The one thing that was clear during the COVID-19 pandemic was that enterprises have to be nimble-footed and innovative to thrive in an uncertain and competitive business landscape.
And for that, enterprises need to have a workforce that thinks differently and brings different experiences to the table.
According to a Deloitte report, enterprises with a diverse, international staff were 1.7 times more likely to become the leaders of innovation.
The global workforce brings different experiences, skills, and knowledge to the enterprise. It helps the enterprise to gain different perspectives and build innovative offerings for customers worldwide. The wider talent pool can give the enterprise a competitive edge over others. A global workforce is also cost-effective as enterprises can save on labor costs if they hire from countries like India and the Philippines.
The pandemic has also shown that remote work is possible. So, enterprises don’t have to worry about managing remote talent. They can collaborate with them seamlessly with the help of enterprise apps just like they are collaborating with their own now distributed teams.
Even global talent is keen to join such enterprises.
According to a Distribute Consulting report, employers that advertise themselves as remote-friendly saw a 3000% spike in application rates.
It’s clear that enterprises that capitalize on the global workforce would perform better.
However, despite the clear advantages, enterprises are unable to make the most out of the growing global talent pool.
Let’s look at what’s stopping them.
What’s Stopping Enterprises From Tapping The Global Talent Pool?
- Cultural and language barriers
A diverse workforce is undoubtedly better than a homogenous workforce. However, managing a workforce that speaks different languages and works at different shift timings can be challenging. Different countries follow different work practices and may have contradictory opinions on various subjects. Sometimes although the workforce is skilled, the enterprise may have to spend time in “training out” irritants and poor practices. Sometimes they may face the risk of miscommunication due to the language barrier. These are some differences that enterprises have to tackle while dealing with global talent.
- Silos in teams
As enterprises adopt agile methodology and DevOps, they expect the workforce to work collaboratively. The language and culture barriers and working in different time zones could result in the teams working in silos. Knowledge sharing also becomes a challenge. Silos can be a bane for enterprises that aim to expand their global footprint. It could lead to the weakening of trust between the teams and general demotivation among employees as they worry about shouldering more than their fair share of the work. This could eventually also lead to a poor-quality outcome or unnecessary delays in project completion.
- Inability to fill gaps
Despite a large talent pool, enterprises are often unable to fill the skills gap because of difficulties in hiring. According to KPMG’s survey, 65% of technology leaders in 83 countries cited hiring as one of their primary challenges. Technology is evolving so rapidly that by the time the enterprise bridges the gap, they are back to looking for talent with a new skillset. Along with technical skills, enterprises also look for talent with soft skills. In fact, soft skills seem to have surpassed digital skills in some ways. All things considered, it takes almost 33 days for enterprises to hire and onboard the new talent. Given how trends change rapidly, enterprises hesitate to wait for so long to get the right talent. However, this could take time to show results, especially if the digital transformation requires a complete overhaul of processes and tools.
- Compliance issues
Every country follows different labor laws and tax regulations. There are other factors to consider such as immigration laws, work permits, relocation expenses, etc. Enterprises also need to be careful about their contracts and termination processes. Complying with each of these laws could be time-consuming, complex, and expensive. It could lead to unnecessary delays in hiring. That’s why enterprises are hesitant to hire globally. They find this process daunting. Enterprises can consider hiring legal experts who understand the local laws well and help enterprises comply with them, but that’s quite an onerous process too.
- Costs
Although hiring a global workforce is often more cost-effective than local hiring in the USA, other direct and indirect costs are also involved in the process. These could be the varying currency exchange rates, the training costs, the regulatory and infrastructure costs, and immigration costs if the talent has to work onsite. There are also training and onboarding costs involved. For instance, an enterprise loses 1% to 2.5% of its total revenue in bringing the new hire to speed.
Conclusion
Don’t let hiring challenges, costs, or compliance become a roadblock to growth. Enterprises can consider working with a reliable partner to implement their strategies as they can focus on growing their business. Enterprises could work with a partner to build or hire an offshore, onshore, or onsite team, depending upon their business needs and budget. The important thing is to ensure that the partners align their service delivery with the business needs. They must possess the technical skills and have strategic partnerships with leading vendors to use the right technologies for service deliveries. They must have robust hiring processes that allow them to find the right people at the right time to enable project delivery.
At Trinus, we offer services to help enterprises improve their agility and competitiveness. Enterprises can expect us to deliver tangible business benefits from enhanced operations to improved governance, easy scalability, and TCO reduction. Our onshore, offshore, and onsite teams can help to support enterprises in achieving their business goals.
To know more about our services, contact us.