Going Global: Tips for Maximizing Your Offshore Team
In a rapidly changing business environment, working with offshore teams will become even more necessary. How do you successfully leverage your virtual team?
Scaling your business means expanding your team, and this often comes with the challenge of hiring people with the right set of skills to drive your business’ success. Most companies opt for hiring an offshore team to handle some of the crucial aspects of their operations. However, many fail to implement this type of staffing strategy successfully. But how do you really gain buy-in from your global team? Here’s how:
5 Ways of Maximizing Your Offshore Team‘s Performance
Here are some proven ways of leading and managing an offshore team with increased odds of success:
Align Your Vision
When working with an offshore team, randomly assigning project tasks to different groups can be tempting. Don’t commit this mistake as this practice will give your team a disjointed vision of the goals that you want to achieve.
Make sure that your team understands what you want to achieve. Having an aligned vision can help teams work seamlessly. It would be easier for them to develop processes and make decisions that will impact the project’s success rather than being kept in the dark not knowing what other people are up to.
Moreover, aligning your project vision allows your offshore team to plan and manage their resources in the most cost-effective way possible. It also gives your team a sense of inclusion and security as they work on the project.
Communicate Regularly
Working with an in-house team requires constant communication, this does not change when working with an offshore team. Regular communication ensures that no one in the group gets lost in projects. Use clear briefings whenever possible, so all details are clear. As much as possible, eliminate confusion between you and your teams.
Whenever assigning tasks, never assume that everybody understands what you are trying to communicate. Cross-check if their understanding is aligned with what you explained. It is also essential to allow your team to raise questions and look for clarifications.
Remember, communicating with a global team means harnessing the power of online tools that facilitate communication and collaboration. Software such as Slack and Skype can help teams exchange messages and files. You and your team can also use project management tools on the cloud like Asana or Trello so everyone can track the progress of tasks assigned to them.
Adopt an Agile Methodology
Teams working on projects need to adopt an Agile methodology, mainly if the process requires high levels of interaction and iteration from different members. Practicing Agile development in your operations can do so much to increase efficiency. The lengths of iterations or sprints depend on the complexity of the process and the number of people working on the task.
The key here is to have your offshore team sit down and discuss each project’s goals and processes. Once a sprint is done, there must be an assessment of the progress and identification of hurdles. All of these must be accounted for when starting a new sprint.
Maintain Regular Engagement
One way to leverage your offshore team is to keep them engaged at all times. More than communicating with your team about project updates and outputs, you also have to reach out to them in a manner that would allow you to understand their strengths and areas for improvement.
As a business owner, you have to understand that employee engagement is among the hallmarks of developing a positive company culture. You cannot maximize your team, even if you have the best and the brightest members if you do not keep them engaged.
Visit Your Offshore Team
Handling an offshore team does not mean that you should always communicate and engage remotely. If possible, make them feel important by visiting them. Fly over their country and spend a few days with your team members. This way, it would be easier to get familiar with what happens on the ground. You can see what processes work and what additional resources your team may need to improve their output. It is also an excellent way to increase your team’s overall productivity as they feel a sense of belongingness. They will start to think that they are not merely workers but crucial business partners.
Building the Right Offshore Team
As your business goes global, you need to make sure that you can cover all angles when it comes to your processes. Working and managing an offshore team can be challenging. This is what happened in the case of Seller Snap. Despite investing thousands of dollars in their business by hiring SEO agencies for their Amazon Repricer program, they failed to hit their goals.
How did they overcome this challenge? Through MultiplyMii’s bespoke offshore staffing solution.
MultiplyMii understood what Seller Snap needed and recruited the right individuals for their offshore team. Along with the company’s established processes, Seller Snap was able to cash in on the benefits. This example shows that an offshore team can bring in positive results when you know you can manage them.
Find an offshore team for your business through MultiplyMii. Call us now and learn how we can get you started on your offshoring journey.
