Having an outsourced team can be valuable for any business. A set of knowledgeable people in a specific field can offer new and unique insights that further improve the quality of your brand and products. However, it can be difficult to trust people outside the company to help you.
This article provides ways to maintain quality and establish an effective system that will enable managers to assess their outsourced team. A question to ask here is what methods are available to determine the team's progress while monitoring their workload.
It is important to remember that an outsourced team is a party that is outside the company. This team provides services to create the product or results you desire, so having an organized plan is vital to maintaining a balanced workload and a realistic timetable.
This creates a productive environment where members can perform their roles properly, leading to quality outputs.
Tips on Assessing and Measuring Team Performance and Productivity
This article provides insights into the different systems and tools that businesses use to manage their outsourced teams while assessing the performance of each individual.
Define Company's Goals and Expectations
With the many projects businesses take, setting goals should always be in the first few steps of the process. Aside from your company's actual mission and vision, you also need to share with your outsourcing partner your expectations from them. Make sure to set realistic ones that the team can meet.
You will find measuring their progress and improving the objectives easier with a goal in mind. You can also assign a team lead to assist in conducting their tasks and monitoring the group's progress for a more hands-on approach even when you're far away.
The team lead can initiate improvements, call for meetings, and lead regular status reviews to ensure that everything is on track.
It is worth remembering, though, that too much monitoring can become a form of micromanaging. This can be detrimental to the outsourced team as it can cause burnouts, damage trust between the parties involved, increase employee turnover rate, and cause too much dependency.
Set Performance Metrics
Which metrics would you look at to measure the performance and productivity of your outsourced team? It's easy to check how many hours they spend working on a project and assume they are working hard, but what exactly is coming out of the long hours output-wise?
While it's logical to look at the hours worked, it should always be paired with the effort they made. What are the results or bottom-line production? This goes back to specifying your goals. For instance, if your outsourced team addressed 100 customer service tickets, you also need to check how long it took them to complete the task.
This is referred to as efficiency—the value created in a certain amount of time or an employee's ability to complete work with the least amount of time and effort.
Online Tools
Having an organized system is essential in today's businesses. With many companies moving to an online setup, software and applications have become vital in providing employees with the necessary tools for work. These can play a significant role in figuring out the progress of each individual.
Email continues to be a big part of businesses, especially at the current time when remote work has become the norm. By monitoring email activity, it will be possible to determine how big the workload is for each person and what adjustments need to be made.
One such software is EmailAnalytics which provides data of email usage, sent and received data, and an email breakdown of day and time.
Another example is Trello, which can organize and track employee workloads and schedules. The software allows for equal distribution of tasks and can determine how heavy an employee's workload is.
Then, there's always self-reporting. It may be difficult for some employees to admit that too many tasks are on their schedule. Encourage the team to be open about their situation, so they also feel heard and valued.
It is worth mentioning that an advantage to these online tools is their ability to split high-priority projects from smaller projects.
Timeline or Deadline
Like any other department in your company, your outsourced team also works under a timeline: first, there is the length of their contract, and second, the more specific deadline of the projects you're letting them handle. Before work officially starts, you should have discussed your timeline with your third-party service provider.
Each project has its own phases that employees work on to completion. Stages such as market research, social media content creation, finance and accounting, and customer service are some of the common ones. Knowing what stage the project is at is crucial for moving to the next step.
Performance measuring tools are widely available for this. Having one of these installed on your employees' computers simplifies the process of evaluating their performance and lets you know if you need to adjust the schedule and tasks evenly. They can organize the timeline of each project the company is tackling.
All of these contribute to an efficient process for any outsourced team while promoting a fair and balanced workload.
Having Eyes Off-shore
Outsourcing will continue to be an integral part of many businesses for years to come. With the way the world has transformed primarily because of the pandemic, companies have transitioned to a more significant online presence. Competitors will aim to do the same, so having outsourced team management may be a good idea to stay afloat.
It is also essential to maintain transparency throughout the process, give support, and schedule engagement activities to provide outsourced employees a chance to take a break.
One thing to keep in mind is the continuous outsourcing trends that arise that may affect your business. This leads back to the earlier point of having an organized system, a realistic timetable, and a proper schedule. This dynamic provides the opportunity to improve your product and ultimately stand out from the competition.
