than sacrificing personal time.

• Provide the required infrastructure. Make sure that your off-shore team has the necessary hardware and network in place to enable them to accomplish their tasks.  If you are worried about data security and requires your off-shore team to work within your network environment through remote desktop access, giving minimal network allocation will only upset your team as they scuttle to meet your deadlines. Frustration leads to stress, stress leads to absenteeism, and spotty attendance leads to missed deadlines and possibly, low-quality outputs.
• Respect their time. Always remind yourself and your management team that outsource workers live several time zones away. While you are fast asleep, they are already developing, documenting, and checking your project.  When you login to work, they have already earned their keep for the day. Do not expect them to extend their working hours or be available for you round the clock to give immediate answers to your questions.  They, like you, need to spend time with their families and friends, and that they have to attend to personal responsibilities.
  
  

  When India-based Wipro Technologies, one of the world’s top outsourcing firms, reported a 48% annual attrition rate last year, its chief executive TK Kurien reported “odd working hours” as one of the top reasons why employees left the company.