24 Jul Getting team ‘buy in’

Team ‘buy in’ is critical  with outsourcing.  It is no good making the big announcement without notice.  We give you a better strategy today.

Outsourcing from every angle

Mentor – Nick Ogden

• Plan it and sell it at your end
• How to involve the team at the start
• Show how it will benefit the business and the team

Property Management Matters with Tara Bradbury – Listen for the cues and they will be the clues. More role play with Tara

Transcript:

Kevin Turner: To follow on from our conversation with our guest mentor this week from yesterday, Nick Ogden, who is our guest all week. Nick is from Beepo, of course, and you can find out more about Beepo the outsourcing specialists. If you’re looking at getting that into either your office or you’ve got an independent team and you’re looking for support. We’re going to be giving you a bit of an insight into that this week, and I’m on record yesterday as saying that it’s not for everyone. It can be, but it’s all about you and your mindset. Believe me, outsourcing does work if you get it right. Part of getting it right is getting the buy-in with the shore team. That is, your team. Getting that buy-in so that they are willing to support you on that decision. Nick Ogden joins me to talk about that.

Kevin Turner: Nick, this could be a bit of a sensitive topic, because we need owners of businesses to have a look in the mirror and just see if they’re the right kind of leader to implement this into their team. Is that a fair comment?

Nick  Ogden: Yeah, absolutely it is, Kevin. Look, it is a challenge and approaching this with your onshore team the right way is once again is a real key to the success of this long term.

Kevin Turner: I guess the leader has to make the decision, you can’t go to your team and say, “Well should we do outsourcing?” Because many people, local teams, will see that as a bit of a threat. So the owner of the business has to fully arm themselves with the facts, make that decision, and then get the buy-in. What would be your recommendation, Nick, about how best they can do that?

Nick  Ogden: Our number one recommendation is to go to the teams and get them essentially just to write out an A4 page, split that page right down the middle, and the A column needs to be the high value tasks, the parts of the role that they enjoy and the parts of the role that they feel bring value to the business long term and to reach the goals that everyone’s trying to achieve. Of course, column B is the opposite of that; what’s the rinse and repeat tasks, what’s the ones that they spend most of their day on, and what are the ones that are taking away their time from column A and the parts of the role as I said that are the high value and really do bring value to the business long term.

Kevin Turner: I guess if the shore team can understand that they’re there to do the high value work, that is to bring the most value to the organisation, and these support tasks that can be done offshore are the ones that are going to support them in those endeavors so that they’re getting the most out of their time in helping the company grow, Nick.

Nick  Ogden: Yeah absolutely. Essentially that column B, the rinse and repeat tasks, essentially that’s the parts of the business that we’re looking to support. But we also recommend the business owner goes a step further. Because at the end of the day, there’s an investment from the business owner’s point of view, and they’re putting an extra support mechanism in place for their team, you really need to get a commitment from the team that if they do put this solution in place, what is the team going to do in the column A section, in the high value task, in a kind of experience the service delivery to the landlords or the property owners to improve that? Because we’re taking away that rinse and repeat task, and investing to do that, we need a commitment from the teams they’re going to utilize that time in the best way possible.

Kevin Turner: I have not been to your office, I’ve been to the Philippines but I haven’t been to your office so we did that virtual tour just recently, and I know just looking at the size of the real estate team those people actually have a great relationship with the offices they work in and probably never visit them. We only ever see them online in a virtual … I wouldn’t even know how big Red is. Red does all of our work, Red and Estef. I wouldn’t know. They could be tall, they could be short. I only ever see them on screen. It’s an interesting relationship.

Nick  Ogden: It is. One of the ways that we recommend in the early part that a business can integrate their teams is to just set up one-on-one interview times on Zoom Meeting with their staff member. That’s a really informal introduction of the onshore team and the offshore staff member. That’s really just a quick 30 minute video call, and it’s really just a get to know you session and it’s amazing what comes out of that and the parts of people’s lives that are exactly the same. Of course parts are a little bit different and really interesting too. But taking the time to do that, once again it’s very similar to what we do when we’re on-boarding a new staff member locally. We don’t just upturn a big box of work on their desk on day one and then walk away. We take the time to make that person feel welcome, and we take the time to get to know them a little bit outside of work as well.

Kevin Turner: Nick Ogden is our guest this week from Beepo, and we’ve spent the last two days and we’re going to spend tomorrow too helping you on-board these new people, bring them into the team, because it is the key part of making outsourcing work. Then we’ll go into other parts later in the week like communication and technology. Nick, great catching up with you mate, we’ll look forward to talking to you again tomorrow morning.

Nick  Ogden: Awesome, Kevin. Thanks for your time.