3 Benefits of Outsourcing Tasks
In today’s economy, both large and small companies are outsourcing any task that is not core to the company’s operations. Behind most successful companies you will find a pool of outsourced talent pushing it forward.
Over 5 years ago when Instagram was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion, the company only had 13 full-time employees. Can you imagine managing a company with over 30 million users with just over a dozen employees? It’s not possible. Instagram may have had only 13 people in its office, but it had more people working outside the office. This is where outsourced talent can be invaluable.
Outsourced talent can be extremely beneficial to your company. And all successful companies know it. These days, a company’s size is no longer judged by the number of employees it has. Large companies like WhatsApp and Instagram are run by only a dozen or so employees and are valuated in billions.
Outsourcing tasks that are not central
You may think Instagram used outsourcing just because it’s a technology company, but that’s not true. Cerius Executives is a professional business services company, and they outsource for all non-core competencies.
“Our edict is if it is not our core competency, we outsource it,” says Kristen McAlister, co-owner of Cerius Executives. “When you look at what do we do best, it’s when we work with people and clients. Anyone who is client-facing or executive-facing is internal to our company and they’re employees. Anything outside of that is outsourced.”
Outsourcing gets you the right talent
Outsourced talent is flexible and can be applied to all functional areas, particularly those not needing full-time focus. Hiring somebody for an area you’re unfamiliar with is difficult because you don’t know what to look for. If you have no background with IT, how do you know what skills and capabilities qualify as a good IT manager?
An outsourced firm will do that for you. Go to an IT agency, and they’ll send you a programmer who knows a coding language best suited to building your company’s website. You won’t need to bother researching PHP versus HTML. It’s their job to figure it out and provide the right talent for it.
Outsourcing means no more HR issues
A common thing you hear from companies resisting outsourcing is “I need to have a full-time employee, I have to be able to control what they do.” Just because the people you are outsourcing don’t work as a W2 employee, doesn’t mean you can’t have input and visibility on what they are doing. Instead of focusing on managing them by each task daily/weekly, you get to focus on the results you want in the end. Manage by results, not by task. If they’re not providing the results of the job needed or the business environment has changed the requirements, outsourcing provides the flexibility to quickly and easily adjust.
“Stop worrying about whether or not they came in on time at 8 o’clock in the morning and left at 5 pm or took a lunch break that was longer than an hour,” says Pam Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives. “Stop worrying about that and start looking at the results. If you gave them a certain goal that they have to meet over a certain time period, make sure that they’re meeting it.”
Spreading out goals and tasks to different people outside your company makes it less stressful for employees inside your company. So many employees fail or burn out because they’re juggling 50 different things at once. Outsourcing tasks lets your employees focus on what they’re good at. You’ll have happier employees who get to focus on what they do best. When companies and employees are working most within their core competencies, the daily stress and frustrations will decrease dramatically.
To learn about how Cerius Interim Management can help you, please visit our home page by clicking here.