One of the greatest risks facing business in 2022 will be if the tidal wave of economic challenges we have had to face in the last couple of years recedes; to go back too quickly into the water of rebuilding a staff contingent and only to be hit by a new wave of unexpected ill-fortune.
Sadly, the onslaught of the Covid pandemic, civil unrest within our society and exorbitant petrol price hikes, have all contributed to an ever-tightening grip on the economic landscape and the consequent laying off of permanent staff.
AN OUTSOURCING SOLUTION
As the redundancy figures have escalated, globally the trend has been to hire more outsourced services, and because we stand on the threshold of another year still facing an enormous amount of uncertainty, this trend will not dissipate next year. On the contrary, in all likelihood, outsourced services are set to explode in 2022!
WILL THIS AFFECT ALL BUSINESSES?
Generally speaking, larger companies have had the resources and the staying power to be able to hold on to key employees, but even they have felt the pinch and certain industries like the travel, events and hospitality industries have had no choice but to lay off large numbers and hire outsourced services at least as a temporary measure.
For small SMMEs the hiring of outsourced services has been absolutely necessary as they have not had the resources to retain all their staff and many start-ups, in particular, are now modelling their business on hiring mostly outsourced services to populate their workforce. Why is this so? What are the benefits of structuring a business in such a way?
THE KEY BENEFITS OF HIRING OUTSOURCED SERVICES
Cost-effectiveness – Many people think it is cheaper to have your own employees as opposed to paying outsourced fees, but they forget that when hiring an outsourced service your business saves all the costs of recruiting, training, onboarding, paying overtime, sick and vacation leave and bonuses, and potential CCMA or lawsuit costs if labour issues arise.
Outsourced services like Virtual Assistants (VAs) for example charge only for the work they do, whether it be on a job by job basis, or a monthly retainer, so every hour has to be accounted for.
Productivity – One of the biggest challenges that small business owners have is spending too much time trying to be a ‘Jack of all trades within their own businesses. They believe this saves on costs – but at the end of the day this is ‘penny wise and pound foolish.’
Particularly when they have had to put off staff, they try to replace them with their own efforts not realising that this greatly affects the procurement of new business and the productivity levels of the work that does come in.
BUSINESS SKILLS AND BUILDING NETWORKS
Businesses often forget that outsourced services are running their own businesses too and most have to be pretty skilled at it to survive.
They can, therefore, be another entrepreneurial head within your business offering astute advice and assisting you to grow your business network through introducing you to their networks!
V-Assist is a great example of just such a successful outsourced service and with our great skill and experience, we can assist clients with a wide range of services to save the most precious commodity of all – Time!
