Is it Possible to Outsource Your Life?

Outsourcing a segment of your business? Yes. Outsourcing your entire company? Probably. Outsourcing your whole life? Maybe, but can you really?

Outsourcing will always be around for as long as there are efficiency and productivity goals to meet. However, is it truly possible to outsource your whole life? 

Did you know that aside from customer care and IT services, you can now outsource personal assistants? Today, personal assistants can be hired from the Philippines and India and have them do all the tasks you need to finish in a day from mundane personal errands to the credible and official ones you need to accomplish before the day ends. With an outsourced personal assistant, you can have someone book your plane ticket for the holidays, answer calls and emails for you, take messages when you are not available to speak, transcribe your meetings, interview applicants, buy an anniversary present for your significant other, manage your personal or your business' social media presence and so much more.

With the possibility of having a remote personal assistant work for you and get things mundane and official tasks completed, it only goes to show that our lives are so digitally embedded. You can have someone improve your day and take away some of your daily stresses virtually. 

Aside from outsourcing your entire life from a remote personal assistant, you can do so by judging the gadgets and pieces of technology that you use every day. 

The science behind the smart phone or the laptop that you use 24/7 may come from techno think tanks in the United States or in Europe, but the manufacture of its different parts and its assembly are all outsourced. China is an outsourcing capital for the manufacture and assembly of everyday technologies. Aside from the fact that labour costs are cheaper in China, this country also has far more updated technology in creating smart phones and laptops compared to to these techno think tanks. The irony is there, but it makes outsourcing in our lives essential nonetheless.

Truly, outsourcing your entire life is possible, and this fact of life becomes a revelation in terms of how our time costs and how we spend them especially when it comes to outsourcing personal assistants. Aside from the time factor, the issue of outsourcing is also a test or a testimony of the trust that can be established between 2 entities.

Brilliance or Laziness: A Story of Outsourcing With a Twist

No one can deny that outsourcing is an effective way to save money. It can cut a company’s operational costs down to a significant degree thus allowing them to appropriate saved capital to another aspect of their operations. It is just funny nay strange to think that there are people who use outsourcing simply for their personal advantage. Case in point? Bob.

January of this year, Newser published an article about a software engineer in the United States that outsourced his entire work to a software consultancy in China. Bob, the software engineer, had an entire Chinese subcontractor in Shenyang manage his daily programming responsibilities. While his Chinese subcontractor was doing all the heavy lifting, he immerses himself in Facebook, Reddit and a bunch of cat videos. He received a lot of commendation for the clean codes he submits before the day ends. He gives a fifth of his 6-figure salary to his Chinese subcontractor. 

Work was going smoothly not until the HR department where Bob works noticed that someone located in Shenyang was logged in the company’s system using his credentials. They had to hire investigators from Verizon to look into the matter closely. And no, the company was not being infiltrated. 

In this scenario, brilliance may not be an appropriate word. However, with the technology and the channels laid out in front of you, wouldn’t you act like Bob to make things life a little easy for you? However, since Bob is working for a software company, contract breaches on confidentiality and proprietary issues all come to the fore. It is understood that being part of a company means fostering value-laden ideas and keeping it within the walls of the office. If Bob has his own company, outsourcing his company’s work is a business strategy that he can legally (and morally!) get into. Since he is paying someone to do his job, that is definitely another story.

How does this impact those in the outsourcing industry? While the whole brouhaha was ingeniously creative, outsourcing becomes critical especially when systems and infrastructures that took years to build are at stake. Security is at risk just as it can be an issue when operations are done under clandestine conditions. Second, laziness and brilliance can never be synonymous especially when it is not foolproof and you get caught. Outsourcing in China, outsourcing in the Philippines and even in India are popular today, but the legalities of conducing business offshore definitely do not fly out the window. 

The Advantages and Disadvantages of BPO Companies in Developing Countries

In developing countries such as the Philippines, the presence of so many BPOs or Business Process Outsourcing companies is not new nay surprising anymore. Central business districts or CBDs are a conglomeration of local and foreign companies with BPOs forming a significant percentage of the latter.

BPOs have helped local economies rise, thus putting local trade and stock markets in healthy positions. However, even with its favourable reception, it pays to know what the different advantages and disadvantages are of BPOs for developing countries.

Advantages of BPO Companies

First, it has to be the influx of local employment. Scarcity of jobs is common and it can be attributed to different factors. The rise in population is one. The lack of local investment is another. As more people exit schools with a college degree, the number of employment does not immediately commensurate to the number of job seekers. Especially if a lot of students graduate with almost the same range of specialisation, companies may not be ready to have them all on board due to the relatively limited resources companies have to hire. With BPOs, graduates who are not immediately accommodated by the companies they initially intend to work for can take them in instead. Since most BPOs are skills-based, for as long as you have the competency to be taught and to learn new things, you have the potential to make it big for your employer.

Second, with local employment from BPOs gaining momentum, the quality of life of employed individuals are generally improved. It is true that one can earn more by working for a BPO company compared to working for a local company. Compensation is higher and benefits are better, which can include health insurances, transportation allowances and other refundable expenditures. Moreover, for call centre agents who are in sales, they are also entitled to commissions for every deal that they close. It is not surprising why there are people who leave their relatively low-paying jobs and enter the call centre or contact centre industry to work. Much more can be earned and be put in the bank if one manages to save whatever he or she is earning from a BPO company.

Disadvantages of BPO Companies

Many of the disadvantages thrown at countries where BPOs are is that it drains out local employment in the originating country of companies that choose to outsource. For US MNCs or multinational companies, for instance, Americans are competing at very few employment opportunities because most MNCs would instead invest in the Philippines or in India for its operations. After all, if MNCs can be as productive, but with little cost on manpower and infrastructures, it would be natural for them to shift operations offshore.

Also, with the way BPOs shoot their success to the top, they can go down as fast and easy if they are not careful. Maybe there was a glitch in the managerial process that caused them to lose a lot of money. Should that unfortunate event happen, the brunt of it will be received first by those in the front line – the outsourced employees. It is for this reason why redundancies and mass unemployment are natural occurrences in BPO companies. Redundiated employees simply look for new opportunities in another BPO company or in another industry to be able to work again.