Ensuring Quality When Outsourcing

We have all heard the outsourcing horror story. A company starts outsourcing processes and suddenly the quality of their product or service drops dramatically. Ensuring quality when outsourcing is a major worry for any business looking into the practice.

However, quality doesn’t just get lost. It is either a lack of communication, a shortage of available resources, or insufficient skills to complete a task. These all lead to a poorly completed job.

Here are six key tips to assist you in avoiding non-delivery of time-dependent projects, and ensure that your business retains the the quality you are used to – whether the job is completed locally or by a remote employee.

1. Put effort into the hiring process

While Deployed takes a lot of the work out of hiring in the Philippines, you need to be involved as well. Make sure the job description is accurate and as extensive as possible. You want to hire someone for the job you need them to do, not for a job that’s close to it. By writing a comprehensive job description we can target our candidate search as precisely as possible.

2. Take time when interviewing candidates

Make sure you hire someone you are comfortable can do the job and understands the culture of your company. Let them know that quality is expected by your customers – and that you in turn expect the highest level of quality from your business.
If you don’t think anyone you interview is up to the job, don’t be afraid to go back to the hiring pool. Don’t settle for a candidate you aren’t sure about to save time and effort.

3. Go through the onboarding process thoroughly

Expecting instant results from your offshore staff isn’t the way to maintain quality or build relationships. Take the time to get people comfortable in their roles, and to establish lines of communication. Build up responsibilities as you feel your new employee is ready for them, and try not to rush the process. Give your new remote staff the chance to understand what your expectations for quality are, and the ability to reach them.

4. Establish expectations upfront

Although expecting instant results isn’t useful, from the first day you should be introducing your new offshore staff to your company culture, including the expectation that your company provides quality products and services. You can set a high bar if you also give your remote staff the tools to clear it.
Take a positive stance on bringing up issues. Your employee should feel confident in raising difficulties so you can deal with them before they cause problems. Halting a slide in quality is more difficult and less effective than preventing that slide in the first place.

5. Grow your relationship with your remote team

Like any business relationship, the longer you and your offshore staff work together, the better both parties understand one another. By retaining your offshore staff and using them for ongoing work you will be able to fine-tune your communication methods, progress checks, and quality expectations.
Investing in your remote team over the long-term helps ensure your staff are similarly invested in the quality of your product or service and the success of your business.
Make sure that you provide regular feedback as you work with your offshore staff to allow them to improve their provisions and maintain standards.

6. Put resources into your offshore team

It’s a truism that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. To maintain high quality in your business you should be willing to pay more than the absolute minimum to your offshore staff. Cost savings are eradicated if your local team has to spend extra time correcting mistakes.
Beyond that basic tenet, you also need to be willing to expand your offshore team. There is a limit to the amount of work one person can get done, even if they are exceptional. You might find you need to hire more remote staff to keep up with increased demand, even if you hadn’t planned to grow your remote team that quickly or at all.

Fears about reduced quality can discourage businesses from realising the benefits outsourcing could achieve. But with a little planning and effort, quality can be maintained or even increased while you outsource. Deployed can help you save time and worry by providing advice tailored for your business. We get you started outsourcing with confidence.