095 – Offshoring with Nerissa Chaux

We’re excited to welcome Nerissa Chaux onto the podcast this week.  Nersissa first started her career as a Christian minister.  She helped to build one of the largest youth groups in Australia.  She later took her love of helping people into the world of recruitment .  She started her first executive recruitment business back in 2009.  She knows how important it is for every business to find the right people.  That skill-set fits perfectly into this month’s Phase 4: Hiring new employees. 

Much of Nerissa’s work has focussed on helping companies to recruit workers in overseas markets.  She always starts by helping companies to understand the difference between “offshoring” and “outsourcing”.  Those are two phrases that are mistakenly used interchangeably.  They are part of a broader array of options that employers have when trying to source new workers.  The others including freelancing and incorporation.

Freelancing is fairly straightforward.  Short-term workers are recruited using websites like Upwork.  People are hired using messaging services rather than a live conversation.  It’s a great way for companies to get comfortable with finding other sources of workers.

Outsourcing is something different.  You may want to find someone else to handle your payroll, for example.  You would retain a company who would take over that function.  You wouldn’t be able to choose the individual people who actually do the work.  That is all handled by the outsourcing firm.

Offshoring is similar to outsourcing but you have much more control over who is performing the work.  It is essentially finding employees in other countries to take over functions like HR and payroll.  They become part of the team and are dedicated to your business.  They don’t have other jobs to attend to .  The frustration with outsourcing is that you never know who is doing the work and the quality can vary wildly.

Incorporation means creating a business in another country like The Phillipines to handle functions like IT or HR.  This is the logical final step in the offshoring process.

Nerissa believes strongly that there are some jobs that are best suited to being offshored.  Those include, IT, HR and payroll.  She thinks that any “client-facing” role should be done in Australia.  Companies too often offshore parts of their business without considering the full implications.  Australians love to talk to Australians.  Outsourcing your call centre overseas is probably a mistake.

Another mistake companies making is not keeping a close connection with their overseas workers.  Weekly conference calls to build a relationship are essential.  It’s not about checking up on your workers.  It’s about making them feel part of the team.  It can take as little as a two minute Skype conversation in the morning.