Visualize this – 

An exuberant start-up team, basking in the possibilities of the next big idea, celebrating the funding, and all ready to scale up. 

Now, you just need to employ the best-suited people in the next few days, to keep this going.

Opens a whole new Pandora’s box though – posting jobs, sorting applicants, competency assessment, interviews, selecting the right ones, negotiating terms, conducting background, regulatory & compliance checks, on-boarding – the whole nine yard! And NO, it’s not free.

 It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that securing cash reserves is less demanding than getting the best fit of people to take care of your start-up “baby”.

 In more cases than not, if the money squeeze is daunting, the people deficit can be spine-breaking in the start-up ecosystem. The competition for quality manpower is fierce for starters, often due to sheer unavailability or complex compliance clearances.

 This is where a professionally managed manpower outsource agency steps in, as an affiliate, to deliver the best staff for a specific job type, within the boundaries of a contract.

 Contrary to popular belief, low-cost manpower is not the only gain from this setup. Working with competent manpower agencies brings several not-so-obvious benefits, that in the long run give a competitive edge – whilst keeping your company trim. 

 Few would disagree that, when trying to find manpower, the two biggest roadblocks can be finding the right skills and unearthing them at the right time. This more often than not means “finding them yesterday”!

 There are significant overhead costs and hiccups involved when setting up tedious in-house HR processes with a dedicated team. You will need to incur the cost and source employees, irrespective of the inflow of actual projects. This expenditure is eliminated when engaging with a manpower agency. The agency invests in resources and time to build a skills database and you get access to this curated pool, for a fraction of the cost. Tailor-fit for budgets, it permits you to evaluate, select and hire talent at an affordable price. As a deliberate time-cost saving strategy, the agency can also be engaged to manage the wing-to-wing lifecycle of an employee – on-boarding, training, licensing, payroll-processing, engagement, and transitions including exits.

Irrespective of the skillset being engaged, be it at a contact center, coding project or construction site, the accountability of manning the position, is shared by the service provider. Outsourcing lets you reduce the time required to fill a position because you are hand-picking from a queue of skilled and pre-screened workers.  No more running helter-skelter every time a new project lands up or the existing one expands. The time saved, in not having to start from scratch, to find another person, offsets the cost of engaging the agency manifolds. Unforeseen replacement requirements, in case of non-performance or unavoidable leaves, are also easier to find, as compared to replacing on-roll employees. In rare cases, if an emerging skill-need crops up, the agency will have a better chance to match and fill it.  This assurance allows your start-up to focus on its core business and offerings.

 Another distinct facet in a start-up’s resource requirements is that it fluctuates. A full-time employee can burn a hole in the pocket when in-hand projects are still not signed-off. This risk of sitting on a non-revenue generating workforce is largely mitigated when working with manpower providers since it is a demand-based pull model. The workforce can be ramped up or down depending on the workload, which gives you the flexibility, without the financial liability. 

 Now let’s address the ethical elephant in the room. Is outsourcing fair? 

For the longest time, there has been a perception that staffing agencies inherently exploit. Many believe that the agency short-changes off-shore workers by paying below acceptable wages, to reduce costs. Alongside the local population is deprived of job-opportunities, in their own place. Nothing could be far removed from the truth.  This model, in fact, enables employment & provides a choice of financial freedom to offshore workforces, where their own homeland earnings may be substantially less or non-existent. Thus, the savings made by your start-up can then be circled back to local hires as higher income or employee benefits. A win-win for both sets of the workforce.

In the last two years, where the epidemic has disrupted work and thereby employment, these agencies have been able to successfully shuffle people in different projects, instead of letting them go unemployed. A resource not required by someone, due to slow-down, may be useful somewhere else. 

 Irrespective of which phase of the business you start outsourcing, for manpower, the savings will start stacking up. You’ll end up paying for just the people you need when you need and be pleasantly surprised by the reduced expenses!

 Next on this series – “ How do I select by manpower partner?”