Spotting the Right PEO for Your Business: Efficient Offshore Staff Leasing

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Business owners seeking the aid of offshore staff leasing have to make sure they are on the right side. While it is proven that this type of platform is highly cost-effective on their part, it is also wise to evaluate what is best for the company. Offshore staff leasing sure has lots of advantages to offer, but sometimes this strategy may tend to backfire.
To secure your business’s future, here are some of the things that you should consider in looking for a professional employer organization (PEO) that would represent your ideals and goals.

 

The Right Combination of Services

 

In considering which PEO to deal with, it is important to know the services being offered first. Do they have what you are looking for? Do you think they will be able to give you the kind of service that your business needs in able to grow its market? Ask as many questions as you like. Be very specific with your criteria; if you think the PEO will benefit your company in the long run, then you can consider it as a green light.

 

Financial Stability

 

Considering the PEO’s financial strength also counts when it comes to securing a good business deal. As an entrepreneur, it is your responsibility to avoid scams, misfires and similar failures to prevent damage on your behalf. A PEO with a clean and impressive track record is the one that you want to transact with.
Look into every detail before deciding to give it a go, ask for advice and references from colleagues, and most especially, study the contract meticulously. Scams tend to provide contracts which delude clients. If you see even the slightest anomaly in the details, raise a red flag and inquire before signing.

 

Rapport

 

Another thing to look over when dealing with a PEO is the personal connection between you and the representative. It is easier to do business with someone whom you’re comfortable with than with someone whom you don’t truly trust. Developing a close bond with a PEO may determine the course of the relationship which you may have with them in the long run.

 

The PEO you’re partnered with affects the trajectory of your business. Offshore staff leasing comes with plenty of benefits, especially if the people you choose share your ideals. Details are easily sorted out once you’re in agreement with the big picture.

Partner with us! We customize Staff Leasing Solutions to meet your business needs.

Elsewhere on this blog:

Staff Leasing: What to Look For When Hiring a Support Staff

Competitive Advantages of Offshore Staff Leasing

3 Ways to Improve Staff Leasing for Your Business

Four Easy Steps to Calming Angry Clients

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Customer complaints are expected even in thriving businesses, constant reminders that there will always be opportunities for growth. The question is how to handle these complaints in such a way that both you and your customer come out as winners.

Actually, there is no sure-fire formula to effectively handling disgruntled clients. In many large businesses, staff leasing is considered the solution; a complaints department or team is created to make sure that grievance calls are addressed promptly. Sadly, even this is sometimes ineffective. When dealing with an angry customer, only four things should be observed.

1. Listen.

Some people are simply fed up with the customer service and just need to release that pent-up emotion. The call that they make serves as their outlet and your role is to listen patiently to what they have to say, without judging them in any way. At some point during the call, your caller will calm down. That will be your cue to offer a solution, but make sure that you fully understand the problem.

2. Repeat.

Once you sense that the customer has let down his guard, repeat the problem back to him to make sure that you got it right. Getting corrected at this point should be expected because how you tell the problem may not be what your caller wants to hear. Continue this “parrot” technique of presenting the problem until the customer agrees to what you say.

3. Empathize.

With the two of you agreeing on the issue, offer an apology for what your customer has experienced. Saying sorry may have become too common in many complaints cases, but if you say it with a sincere heart, it will always have a calming effect on your caller. Follow this up with the appropriate solution and an explanation as to why the problem came up, but without putting the blame on others.

4. Assure.

A strong assurance that the issue is an isolated case and is not a normal procedure will inspire your customer to stay with the business. In some cases, making a follow-up call a few days after the problem was resolved comes highly recommended. Not only do you get to find out if your client is satisfied with your service, your call can help bring back that all-important customer trust.

Empathy should be the first thing on your mind when handling customer complaints. It’s an important element of frontline service, and it’s crucial to resolving complaints. Nothing spells service better than effective, personalized customer service.

We can help you build an amazing support staff, request a quote now!

Elsewhere on this blog:

Competitive Advantages of Offshore Staff Leasing

5 Ways Customer Feedback Can Help Grow Your Business

Staff Leasing: What to Look For When Hiring a Support Staff

 

Build Stronger Teams on an Infrastructure of Shared Services

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Adapt your business strategies to changing business trends. In a time corporate dynamics is more demanding, there’s always the need to look into ways to improve operations. With that, more and more companies are now built on infrastructure of shared services.

Shared service is a strategy of combining different resources into one operational entity. This is to streamline possible redundancies in the organization, and cutting operational costs. This model is an efficient and effective way of delivering services to both corporate functions and customers. Shared service is more than just a method of lowering costs, it is a dynamic strategy where the value of services is improved with focused operations.

Shared Service Is Focused

It’s feasible to combine company resources like manpower and technology, especially if the goal is to consolidate an organization. United teams work well together, and unity is what shared service is all about.

Some companies combine their operational functions (legal, administrative, accounting, human resources, clerical, and the like) into a single unit. Through a collection of various resources, the resulting structure is a flexible unit. As the cost of shared services is based on the output delivered, better task delegation and financial management are always possible.

Shared Service Is Feasible

An infrastructure of shared services is designed to improve and deliver. Operations are efficient when downtime is reduced, or dedicated to other valuable services. Moreover, by cutting redundancies, services are delivered much faster. Shared services free and make room to the organization, improving the workflow along the way. Who else benefits from this dynamic system but the business, the employees, and the customers?

Shared service is not just a practical way to achieve organization goals, it’s also a proactive response to ever-changing business needs. Just like in budding plants, for a business to grow, cutting some parts within the whole is essential. And when that part blooms, the whole prospers. Shared service is just that – benefitting the whole business without sacrificing the quality of services.

Hire an awesome support staff without the hassle: we offer Staff Leasing Service that’s guaranteed to build your team. Request a quote now!

Elsewhere on this blog:

Competitive Advantages of Offshore Staff Leasing

Staff Leasing: What to Look For When Hiring a Support Staff

3 Ways to Improve Staff Leasing for Your Business

Staff Leasing 101: Is Cheaper Better?

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Cheaper might not always be the best choice but sometimes it is depending on the situation. For staff leasing, this general rule also applies. There are many service providers out there and they relentlessly compete with each other, and the main reaction to this is to offer cheaper services in order to attract clients.

Cheaper staff leasing services doesn’t always mean poor quality, but how do you determine if the cheap price being offered to you is a good deal? Here are a few tips to help you pin point what is a good deal and what’s not.

Ask for Proposals
Proposals are not just for formal purposes, it’s an opportunity for you to determine if the money you will be paying a staff leasing firm is worth the services they will be providing you. It would be best to look for a few service providers you like and ask a proposal from each one of them, so you can take a look and compare their pricings.

Research and Dig Deep
It can become too boring but definitely worth it. Would you want to be tied in a contract with a staff leasing firm that specializes in conning clients? It happens and is still happening today, so always be vigilant every time a service provider is offering you cheap services. Look for testimonials, press releases, articles and even comments on social media sites, you are likely to get a good grip on what’s happening with that service provider’s business when you research online.

Always Ask for a Portfolio
A staff leasing firm might send you their company portfolio, but it is best if you also ask for the professional portfolio of the staff who will be working under you. Request for a phone call or even a Skype interview so you’ll be able to see and assess the personality of the staff you’re considering to hire. This way, you can be assured that a dedicated staff will be working on your projects and not some random freelancer that the staff leasing firm is hiding from you.

Look At What They Specialize On
Staff leasing firms varies on their specialties, so if you’re looking to hire a team of data entry specialists it would be wise to look for a service provider that specializes in that field because they know it better than the others. Same goes for IT services; you can get a better programmer or designer from staff leasing firms that specialize in the IT field.

If the proposal is too good to be true, always think twice and never decide on the spot. It’s much better to keep searching for a reliable service provider than engage with the wrong one.

The Evolution of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) in the Philippines

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What began as call support centers in the 1900’s to cater to foreign costumers, the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the Philippines has grown quite remarkable, serving IT services, offshore staff leasing for admin functions and many more today.

In the 2000’s, the Philippines shown excellence in the call center industry, and had made a stable growth of 46% annually since 2006. And by 2011, the country has earned the most number of call center employees, with about 400,000 heads compared to other outsourcing destinations in Asia. By 2012, the Philippine economy grew 6.4% through BPO; it is the country’s fastest growth since 2010.

Call Centers in the Philippines

Call centers popped all over the country’s capital, Manila, and extended as far as Visayas and Mindanao. More and more foreign investors are capitalizing in the Philippines rather than its Asian neighbors due to the fact that Filipinos are more polite and westernized in term of accent, even though BPO services in India and China are much cheaper.

IT Outsourcing

Information technology also plays a big role in the country’s BPO industry growth. Surprisingly, clients from different parts of the world are looking for Filipino programmers, designers and animators, it is evident that the IT professionals are also becoming popular, not just call center agents. Software development and animation is now part of that growth.

Offshore Staff Leasing

When one door of success opens, a lot of opportunities peek in. When outsourcing in the Philippines became popular, so did offshore staff leasing. Professionals for data entry, virtual assistance, online marketing, writing and many more also became in demand, which lead to the boom of outsourcing companies in the country that specializes in offshore staff leasing.

Outsourcing Functions of a Business

Today, the Philippines BPO industry is catering to businesses that are bold enough to outsource some functions of their business like the admin and support, finance and accounting and HR.

What Is the Future of Philippines BPO?

Business process outsourcing has provided clients with new ways and opportunities to grow their business, and for as long as there is the need to grow, there will always be a space for innovation and the Philippines’ BPO industry will always be ready to deliver.

Competitive Advantages of Offshore Staff Leasing

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There are many recipes to success; what works for one business may or may not work for another, sometimes a little tweaking of someone else’s business strategy works for others too, just like with offshore staff leasing. By leasing employees offshore you get the general benefits that come with it, but by using different approaches and strategies you can gain a lot more than what you’ve expected.

Why Go Offshore Outsourcing?

Today’s global market place is becoming more and more integrated. Customers increase and so are their demands for better products and services. Big companies competes best for customers and market shares, but with offshore staff leasing, small companies are also able to compete with the big guys and gain a piece of market share which makes their business grow more and eventually become one of the big companies.

What Are Some of the Competitive Advantages of Offshore Staff Leasing?

Dramatically Reduced Costs
Oftentimes the main reason why many businesses today are opting for offshore staff leasing is the dramatically reduced operational and labor costs, especially for long term engagements. Business owners significantly save on infrastructure, employee salaries, training, software, utilities and more.

Global Knowledge and Talent Pool
Resource is also one of the biggest reasons for offshore staff leasing. Because some intellectual properties, staff experience and knowledge is not available or too costly to develop in-house, offshore staff leasing provide businesses all around the world with a wider pool of talents with various skill sets and business leverage.

Expanded Services, Increased Product Range and Access to New Markets
Entrepreneurs are able to expand and accelerate provision of a service and/or product through the additional capability of their offshore partner. In addition, new markets can be explored and test waters without having to spend a fortune or take higher risks.

Time Saving and Arbitrage
For entrepreneurs looking to gain competitive advantages, they partner with an offshore staff leasing company in a different time zone which helps them gain time benefits and arbitrage.

Business Model Innovation
A few tweaks and changes into the original plan is common to any type of business, but with offshore staff leasing it allows business model innovation to keep up with drastic consumer demands and develop better products and services with less costs.

If you are planning to outsource parts of your business, there are substantial benefits you can gain from offshore staff leasing. You can also discover additional benefits through various strategies that will be unique only to you. Look for an offshore partner will flexible solutions or willing to be flexible to your needs.

On the other hand, if you have already partnered with an offshore staff leasing firm but do not seem to gain the benefits you expected, do not rush things and fire your service provider. Talk to them, maybe you haven’t put more details into what you really want to have from them. But if the agreement you signed limits you into getting the full benefits of offshore staff leasing, maybe it’s time to look for another service provider.

Staff Leasing: What to Look For When Hiring a Support Staff

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A support staff can be assigned to different departments within a company and can multitask depending on his responsibilities. The main goal of a support employee is to provide clerical, secretarial and over-all administrative support.

Through a staff leasing firm, hiring a support staff has become more affordable in terms of salary, employee benefits and the need for additional office space has been eliminated. That is why many businesses today are opting for staff leasing services.

If you already have outsourced other services or just planning to outsource your support staff, here are three (3) simple ways to look for so you can guarantee effectiveness and efficiency of your leased employee.

Right Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

Your support staff should possess the necessary skills to ensure efficiency and effectiveness within your company. Some business owners prefer support workers who have multiple skills so they can gain more strategic advantage like having their support employee work in various departments or have them work on multiple tasks at the same time.

Generally, your support staff should posses:

  • Basic computer skills including web navigation
  • Analytical and problem-solving skills
  • Time management and organizational skills
  • Clear understanding if the company’s policies and mission

In staff leasing firms, since they are very competitive with each other, support staffs normally possess two (2) or more skills. For example:

  • Virtual Assistant (VA) – general VA skills, plus basic internet marketing and writing skills
  • Data Entry Specialist (DES) – general DES skills, plus basic graphics and HTML skills
  • Quality Assurance (QA) – general QA skills, plus basic internet marketing and some DES skills
  • Help Desk Agent (HDA) – general HDA skills, plus basic internet marketing and some DES skills

With a staff leasing firm, you can come up with various marketing campaigns and business strategies with multi-skilled support staffs.

Strong Communication Skills

An average to excellent communication skills is a must, but a support staff also needs to communicate effectively, both verbal and written. This means that your support worker should be good in listening, can provide clear information, and can process a situation without being too emotional. Strong communication skills enhance all kinds of relationships in the work place.

For a staff leasing firm, good communications skills of their support staffs can either be a acquired through experience or by attending trainings and seminars. So you are never getting a support worker from them that do not know how to communicate well with a client, customer and company executives.

How to know if the support staff you are going to hire from a staff leasing firm can communicate well?

  • Conduct a face-to-face interview or a Skype interview
  • Have the candidate write a short description of anything you want or a sample report

Good Work Ethic and Personal Attributes

All types of skills can be learned and developed through time, but a good work ethic can be unlearnable for some support staffs. While employees with a good set of personal attributes can sometimes be hard to find, because they are mostly already employed by someone else. So you should always be aware of work ethics and personal attributes when hiring a support worker from a staff leasing firm.

Aside from respect and integrity, your support staff should also:

  • Possess cultural awareness and sensitivity
  • Has strong sense of responsibility
  • Flexible to changes and ability to adapt
  • Demonstrates good morale and teamwork

A good work ethic is vital to any business in achieving its goal, from support staffs up to the CEO and the owner of the company. That is also what makes a staff leasing firm effective in help you achieve your goal, because they always make sure that the employees they lease are not just skilled on their respective fields but also possess good personal attributes.

4 Importances of Support Staff For Your Business

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Support staffs are very important little cogs that help run your business smoothly, it maybe just a small part for some companies but the level of importance is the same for all. Support staff varies by industry and company, it is routine and can be very tedious.

Let us elaborate the importance of support staffs in your business.

Virtual Assistant (VA)

The masters of multitasking and flexibility, virtual assistants or VA staffs are very good in learning new things in order to make their work easier and faster. They are cunning when it comes to clerical tasks and are highly organized. But did you know that VAs can do a lot more than what you think they can? Teach them a bit about Photoshop and they’ll watermark, crop, and enhance your photos for you, have them read the basics of SEO and you’ll have a VA that can do basic link building. It’s all up to you on what you want to assign to your VA!

So what makes a virtual assistant support staff a very important part of your business? There are five (5) major roles you can assign to your VA staff; a general VA for secretarial tasks, SEO/internet marketer VA for various online tasks, writer/blogger VA, a video Editor VA and a sales rep VA. Virtual assistants are versatile so you can have them do multiple tasks from various departments.

Quality Assurance (QA) Staff

The guy that always checks for quality, always monitoring and looks out for signs of issues and improvements, is the quality assurance or QA staff. A QA staff can be assigned to any department and can do several functions for consistent and quality deliverables.

So what makes a quality assurance support staff a very important part of your business? QA staffs does not only make sure that the process in your business are running smoothly, they can also identify potential problems before it occurs, formulate a solution for the betterment of your products and services, and even provide useful information for your marketing team. This support staff is the overall eyes and ears of the management!

Data Entry/Encoding

It is the manual typing of data from various digital, voice and written sources. Data entry specialists or encoders can type faster and more accurate, look for items in the database quicker than everyone else, and process data more effectively than you. They can be assigned as a typist, a word processor or a transcriptionist.

These days, many businesses prefer to outsource data entry services not only to cut down on manpower costs but to gain strategic business advantages.

So what makes a data entry specialist a very important part of your business? Companies today use more data compared to decades ago, and that is because of the evolution of technologies we use now. The manual typing of data into a computer can be very tiring and boring which leads to inaccurate inputs of information. If you want your data to be accurate all the time, you need an expert, a data entry support staff.

Back Office Help Desk

The primary objective of a help desk or service desk staff is to assist and help clients with technical issues regarding the product they purchased or services they bought from the company. Help desk varies widely within companies and can be outsourced too.

Customers will be calling in with their concerns whether you like it or not, and they will call whenever they want. Your help desk should always be ready to answer calls and effectively assist customers with their concerns. If your business can do transactions 24/7, so should your service desk.

So what makes a help desk support staff a very important part of your business? Aside from handling customers, your service desk has all the information that your marketing and sales department can use to create effective advertising to widen your customer network. The information they relay can also help you improve and make better products and services for your customers’ satisfaction. What business doesn’t want a repeat buyer?

3 Ways to Improve Staff Leasing for Your Business

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Staff leasing and offshore outsourcing has become a trend these days not only because it reduces manpower costs, but because many businesses today are finding these methods to be very helpful in increasing their bottom line, improve online presence and widen customer network.

If your business is suffering from some operational issues from your service provider, or if you are a first timer who is seriously considering staff leasing or offshore outsourcing, here are three (3) great ways on how you can improve your relationship with the service provider and get all the juicy benefits that comes along with it.

Specify the Level of Supervision and Build a Rapport with the Supervisor

Field supervisors or managers from staff leasing firms are properly trained to oversee your leased employees, not only to micromanage their performance and punctuality but as well as personal issues that may arise during working hours. You can set the level of supervision you want for your leased staff and even specific requests like having your staff come to work at least ten minutes early so you chat with them or to conduct a short Skype meeting.

If you want a more efficient field supervisor, build a rapport with him. A good relationship brings great rewards, especially to businesses. You might even be surprised that some operational issues, including highly technical ones, have already been resolved before it even reaches your attention.

Specify Insurance Coverage and Other Employee Benefits

Not all service providers handle employee insurance and benefits, so never assume and always ask for the coverage.

To stay competitive, staff leasing firms including both local and offshore outsourcing companies, have packaged basic employee benefits such as overtime pay, medical reimbursements, paid vacation and sick leaves. Some even allow the usage of vacation leaves for religious Holidays and emergencies. With flexible a solution like this, you can specify what type of leaves can be used to what type of situations.

Here are some benefits that the staff leasing firm can provide for your leased employee but not required for you to pay:

  • Full medical plan
  •  Retirement (pension) plan
  • Life insurance
  •  Recruitment (joining) bonus
  • Referral bonus – when you request for additional heads

If you have Doubts, Seek Legal Counsel!

Every company changes their policies from time to time. As the business owner, it is your responsibility to read and learn whatever is written in your service provider’s policy. You also have the right to ask questions and for examples, and you can even request for a written explanation or a short meeting with the CEO if you feel that can help you understand their policies better. After all, you are the customer.

Legal advice is always crucial when it comes to jotting the agreement with the staff leasing firm you chose. You will need to know how much control you have and the level of protection that the agreement can give you when it comes to liability. The more things works in your favor, the better!

What is Offshore Staff Leasing?

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Staff leasing works just like your local outsourcing process; hiring an individual or a team of professionals from a third party service provider to work on specific parts of your business like data encoding, help-desk, QA, online marketing, graphics designing and many more.

For offshore staff leasing, also referred to as offshore outsourcing or offshoring, business owners seek out the services offered by Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) to assist them in various activities of their business, mostly in administrative.

Any worker you hire from PEO will be considered employees by the service provider; you will only be hiring their services. Thus the legal responsibilities to the workers fall to the care of the service providers, such as taking care of their taxes, safety and healthcare benefits, and more.

What Makes Staff Leasing and General Outsourcing So Attractive?

For starters, it is cost-efficient in terms of hiring local employees with full compensation packages and benefits. It allows many business owners, especially start-up businesses, to get access to a pool of highly skilled and talented professionals for a drastically lowered cost.

For businesses planning to expand their workforce, the recruitment process and human resource management will already be handled by the offshore staff leasing firm. There will no longer be a need for you to worry about employee taxes and payroll management because they are already taken care of.

With offshore staff leasing, you generally get:

  • Lowered overhead cost
  • Access to a pool of highly skilled and talented professionals
  • Eliminate the need to hire additional accountants and human resource managers
  • Opportunity to expand your business without adding more office space and equipments

In addition, offshore staff leasing firms also offers flexible outsourcing solutions for businesses with complex requirements, so you can always get the services you want within your allotted budget. Who doesn’t get attracted to that?