Outsourcing stays in
Today’s employees should adapt to opportunities in off-site work
Get the temp to do it.” For years, that was the rallying cry of every middle-management employee who didn’t want to be bothered by fulfilling menial tasks like making copies or filing billing statements. And for years, the temporary worker was there to help, eager to earn a paycheck while looking for a new job or while spending the summer home from school, but those days are in the past.
Granted, there are still temps who make copies and file billing statements, but today’s temporary worker, or gig worker, may have credentials that put his or her former middle-management boss to shame.
“Temporary workers have always played a role in making an organization more efficient and more productive,” says Sylvia Stillman, an employment recruiter and corporate adviser. “Today’s temporary workers are educated and experienced. They’re making organizations more efficient and more productive.”
Outsourcing can cover numerous aspects of a company, not just offshore data entry workers or customer service reps. Today’s outsourcing opportunities could include skill-specific training sessions, courses on necessary certifications, human resources functions, accounting services, technical assistance and much more. By outsourcing workers, companies can save on employee benefits, office rentals and more.
Taking hold
“I think outsourcing is transitioning from offshoring, which moved jobs overseas to save on wages, to an exciting new phase which is based on innovating your business model and getting new results from outside your company,” says Thomas Owens, a business analyst based in San Francisco. “Outsourcing has moved in the direction of much improved quality.”
Owens says the trend is also a result of continued rapid growth in technology and further realization of on-demand services.
“If you’re looking for a new marketing plan, you don’t have to ramp up an entire department,” he says. “You can bring someone in for two or three months to help craft a marketing plan, and then let them move on to the next project while your team puts the plan into action.”
Owens says the movement is being pushed along at the top levels of companies across the globe. “Remote, high-quality labor is now a real possibility and CEOs and board members are aware of it,” he says. “Since they think about the business in more holistic ways, they see the merits of hiring that remote, high-quality labor.”
Outsource yourself
Graduates of the class of 2021 may find that a lot of opportunities exist within the contracting space, something Stillman says she advised against as recently as a few years ago. “I didn’t like those six- or 12-month assignments for firsttime workers because I felt like they didn’t offer the right initial landing — there was little opportunity to begin networking with co-workers or even work beyond the scope of your assignment but that’s really changed in recent years,” she says. “Now, the work is diverse and the opportunities just keep growing. And as an added bonus, you get to learn very specific skills about a program — skill you can easily bring with you to a new job.”
It turns out that often, the act of outsourcing is actually outsourced, as many of today’s companies hire recruitment process outsourcing, or RPO firms, to help fill the empty seats. Stillman suggests graduating students look to organizations who outsource and learn which firms they use to hire contractors and temporary employees. “It’s sort of an inside-out method but it’s useful,” she says. “Some large corporations have contracts with large placement agencies and pretty much use them exclusively. Others are open to working with various agencies, especially if they can bring them the right talent.”
Open to everyone
Although most people think of large corporations when they consider contract work, there is a growing trend in the smallbusiness world that shows outsourcing is on the rise. The U.S. Small Business Association recently listed 10 business functions that could be outsourced. They include accounting, marketing, sales. IT management, administrative tasks, customer service, manufacturing, human resources, research, shipping and logistics. In other words, pretty much everything.
“I think more entrepreneurs under-estimate the time they’ll spend being bogged down with running a business and when they realize they don’t have enough hours in the day to actually think and create, they look elsewhere to lighten the load,” says Thomas. “And let’s face it, they’re not just looking for people who file or make copies — so much of that is digitized and handled quickly and easily by others, anyway. What they’re looking for are people who can do other functions of their business, whether it’s payroll or research, at the same high level they expect from themselves.”
Stillman sees small businesses as a real growth area for consultants, especially in terms of research and business development. “The person with the great idea may have no idea how to see if people want it, if they already have it or if they’re willing to pay for it, so it helps to have people who can collect the data, look at it critically and then make projections,” she says. “It’s like having real-life versions of Google at your fingertips, whether you hire them on a project-by-project basis or for a certain timespan.”
And it’s a win for the contractors themselves. “If you can do work for someone who just happens to be brilliant, think about the knowledge base you get to tap into,” Thomas says. “It’s pretty extraordinary.”