While outsourcing is great for your startup business to expand its reach, it does come with challenges. One is the resistance that your internal team might have against it. Overcoming this resistance is vital for smooth operations. But how do you do that effectively? Let’s take a look.
Why Your Internal Team Might Resist Outsourcing
While it is ultimately you who will decide whether to outsource, you still need to take the opinion of your internal team on the matter. Understanding why they might be against your move will help you plan out how to convince them. There are several reasons why your employees might not welcome this development.
Fear Of Losing Jobs
Comic by Scott Adams.
The biggest worry your internal team might have is that outsourcing would result in them losing their jobs. That is a valid concern. After all, you are sending some of their tasks to others. Even if it does not mean outright job elimination, there is always that threat to their livelihood.
Competition With The External Team
And even if outsourcing does not mean your employees lose their jobs, they might find themselves competing with the external team. This situation often happens if you outsource to get additional personnel for their work. They might find the external team taking over their work unintentionally. That creates friction between the two, affecting the work.
The Erosion Of Company Loyalty
Ultimately, there is the danger of your employees losing their trust in you. They might argue that you are using outsourcing to get away from giving them additional pay. Such a situation can cause them to leave your company. You end up losing essential talents at a time when they are much needed to guide your external team.
Image from CoreCentive.
Even if they choose to stay, the above issues will still exist. Because of this, you might have a harder time getting your internal team to perform as effectively as before. That can have wide-reaching consequences for the business in the long run.
In Comes Change Management
To handle this situation better, you should account for it when creating your change management plans. Change management is the strategic process of helping your company transition from one state to another. In this case, your goal is to successfully get your internal team to accept and work with an outsourced one.
There are several components involved in preparing your employees for the incoming change. Laying down each of these properly will help you convince your internal team to embrace the entry of the outsourced team.
- Broad-based communication strategy: You want to effectively communicate what the change entails to all stakeholders, including employees.
- Staff transition strategy: Take into account things like redeployment, severance, and retention that will help ease employees into their new status after the change.
- Organizational design: You want to create a governance system that would bring together the new and retained teams and get them working effectively.
- Change acceptance strategy: This strategy will help the organizational transformation stick within the company.
- Training program: You need to help your internal team better understand the outsourced team’s processes to better work with the latter.
Of the various components, you want to give particular importance to your change acceptance strategy when dealing with employee hesitation. Your goal is to help them better understand what the change would mean for them and how they can better adapt to it. However, the other components will also play a role in the effort.
How Your Startup Business Can Better Prepare Employees
A big challenge to getting your internal team to accept outsourcing is the variety of individual opinions. While some might readily accept the change, others might not be that open. Because of these differences, you might need to have a more personalized approach to each employee. Nevertheless, there are some strategies that you can apply to everyone.
Outline The Benefits For Your Startup Business Emplyees
This one is arguably where that variability comes into play. Each employee can have a different view of what constitutes a benefit for them. Some of the usual benefits that employees might want to get from outsourcing include:
- Reduced workloads
- Better work distribution
- Decreased work stress
- Improved work-life balance
Your intimate knowledge of each employee’s concerns will help you better decide which benefit to highlight to them. You can also ask them what they want to gain from the outsourcing effort. That gives you a better idea of how to bring the changes to them.
Be Honest
On the other end of the spectrum, you also need to be forthcoming about how your decision to outsource can impact employees. Here, you need to explain why you need to make the decision. You would also want to be clear about things like potential layoffs or reassignments.
Image from Insightlink.
Proper lead time is vital here. Make sure that everyone in your team knows the incoming changes well in advance. That gives them enough time to process the development and figure out what they will do next. In such a situation, offer whatever help you can provide for them to make their decisions.
Introduce Your In House And External Teams To Each Other
This one is something that your startup business should not forget. Even if they are not going to be working face to face, like in the case of a remote team, you still need to introduce your internal and external teams to each other. That helps break the barrier between them, as they get to know the person they will work with.
Go beyond that initial introduction. Get them to collaborate on a project before they work together full-time with each other. That allows your internal team to gauge their ability to work with the external team. It can help them better warm up to your new setup.
Get Your Startup Business Employees And Outsourced Team Working Together
Employee buy-in is a vital step for your startup business to do outsourcing right. Thus, you need to invest the time and effort to ensure that everyone is on board with the plan. And to make that work, you need to present a good external team to them. Sign up with us today and we will help you convince your team of our mettle.