Question

What are the pros and cons for local company (Canadian) having a workforce located in another country? What are the political implications? What other challenges can you think of in managing a global workforce?

Answer 1

The pros and cons for local company (Canadian) having a workforce located in another country points towards the pros and cons of Outsourcing.

Advantages of Outsourcing: -

The very first advantage is potentially reduced costs as the company will outsource the work to others only when it is made available to them for cheaper price, otherwise they would have done it themselves. Therefore various developing countries are a outsourcing hub.

New talent pool is in which the company can dive into. New location for outsourcing opens up an array of opportunities for the company to hire new and talented people that may not have been available at their primary branch. This ensures completion of work in an experted manner.

With hiring or outsourcing in other locations/countries improves business ties of the local company with them. This results in forming of a friendly bond that is mutually beneficial.

Disadvantages of Outsourcing: -

The very basic disadvantage of outsourcing is Communication issues. Communication process hamper and messages may not be as clearly distributed to outsourced units than in house primary employees.

Lack of proper control is another issue that the companies face a lot. Since their non-presence in the outsourced location/plant doesn't allow them to be at the top of things.

Outsourcing has become the most politicized point for a country whose companies practice it especially at the times of elections.

The loss of local employment to other companies or countries is an issue that has been continuously raised from all aspects of the system be it the US, Germany, Britain etc.

E,g, Harley Davidson and President Donald Trump incident.

But in recent times, Outsourcing has become a trend that is being followed by almost all the companies of all the countries irrespective of the nature of work. Outsourcing IT jobs, manufacturing plants, Packaging, Customer service as some of the common examples.

Challenges in managing global workforce are as follows: -

Linguistic barriers are the most common issues faced by outsourcing companies. With such a diverse culture across the globe, there are a ton of different languages spoken. This hampers the processes and proper e=understanding of the messages when to and fro communication takes place.

Cultural differences form another mega-challenge for outsourcing the work to other countries/companies. E.g. In India, most of the employees working in an organization belong to different cultural backgrounds and have different values. Ensuring no discrimination to anyone, respecting each and every culture is a challenge that the organization has to find.

Time zone differences is an uncontrollable aspect that may hamper the efficiency of the work being outsources. The person sitting in India would have to wait for a long time before he could get in touch with say an american colleague. This waste of time reduces the units efficiency and delays the deadlines.