During the crisis, the business increases the demand for the services of outsourcing companies. Large companies and small businesses face significant economic losses. The transfer of office staff to remote work, sudden weekends, downtime of production facilities and outlets lead to the need to develop a clear strategy and tactical action plan for the coming months.
Reorganization of the company’s departments and their transfer to outsourcing becomes the only option to optimize costs. Today, top managers and employees responsible for recruiting and developing personnel, who adhere to traditional models of organizing work within the company, suddenly realized that most tasks can be performed remotely and save money.
What is outsourcing?
Outsourcing is the transfer by an individual or legal entity of certain tasks to another company for execution. In fact, you delegate the functions of some departments or specialists to freelance performers. Personnel outsourcing makes it possible to optimize the costs of maintaining a staff of specialists, drawn up according to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, to save on social benefits and taxes.
Outsourcing a task or giving it to a freelancer are different concepts and approaches. The first case involves the performance of the functions of an employee or an entire department on a long-term basis, the second presupposes the short-term performance of tasks.
What tasks can outsourcing solve?
Often, tasks that do not relate to the core business of the company are outsourced. For example, you can take an assistant manager or document management specialist out of the office and outsource, communicate with partners, and promote your brand on the Internet. In terms of information technology, you can even outsource software development, as Dell did.
What tasks does outsourcing solve:
- Reduced staffing, manufacturing and maintenance costs;
- An opportunity not to waste time on testing and selection of narrow specialists, but to transfer the task to a professional or a team who already have a reputation in this matter;
- Reducing the tax burden on the company;
- Increase department productivity by optimizing processes and working time;
- Efficiency and quality guarantees from outsourcing service.
Only at first glance, outsourcing is questionable. Due to the high level of responsibility of the contractor, it is very convenient to transfer tasks and control the implementation process.
Consider a common example of outsourcing specialists: you yourself turn to a service that provides specialists for rent for a fee. Employees perform work according to a pre-agreed schedule, but they are registered in the service staff and receive a salary there. You can rent staff for a shorter day or any schedule, even for two days a week – if necessary.
What are the advantages of outsourcing in a crisis
Outsourcing primarily makes it possible to reduce the cost of maintaining certain departments or parts of production. During the crisis, not only the demand for the outsourcing and freelancing market increases, but also the competition between them grows. For this reason, you can count on loyal prices, as well as special offers for your company.
What you can do right now:
- Give the current tasks of certain departments to one specialist or team with a fixed hourly or monthly wage lower than the salary of all full-time specialists employed on these projects;
- Completely reorganize departments, highlight only the main tasks that are now needed and pay for them on a project-by-project basis;
- Reduce the number of employees in departments, distribute tasks among those who remain on the staff and switch them to remote work with a salary, depending on the implementation of KPIs.
The measures taken also require changes in the status of employees, the conclusion of new and re-registration of old contractual relations. At the same time, you need to understand the difference between the concepts of a Contractor and a Subcontractor – the first category of performers is responsible to the Customer for the implementation of the project as a whole, the second category – for the performance of a specific task.
Outsourcing models and areas in which it is in demand
Today, almost all companies use outsourcing services. Even small businesses enter into contractual relationships with self-employed people to perform administrative and clearing services, as well as to maintain social networks and websites. And large companies, in turn, are transferring entire divisions and production facilities to outsourcing.
To understand which departments and segments of production you can outsource to Contractors and Subcontractors, consider the classic outsourcing models.
- Industrial – transfer of execution of production tasks. For example, you order the manufacture of goods from a factory, while other work on the development, modernization, advertising, testing of the goods you reserve;
- ITO – transfer of tasks to an IT contractor. Options: maintenance of computer equipment – saving on a staff administrator; software development and others depending on the needs of the enterprise;
- Financial – transfer of valuation, reporting, inventory audit and payroll accounting to an accounting company. Moreover, each of these tasks can be divided into several parts and given to different contractors for execution;
- Legal – transfer of management of legal documentation and consulting support to a private lawyer or law firm;
- Publishing – transferring from the publishing house to the contractor the functions of producing printed materials, as well as performing translations of foreign articles;
- HRO – personnel outsourcing. In fact, you outsource the duties of full-time specialists and free your business from the need to maintain entire departments in an office, in a warehouse;
- In the retail sector – merchandising, delivery, warehouse maintenance, packing and packaging;
- Marketing in the field of PR – SMM, targeting, promotion, communication with the media, bloggers, development of videos, photos and other advertising materials for online promotion;
- Telemarketing – call centers for sales, customer and technical support.
