Managing Offshore Teams — The Most Common Issues (and How to Avoid Them)
Inheriting or setting up an offshore team can be daunting
I was managing a team of Presentation Operators within a large Financial company when I noticed something odd.
Our department was located on the 13th floor (lucky us) of their HQ building, but most of the investment teams we worked for were on the 19th. As a trial we decided to place two operators up on the 19th to work directly with the clients (the main Presentations team on L13 would remain used for longer turnaround work, large jobs and overflow).
The clients loved it! They could provide briefs directly, make changes quickly and review changes immediately. The experiment seemed a success.
But then an unexpected problem emerged. The clients started to adore the operators up on L19 and criticise the ones down on L13. I received calls questioning why the skills of the L19 operators were so much better than the rest of the team. They tried to give all their work to the now overworked L19 operators while staff in the main department sat idle. I was asked why the L13 operators were not trained to the same levels, were there some hiring issues, were the agencies sending us substandard staff…?
The thing is… they were the same people.
We rotated the staff onto the L19 floor. Every person working on L13 also worked on L19 for a period of days as part of a strict rota. It was as if something magical happened to a team member the moment they stepped onto the 19th floor and sat within visibility of the clients. They became more skilled, more reliable, more relatable, just… better.
The perception of differing skill levels was pure illusion based on… well we’ll come to that.
Not long after this we expanded to include two offshore sites, one in Sri Lanka, and one in the Philippines. Can you guess what happened?
Suddenly the clients were filled with praise for all the L19 AND L13 operators in London, but do not want to send work to the ‘unreliable’, ‘unskilled’ and ‘slow’ team members offshore…
So why was this? And can it be solved?
‘Distance’ and ‘Otherness’
Some factors which will make someone feel another person is more sociologically ‘removed’ from them:
- Different race or cultural/physical appearance
- Different manner of speaking/accent
- ‘Foreign sounding’ (particularly ‘complex’) names
- Physical distance (eg even a different floor of the same building)
- No visual contact (just a voice on the phone/text in an email)
- Perceived job status (‘lower’ or ‘higher’)
These differences create perceived ‘distance’ between the onshore clients and the offshore teams. And this distance can lead to the expression of undesirable behaviours such as mistrust, dismissal and even rudeness.
How can we mitigate for these?
Reduce the ‘distance’ of offshore teams
In order to integrate the offshore teams more seamlessly into the global operation we need to approach the issues individually:
Bring the offshore team mentally ‘closer’ to the clients
Make sure the clients know who your team members are and what they look like. Where possible have your team use video calls, Skype, GoToMeeting, Zoom etc. Put your offshore team photos on org charts which the clients have access to. Make sure their company directory photos are available (and clear and professional, not a fuzzy old photo or one taken at a party/the beach).
Often offshore staff hate direct contact with clients (who they can perceive as demanding, rude and often angry). Ensure they pick up the phone rather than relying on emails (or even just taking the easiest option and not communicating at all). Emphasise that clients might not like hearing their work is delayed, but they hate being ignored far more. The more the team do this, the more they will grow in confidence. It may take significant effort to reinforce how important this is and embed this desired behaviours but it will achieve significant results in the longer term.
Raise confidence in the offshore team with the onshore clients
When you get the inevitable complaints about quality, speed etc, always ask for specific incidents. Particularly in the first 6 months of the onshore model I received many complaints from the clients, but 9 out of 10 times when I asked for the specifics the complaints became much vaguer and more indistinctly mumbled. Often it was ‘actually an issue from a couple of months ago’ or ‘Well it wasn’t directly me but Jim said…’ or they simply ‘couldn’t remember’ any details. I explained that without specifics there was little I could do to investigate or address any potential skill gaps. By questioning the clients first it reduces the likelihood of future vague complaints — after all who likes to look like they are continually raising pointless issues?
Of course there will be genuine complaints and you must address these directly with the team members. As with any group of staff some will be less capable than others, some may need training, some even require disciplinary action. Address this as you would any onshore member of the team. Provide support and training as first approach. Action plans and disciplinary if needed. You will be more credible to your clients when you accept the genuine complaints and can demonstrate that you will action them. Don’t be seen as a manger who ignores genuine issues in automatic defence of their team as this will damage your own reputation.
Another good idea is to run annual global tests, to be taken by all operators, offshore and onshore. Have their team leaders/managers mark these amongst themselves (which is also a good message of confidence in that management layer). Hopefully you should find a similar spread of skills and accuracy across all sites. (If you don’t then the lower performing teams need urgent attention — make sure the right local management is in place and understands their responsibilities — take close direct involvement in such locations). Assuming the tests have shown a broadly consistent skill level and scores, this becomes a powerful objective metric with which to defend your team. In difficult meetings with clients and even senior stakeholders, you can raise this as an objective global measure of quality and it allows you to return the conversation to any specific issues.
Try to keep shifts stable. Offshore teams, particularly if the team work 24 hours (or close to this) may well work on rotating/variable shifts. Certain clients may regularly send work at certain times of day. If it is possible to keep the same team members working at the same times the clients will get to know the operators more personally, more quickly. And when such a relationship develops it is amazing how turnaround times and errors are suddenly less of an issue because the client knows they can just quickly call their regular operator and get it fixed quickly.
It’s also important to ensure you know who are the senior clients responsible for agreeing and sponsoring the whole offshore structure. All your clients answer to more senior mangers — if it is clear that your offshore model has very senior level support then, as long as you are ensuring all is being managed as tightly as possible, any complaints can only go so far before they hit a giant hurdle: the most senior managers really want this all to work because it costs less money and as a result they get better bonuses. This is an incredibly powerful secret weapon and should never be forgotten. Simply never give those senior stakeholders any reasons to find the setup no longer desirable.
Record and collate as many metrics as possible which show things like onshore v offshore costs, high percentage utilisation of offshore team members (and how much this would have cost onshore), error rates (which hopefully will be low, or at least reducing over time). And keep a record of ALL positive communications from clients. (Also record all complaints for transparency, but this hopefully allows a positive compliment:complaint ratio to be recorded). Ideally make a simple monthly Management Information reporting pack for your manager each month showing all of this. It’s a bit of extra work but it shows real confidence in your structure and team, demonstrates full transparency and will absolutely pay off during challenging times such as restructures (who is more likely to experience team cuts, a team which can evidence in detail their utilisation figures and popularity, or a team with no information to show?)
Raise confidence in the offshore team across the team themselves
I found that the offshore teams were constantly worried about ‘disappointing’ or angering the onshore clients. So when asked if work would be done by a certain time would always reply ‘Yes!’, even if that was clearly impossible. And obviously this only led to worse complaints.
I instigated an error ‘weighting’ system whereby some errors were defined as more serious than others — I allocated failure to communicate realistic deadlines to be one of the most serious error types. I wanted them to be more concerned about the monthly error reports than a client getting annoyed, especially as in reality it was often the client’s fault for asking for an unreasonable turnaround. Also I had meetings with the individuals to reinforce that they were the experts and if they disagreed with a client on time estimates for the work they must remember that they were correct and the client was wrong (of course this isn’t always 100% true but for the purposes of confidence building it’s an important message). Finally that if any client simply refused to accept the estimate and they were certain their estimate was as accurate as it could be, to never worry about escalating the issue to their manager and then to me.
(One point also worthy of note — make sure you do actually use the offshore team. In one instance I witnessed, an offshore team was set up via an agency, thoroughly trained, and then… ignored for weeks, because they were treated as an overflow. The managers hadn’t permitted themselves to fully trust the concept of sending work offshore so hadn’t truly committed to the model. As a result when work was finally sent to that team it was returned in an awful state because the people who were trained had, by now, been allocated to other work, and the agency were resorting to using untrained temps. The whole engagement failed.)
Don’t take accept bad behaviour from clients
Defend your team. Bad behaviour by clients (which fortunately is rarer these days due to stronger HR policies and PR risks) such as being rude, shouting or unacceptable comments should be addressed immediately and every bit as strongly as if directed towards an onshore team member or yourself. Escalate. Apart from obviously being the correct thing to do, your team need to know you have their back — if you don’t they will lose respect for you, will not care about their role as much and probably end up looking for work elsewhere.
This is one area where it is very important to be firm from day one. For some reason onshore clients sometimes feel they have more ‘right’ to be rude to offshore operators (it’s that ‘distance’ issue again) than onshore ones, and believe they can shout their way into getting what they want. Make it clear to both the client and the operator that this is absolutely not acceptable and will involve HR if repeated.
On the few occasions I needed to escalate an issue about unpleasant client behaviour, the senior management at the company always took our side and reprimanded the client. Remember, at a senior level the company want your offshore engagement to work because, and let’s not pretend otherwise, an offshore solution is much cheaper.
Manage directly, and be a good manager
If you have an offshore team engaged via an agency, try to manage the team as far as possible directly as though they were your own staff. You will usually have local team leaders/managers — have regular weekly meetings with these individuals, but also regular (eg quarterly) meetings with the whole team. If the team is small have weekly meetings with the whole team.
Close direct management is important because often the local managers know their own industry (contracting), but the do not know your industry or specific requirements as well as you do. Measure performance, quality, timekeeping etc as closely as you can. It sounds like unnecessary effort but it pays dividends in understanding the profiles of all your team. Of course it is in the Offshore managers’ interests to claim all team members are perfect — in reality the team’s skillsets, ability and personal motivation will vary and you need to know the skill gaps.
Understand the logistics and details of the offshore location. If possible fly out there and meet them as soon as possible. This will build your team rapport and also allow to get a sense of their location, how it works, who sits where, how does work physically travel around the room, who are the ‘pivotal’ team members, where is their office located (do people have long commutes, are local weather conditions likely to have significant impact etc — my Colombo and Manila teams were regularly impacted by typhoons and flooding — ensure your Business Continuity plans are in place and robust). Get to know the team socially, understand what they like to do in the evenings. Chances are they have a far more active and exciting social scene than your onshore workplace. Taking an interest in these events both when you’re there and when you’re back at home will go a long way. Be as lenient as possible about team social events. Have the onshore team cover for them occasionally — they’ll repay the favour tenfold.
Like all management roles, the more you understand the minutiae of the day-to-day work the better. I was fortunate in that I had started as an operator in the same industry so knew every aspect of the role and could step in and work directly on Presentations when required. If you have that level of knowledge ensure the team are aware of it as it will increase respect and also they will trust your opinion more on the subject. If you don’t have that level of direct knowledge try and develop it as far as possible.
For many people in offshore centres working for a large overseas company is often considered a highly desirable position. As a result they are often prepared to work crazy hours to keep the job. And as a stressed manger who has many tough deadlines it will be tempting and easy for you to let them do this. Don’t. Treat them as you would Onshore staff. If a degree of overtime is expected that’s fine, but don’t treat the offshore staff as resources to be flogged until they drop (if significant amounts of overtime are continually expected your staffing levels are probably wrong and if they charge for overtime your company is probably losing money as a result). And just because they are offshore staff doesn’t mean they don’t like spending time with their friends family as much as you do (often they commute very long distances to be in those offshore centres).
You have already sent the message to your offshore team that you have their back, that if clients are unreasonable you’ll look after them. You’ll have a reputation for taking a genuine interest in them and not asking them for unreasonable overtime. The trade-off is that if they do underperform you will take them to task. You will defend them as you would onshore team members, therefore you expect the same performance levels and communication with the clients. For example you don’t expect to work unreasonable hours, but you do expect them to be at work on time.
And for goodness’ sake learn their names and pronounce them correctly. If in doubt check with their managers. If you don’t they will be polite and probably won’t even mention it, but it is so disrespectful to get these basics wrong, and it sends a message that you don’t really care about them. So they won’t care as much either.
Cultural differences
There are two parts to this.
- Understand genuine cultural differences — Eg offshore teams are generally more ‘polite’ (often to the detriment of accurate communication) like to give positive news, do not like confrontation, will not always be truthful about deadlines etc (they don’t want to disappoint), often will revert to a short email rather than pick up the phone and risk a conversation where the client might be annoyed… This is often because the job is so valued and so locally prestigious they do not want to do/say anything which they perceive might endanger either the personal or team relationship. Compensate for this (as detailed above) to ensure client engagement is as close as possible to what you would expect from onshore operators. And communicate the reasons clearly — ensure the offshore team understand you are not forcing them into situations/processes they might find more uncomfortable than they would prefer for no reason, but rather that you are treating them the same as onshore team members.
- Ignore imaginary cultural differences — I was informed by a senior manager (with what in retrospect was a hilarious level of confidence) that I should treat my Manila and Colombo staff differently. People from the Philippines, I was told, are more ‘maternal’ and ‘nurturing’, people from Sri Lanka are more ‘masculine’ and ‘technical’ etc. It was even recommended I put certain roles in certain countries to reflect this (eg management in Manila, technical development in Sri Lanka).
Obviously, that advice was utter nonsense. There were nurturing and kind people in both sites, there were rude and uncooperative people in both sites. There were very technical individuals and those with poor skills. Because both sites were filled with… human beings.
Final thoughts
The above are representative of my own experience in managing a global department of over 100 people distributed across 7 countries for 10 years within a major Financial Organisation. They are are not intended to be definitive or representative of all situations or industries. But in discussions with other global managers since then I have found many similarities.
You hear a lot of horror stories but in almost every instance it was because the structure, processes and approach had not been set up correctly.
When I finally left that company the engagement with the offshore teams was the aspect I missed the most.
On my final day I discovered the offshore teams had prepared a video for me, consisting of many farewells and kind messages about our time. We watched it together as a global team over the video link.
When it finished I managed to thank them and then, with a shaky voice, had to end that final call.
Because I was pretty sure I was about to cry.
