What is Virtual Staffing: Benefits and Tips

What is Virtual Staffing?

Virtual staffing, also known as remote staffing, refers to the practice of hiring employees who work remotely from their own location, typically using their own equipment and technology. Instead of reporting to a physical office, virtual staff members connect to their employer and colleagues through virtual platforms and communication tools.

In the current scenario, the virtual world has taken over a major chunk of our personal and work lives. Before we talk about the plethora of business benefits that virtual staffing can bring, we have to clearly understand what is virtual staffing. When it comes to managing a business successfully, cost-saving is everything. The simplest and easiest way to cutting down the expenses of running your office is to choose virtual staffing.

In this mode of staffing qualified and experienced staff can work for you from a remote location different from your office. Through virtual business staffing, you can access a big talent pool and manage them all using just the internet and phone! You can select the candidates with the skill level, education, or experience you require and this staff can work as per your specifications. The best part is that you don’t have to handle the infrastructure costs.

What are the Benefits of Virtual Staffing?

The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that 95 million jobs will be replaced by automation by 2025, and 87 million new jobs will be created.¹ When such new jobs are created, there will be a rising demand for new skills as well. Virtual staffing is the best way for businesses to speed up new skill deployment and ride the current wave of reskilling.

Here are some other top benefits of virtual business staffing:

• Easy collaboration

  The strength of every business is no doubt its teams of people all working towards a shared goal.Through virtual staffing, you can haveaccess to skilled resources apart from your in-house teams to help speed up your work. Such a strategic partnership makes way for better collaboration and better business growth.

• Reduced costs

  Getting your work done with the help of virtual staff is a great way to cut down on your operational costs and save money in the long run.

• Lesser workload

  You and your in-house teams have more time to focus your attention on core business tasks when the workload is shared with virtual teams. Scheduling and prioritizing work is much simpler this way.

• Better availability

  A 24/7 availability for a global business is always a winning strategy. Having virtual teams in different time zones ensures that your client needs are taken care of outside business hours as well. The market reach of your business also gets widened.

• Access to talent

  Through virtual staffing, you gain access to a talent pool of skilled resources at lower costs across geographical boundaries.When the tasks are taken care of by experienced personnel, this raises the bar for business productivity too.

How Does Virtual Staffing Work?

After getting a clear understanding of what are virtual staffing services and their business benefits, we can look into how the virtual staffing model works. For any business that is looking at scaling capabilities, bespoke services, or flexible parameters, this is certainly a strategic choice.

The first step to enable virtual business staffing is to select the candidates with the right skill sets that you are looking for. Once initial rounds of screening and interviews are done shortlist the best resources. Finding the right match is quite crucial for getting the best out of virtual staffing.

The next step would be to train the virtual employees for the work at hand and allocate a management staff to monitor performance and outputs. Once this is taken care of you can get things done virtually by coordinating with the management staff.

Tips for Virtual Staffing

Managing virtual employees outside of a standard work environment does come with some challenges. But with some tips, you can handle such challenges smartly and make the most out of virtual staffing:

• Communication

  Your requirements and expectations should be communicated well with the candidates selected. Always make it a point to have weekly calls with your virtual team, so you are all on the same page. Communication is key to achieving the actual benefits of having onboard a virtual team.

• Experience

  Virtual staffing is a cost-effective way to find the best candidates to do the job. It is integral that you always ensure that your virtual teams are equipped with staff that is more experienced and skilled. They can bring better work ethics, quality work and professionalism into the equation delivering reliable results. Don’t miss out on doing proper background checks of your virtual staff too.

• Evaluate at short intervals

  It is always best to test out your candidates by assigning sample works so you have a better idea of their working style or attitude and timeliness before a long-term contract is signed. Make sure you do a team evaluation at short intervals to assess overall progress.

Conclusion

Through virtual business staffing, companies can aim for scaling their business effortlessly without the usual hassles of meeting human resource requirements. This model of staffing can help fill hiring gaps and also impart more control over business performance. If your business lacks experience or background in this area, you can also use expert services offered by a managed service provider for virtual staffing.

Such companies can handle the recruitment, training and onboarding of the right virtual staff as per your needs. Ranked among the top 5 recruitment and staffing consultants in India, Alp Consulting, a subsidiary of the billion-dollar firm Outsourcing Inc Japan, has the expertise to manage the intricacies of virtual staffing for your business. As a leading company in developing and delivering unique personnel solutions, they can offer you a virtual staffing solution that is customised according to specific operational and HR requirements of your company.

References

1. CNBC

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How does virtual staffing make organizations more efficient?

Answer: Virtual staffing can help organizations be more efficient in numerous ways. It is a staffing model that can provide you with a virtual office with absolutely no infrastructure costs. Especially if you are thinking about scaling your business in a cost-effective manner this is the way to go. Here are some ways by which virtual staffing can make your business more efficient:

• Enables you to focus on your core business
• Access to a pool of experienced and skilled staff
• Better time and resource management
• Improved work quality
• No extra training costs involved
• Lower management overhead
• Lower employee turnover due to performance or relocation

2. What are Virtual Staffing Services?

Answer: Virtual staffing services are the services that companies make use of when they require a team or staff to work for them from a remote location. The company will not require to provide office space or any equipment for the virtual staff. They also don’t have to worry about the HR management of these staff. The virtual staff is recruited to perform the tasks that you assign during the hours allocated to them as per your business needs. Using virtual staffing services is a very cost-effective model to scale your business without incurring office overheads or employee administration costs.

3. How is virtual staffing different from conventional staffing?

Answer: Though both staff work for the same company. There can be a few major differences in the case of organizational structure, decision-making, or knowledge exchange. Unlike conventional teams, virtual staff follows a flat organizational structure with lesser hierarchies. In the virtual staffing model, there is more delegation and the usual command and control leadership style is not there. In the case of knowledge exchange, there are only formal project update meetings and no impromptu or informal sharing of information. Virtual staffing will not have the usual relationship-building seen in conventional staffing.

4. How is virtual staffing different from employing freelancers?

Answer: Virtual staffing is hiring employees that can work for your company remotely. These staff could work both part-time or full-time for you as per your business needs. Virtual business staffing is not the same thing as hiring freelancers. Freelance employees are self-employed and could work for multiple clients at a time as they wish. Whereas virtual staff will work for only a single employer. The major differences between virtual staffing and freelancers have got to do with the work arrangements.

5. What are the best practices to improve virtual team building?

Answer: Businesses across the globe now use virtual staffing for many beneficial reasons such as cost-cutting, enhancing productivity, getting high-quality staff, reducing risk and better management of time, effort and resources. Some of the widely accepted best practices for improving virtual team building are:

• Initiate regular project update meetings
• Ensure your training programs are not complicated
• Communicate project goals clearly
• Recognize and appreciate positive outputs
• Conduct short-term team evaluations
• Maintain utmost professionalism

 

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