Outsourcing Hints, Tips, and Everything in Between
Outsourcing has become a huge benefit to many companies in Australia and other parts of the world. Its benefits are undisputed and the results tend to speak for themselves. Still, not every business chooses to outsource for some of its positions, but those who don’t are really missing out. Of all the areas in the world, the Philippines has become one of the premier spots to find excellent outsourced workers, and it looks to remain that way in 2016. Whether it’s virtual assistants you’re looking for, or perhaps web developers, sales assistants, or customer support personnel, outsourcing from the Philippines is a great way to find exactly what your business needs. Here, we’ll look at five reasons it’s the way to go in this New Year.
1. The time zone is great
For Australian clients, hiring Filipino virtual assistants is an excellent move in terms of work schedule. The Philippines is on the same time zone as Western Australia which puts them just one or two hours behind QLD and 2 or 3 hours behind NSW depending on daylight savings. This makes it easy for you to train, manage and maintain contact with your outsourced workers during business hours.
2. The people have excellent skills
The Philippines is known to have a high literacy rate, and on top of that, most Filipinos also speak English as it’s taught in school starting in kindergarten, as is their native language. They also have the ability to hone their vocal skills so that they have a good, neutral accent, which helps a great deal when working for American and Australian clients. Also, it’s not difficult to find a diverse skill set, with some Filipinos having great IT and programming experience while others have strengths in finance, HR, content creation, or customer service.
3. Your business can grow more
Often times, for a business to grow, many things have to fall into place. You need to make sales and build a great team to facilitate growth, but often you also have to handle the mundane tasks as well. By outsourcing these time consuming jobs to virtual assistants in the Philippines – who can handle them quite well – you give yourself more hours to focus on the highest value activities, which helps your business grow faster.
4. The talent pool is large
The Philippines has a population somewhere around 100 million, many of whom are young and can greatly contribute to the workforce. There are around 450,000 students graduating from university each year, which ranks the Philippines third overall in terms of talent pool size coming in just behind India and China. In 2014, only about 1% of the total population, or about 1 million people, worked in the BPO or outsourcing industry. In 2016, this is expected to see an exponential increase with as many as 1.5 million new jobs being generated.
5. You can lower costs without compromising quality
Virtual Assistants in the Philippines are usually very hard working and will provide excellent service for whatever position they’re placed in. Also, the cost of living is far lower than in countries like Australia and the US. This means that a Filipino virtual assistant makes roughly 20% of what someone in a more developed country would earn. This makes it much more cost effective for companies to outsource because they can pay a lower rate which will still be a good amount for the Filipino virtual assistants to earn and support their families.