In an attempt to keep a lid on costs and employee attrition, London-based outsourcing company Xchanging Plc., which has 30 percent of its staff in India, is experimenting with locating some of its business in the hinterland. Or, at the very least, a six hour drive from the nearest airport. That’s enough to ensure that real estate is cheap, as is the work force. And best of all, it’s far enough to deter the competition from coming in and swooping up trained staff, the company says….

Alok Sinha, president and head of its IT outsourcing division, says the experiment to take work outside Bangalore was driven primarily by an attempt to curtail escalating costs. Real estate prices have increased 15 percent, wages, on average, have shot up by up to 12 percent while the amounts billed to clients have gone up only 3-4 percent, says Mr. Sinha.

“It’s a brilliant idea,” Bhavin Shah, an IT analyst at Equirus Securities, is quoted as saying in the WSJ article. “They will face some challenges in recruiting, but if they can overcome those, it will work very well.” Like many successful rural sourcing initiatives here in the U.S., Xchanging partnered with schools to deal with this challenge, asking colleges located in the towns where the company set up shop to tailor their curricula to turn out students that wouldn’t require much expensive training.

Finding talent was an easy enough problem to sort out, but Xchanging had to get more creative when it came to real estate. There were no suitable buildings in the area, so the company initially took “over the local wedding hall as there were no office buildings that were large enough to house all its employees.” It has since built its own campus.

This sounds like good news for the job-starved hinterlands of countries like India, but are there any pitfalls or downsides to the idea?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Paul Keller. 

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Despite the firm’s international outlook, COO Larry Mieldezis struggled to make offshoring work for some parts of the business, so decided instead to cook up a rural sourcing plan with his alma mater Southern Illinois University, snagging well-educated but lower-cost recruits from a region not exactly known as tech hotspot. We called him up to ask how it’s going and what advice he has for other organizations who are considering setting up shop in America’s heartland.

Why did you decide on rural sourcing versus offshoring?

I’m responsible for our technical delivery services, so basically our managed services. I’ve done that with this company for about 12 years. Over those years, just like our competitors, we went down the path of offshoring to try to lower our costs but also expand our just-in-time capacity in terms of development, technical delivery and customer service. We’ve run at that for a number of years, but we’ve had mixed results, ranging from quality issues with the data that came back, to availability, to turnover and really understanding the business practices that we’re trying to solve. The solutions that we’re delivering aren’t just people that can go in the corner and code. They actually have to interact quite a bit with our customers.

Some years back I had had an idea. I’m from a rural part of the country. I know there’s some good talent that comes out of local university systems in those areas, yet the opportunity for those people to stay is typically limited. I thought, let’s try an alternative to offshoring.

The experience we saw with offshoring, and what we were able to do with people here in the U.S. – common time zones, business cultures, communications and all the security issues — have been completely more than what we had anticipated. We still do some selective offshoring on our development side, but we’ve moved managed services 100 percent to rural sourcing.

Are you happy with the workforce in Illinois? Have your turnover issues decreased?

I definitely think we’re seeing better results than what we saw in offshoring. The offshoring model has become so fluid and transient from the perspective of employees moving from one company to the other, and then in recent years providers moving from country to country because of the wage escalation in those markets.

What we’ve seen in rural sourcing is quite the opposite. I think the key was to build really strong relationships between our company and a local university, so as a result of that we partnered with Southern Illinois University, which is a pretty good-sized university with very good computer science and applied engineering programs. We went in and worked with the deans and professors to identify top candidates out of those programs — candidates that are from that region and want to stay in that region. You’re going to find people coming out of school that want to go to New York, L.A., San Francisco, whatever it may be. That’s fine. But you’re also going to find people that want to stay local, raise a family, invest in a way of life and are strong, intelligent contributors in technology. We’re seeing a lot less turnover if you target the right people with the right message.

Let me say, our population up there is not exclusively recent graduates. A third are seasoned people who have either moved back to the region after having a high tech job elsewhere or people that have found opportunities in the region even though they were sparse.

How were you able to locate those more seasoned people?

Basically, tap into those local communities, the Chamber of Commerce, professional networks in those markets. You’re not going to necessarily get there by using things like Monster and Indeed. People don’t look there if they want to stay local, so it’s mainly been people on the ground, word of mouth, and making an investment in the community. These communities embrace this like you wouldn’t believe because it’s an opportunity for these people to take on some important, challenging technology roles. Otherwise they’d be working for a local bank or an attorney.

How about on the financial end – was this a money saver for you?

I look at it overall as a winner. There’s a cost component, and there’s the ability for us to respond competitively. There’s new business that we’re able to obtain that otherwise we would not. On the pure cost side, I have data that shows anywhere from 1.5 to two offshore resources can be replaced by one domestic resource – just the effectiveness, the creativity, the understanding of the business, all the other challenges of offshoring. I’m hiring less people than I have to hire if I go overseas, so obviously that’s a cost savings.

The cost in that part of the country, whether it’s rural Illinois or Kansas or Indiana, is obviously going to vary, but I am seeing somewhere in the area of probably a ten to 15 percent higher salary rate than what you can find overseas, in some places a little bit more than that. But that, by far, gets offset by what I see as more effective resourcing.

Do you find it easier to manage on your end in terms of things like time differences, logistics, cultural differences, etc?

Absolutely. I’ve had six people in southern Illinois get in car on a Sunday and drive down to spend the weekend in Atlanta with the engineers. It’s very easy for them to do that. It’s very easy for them to communicate and plan and be a part of the product planning cycle as well, so the communication disparity is night and day, and the physical availability also is pretty extreme.

If another company were thinking about rural sourcing, what advice would you give them? 

On the university side, building that relationship with the local university. Make sure the technical programs that are being taught in that university are aligned with the skills that you need. Make a connection with the top of that school, whether it’s the president, the dean, the lead professor, to make sure there’s alignment.

Going into these regions, the flexibility that they show in wanting to help and conform to what your company needs is night and day compared to offshore. We’ve had discussions around, why don’t we take some of the real world concepts that Liaison is solving and build it into our curriculum? Then you have students coming out of the program that are trained in real world examples of technology solutions that we’re providing to the market. So number one is, really depend on that relationship to the university. You’ve got to find a university that’s willing and interested.

The other thing is, I think it’s strategic to identify a university where there’s not an overrun of a lot of other companies wanting to do this. You’ll get their undivided attention.

How about bumps in the road – did you run into any problems that others should avoid?

I guess really recruiting that one-third that’s not coming right out of the school system, and building a connection with the local community early on. We didn’t do that right up front. We mainly focused on the university, and as a result we quickly staffed up a lot of people that were freshly out of school and then had to aggressively go after some more seasoned folks for leadership, mentoring and management. So doing that up front at the same pace that you’re building a relationship with the university is critical.

You mentioned it’s a good idea to find relatively fresh territory. In your experience, are you competing with many companies interested in rural sourcing?

I think the concept has been there for a while, but it’s not been called rural sourcing. It’s been very low-key. Where we went into Carbondale, Illinois, there were probably two or three other small technology companies that recruited locally. We found there was plenty to go around. I think the area could even house some additional companies.

What’s interesting was the university’s economic research arm had just performed a study the year before we came in on how to lure technology companies into the region and what the demographics were, so we were able to peek at that to target our message. There are some universities that want to be a driving force for the economy in the region, and I think if you find a university that wants to do that, then they’ll be able to get you the data to show what the availability is and the demographics of the resources.

What are your plans for the future?

We’re actually looking now at expanding our footprint a little bit. We’ve identified two other universities in the region. Each is about 60 miles away. It’s not uncommon for folks to drive 30, 40, 50 miles there — not in traffic, by the way — to work in a role like this, so we’re expanding. The one piece that we have not tapped into that I think there’s opportunity there to help perpetuate this, is tying in to the local and state government. That’s one area I think you’re going to see us look into a little bit more. How do we get our message out through the state government entities, whether it’s through financial help or through reach and marketing?

I absolutely embrace globalism. We’ve got operations in Finland, the UK. We’re serving customers in China. We need feet on the street over there. But at the same time, if I can find a way to help employee people who live here in the US of A and help my company grow, I’m absolutely going to do that. That means we’re going to be a global company, but we’re going to do it out of rural Illinois.

Image courtesy of Flickr user tlindenbaum.

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Elance’s look back at the year reveals that online hiring has soared more than 100 percent from 2010, and the number of professionals working on the site is up more than 120 percent. Cumulative earnings this year should surpass $500 million.

And like his oDesk counterpart Gary Swart, Elance’s CEO Fabio Rosati (who is speaking at Net:Work Thursday) doesn’t feel the economic doldrums are the sole cause of the growing attraction of online labor platforms. What is? Structural change to work, Rosati told us in an interview:

The state of [the] economy and unemployment is acting as a catalyst. It’s forcing a large portion of the workforce to look for alternatives. It’s forcing business to remain more flexible. But what we’re seeing is a change in how work is done and it’s similar to commerce. What caused e-commerce? Did the rise of e-commerce result from problems in the economy? Not really.

E-commerce started to be more effective in some categories than regular commerce, and I think that’s exactly what’s happening in the world of work. Working online in many ways is more efficient, more effective and more immediate than traditional employment. Businesses that use the flexible work model have distinct advantages over businesses that don’t, and there are some departments within these companies that have always used a flexible work model anyway. Creative departments, marketing departments [and] IT departments have always approached talent in a very flexible way on a project basis. They’re just doing it online now. So I don’t think we’re going back. I think this is really structural.

And while some may feel this shift towards global, online labor platforms undermine American workers by opening them up to competition from lower wage workers abroad, Elance is predicting in its report that professional services will become “America’s next great export.”

“The global demand for US talent has increased steadily over the past year and is set to grow even faster as online platforms like Elance break down global barriers,” says the release that goes along with today’s numbers. But Rosati is a little more understanding of those who feel the rise of these platforms is a mixed blessing for American workers.

When you create a global workplace and a global workforce, the dynamics are very different. Suddenly, you have a lot more competition cross-border. I know that is a very strong reality, and at the same time, there’s the other side of it, which is that for the first time, a very capable, talented, U.S.-based professional can access work and have clients all over the world, and we’re seeing exactly that on the U.S. platform. I feel that it’s an important side of what’s happening, because Americans have amazing talents. We’re seeing companies that may be hiring in some parts of the world for certain types of tasks, but for others, they love the opportunity to hire people based in the U.S.

I don’t doubt there are strong pressures when you compete with someone who is living in another part of the world. For example, it doesn’t even have to be someone who is in a lower-wage country. It could be simply someone who has access to public health insurance. So if you’re working in the U.S., and you have to pay for your own health insurance, you may be at a disadvantage to someone living in Norway who absolutely doesn’t because it’s all covered by the government. So that dynamic is definitely real and a challenging aspect of what is happening, but there are also many positive things.

You have to hand it to Rosati for acknowledging that, for all the psychological and lifestyle benefits of independent work, it does offload tasks and expenses ( (like obtaining health insurance, dealing with tax issues and building retirement savings) entirely onto the worker. Also to Elance’s credit is their partnership with eHealth to help U.S. community members compare health coverage options. “I wish I had the magic wand to address the problem, but I don’t,” says Rosati.

But health insurance isn’t the only external cost shifted from employer to worker in the paradigm shift these platforms are pushing. Though Elance clearly tries to make verifying work, billing for it and sorting out logistics as simple as possible with everything from an internal file management system to built-in virtual meeting facility, one can’t help but feel independent workers are more burdened with what Craig Lambert recently dubbed “shadow work” in the New York Times.

Lambert defines the term as “all the unpaid labor — including, for example, housework — done in a wage-based economy,” and muses that all of us, not just independent contractors, are being saddled with more and more of it in the name of corporate profits:

Science fiction novels of a half-century ago dramatized conflicts between humans and robots, asking if people were controlling their technologies, or if the machines were actually in charge. A few decades later, with the digital revolution in juggernaut mode, the verdict is in. The robots have won. Although the automatons were supposedly going to free people by taking on life’s menial, repetitive tasks, frequently, technological innovation actually offloads such jobs onto human beings.

The conventional wisdom is that America has become a “service economy,” but actually, in many sectors, “service” is disappearing. There was a time when a gas station attendant would routinely fill your tank and even check your oil and clean your windshield and rear window without charge, then settle your bill. Today, all those jobs have been transferred to the customer.

From automated airport check-in terminals and the near extinction of travel agents to understaffed retail outlets where we find our size ourselves, more and more places are shifting work, with all its attendant costs in time and energy, from companies to individuals, argues Lambert. In its well-intentioned way, Elance and its competitors appear to be doing the same.

Do the larger markets for our services and increase in lifestyle flexibility make up for these extra costs?

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Speaking by phone, he explained how his platform’s vetting process ensures clients get top-notch work. This costs a premium compared to competitor sites but comes at a discount compared to work out of U.S. advertising and professional services firms, which Paolucci believes is comparable to what Solvate talent delivers. The process protects skilled workers from competing with much cheaper competitors overseas who are sometimes less than transparent about their actual abilities.

So far, pretty standard stuff as a CEO attempts to explain what differentiate his product from others in the space. But the conversation got more interesting when it turned more general, as Paolucci isn’t just saying his company fills one, higher end niche and other platforms another. He also argued that his competitors are actually accelerating outsourcing, which he called, “not good for the American worker.”

They’re trying to create a global marketplace and that’s what ends up undermining the American worker, because you’ve got somebody in the Philippines or India saying that they can do the same thing that a U.S. worker can do for $5 or $10 an hour. But the reality is that only applies to certain kinds of I.T. like backend programming. They say they can do everything and there are a few American workers on those platforms, but ultimately the customer on that platform is looking for really low cost, offshore IT work, and there’s no way a U.S-based developer can compete at those prices. Those other marketplaces are absolutely undermining the price for that kind of work. I’m not sure how else you’d find all these people.

From Paolucci’s comments it’s clear he’s not a fan of outsourcing generally, and it’s not just his competitors who he’s willing to debate about whether a globalized market for labor is a positive development. He also hit back at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for a recent piece on the challenges and opportunities of the ability to move work anywhere.

“My argument back to Thomas Friedman is that the world is still more round than flat,” says Paolucci. “Certain jobs are going to be outsourced, but the kind of work that we do is never going to be outsourced. Just like I wouldn’t understand how to market a product in India.”

“The American worker needs to focus on the things that can’t be outsourced,” he concludes, implying that speeding up the process of hooking companies up with cheap talent overseas, while workers here are retooling for new realities isn’t doing the American worker any favors.

Of course, Paolucci’s focus on the American side of the equation makes sense given the product he’s selling, but it’s not necessarily the only viewpoint – or even the most moral one. That’s the position of John Horton, a staff economist at oDesk. Commenting on the original complaints that sites like the one he works for drive down prices for American freelancers, Horton write:

I think focusing on what these markets do for relatively well-paid workers in developed countries misses one of the most important moral facts about these markets, which is that they generate new, relatively well-paid, meaningful work opportunities for people in developing countries. It’s obviously not a random sample of our workers, but if you spend a few minutes on oDesk’s Facebook fanpage and look at the comments and stories, it’s clear that online work is improving lives in a pretty dramatic way.

Is Paolucci’s complaint that most online labor marketplaces speed a destructive trend and hurt American workers valid? Should we also be considering how much good these platforms do for workers in developing countries?  

Image courtesy of Flickr user Paul Keller.

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After all, a recent study by online worker clearinghouse oDesk found that workers in tiny towns of less than 15,000 inhabitants are already online and thriving in a remote work environment. The analysis discovered that:

• Small towns meet or beat large cities in terms of the number of online workers per capita
• Contractors in small towns worked more than 175 hours in January, which compares favorably with the hours worked by contractors in the larger cities: New York (70 hours), San Francisco (54 hours) and Los Angeles (23 hours)

You might argue that the high numbers of hours worked and the percentage of remote workers per capita just reveals that those marooned in small towns are simply desperate for work. No doubt that’s part of the picture,  but it’s not the whole story.

Before imagining dreary call centers springing up in Nowhereville, U.S.A. staffed by hordes of marginally skilled drones, consider this profile of Atlanta-based firm Rural Sourcing, one of around 20 U.S. companies that are locating skilled IT-workers in small towns — often those near universities with plenty of job-hungry graduates — to take advantage of lower living and labor costs, higher quality of life and an underutilized talent pool.

While salaries in Milford, Penn. may not be as low as those in Mumbai, India, some often-overlooked costs associated with outsourcing abroad — such as greater management oversight, cultural miscues and occasional long-distance travel — are lower with rural-sourcing. Plus, many workers enjoy living in these slower-paced places, while bringing employment to struggling towns is sure to generate good will.

Rural Sourcing chief executive Monty Hamilton reports that his employees are:

in places where … $150,000 still buys you a great house with a great piece of property, where people want to stay and raise their families.

Obviously, outsourcing abroad isn’t disappearing anytime soon, and for some positions, the best-qualified applicants will still be found in major cities. But could looking for virtual team members in small towns, whether through a firm like Rural Sourcing or independently, be a triple win for your organization – good for costs, good for workers and even good for small towns (and your PR department), too?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Mr Marmot

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Identify Your Reason for Going Virtual

After becoming a father for the third time, Chris knew he wanted to change things. With his first two children, he was always working, but now, he had the perfect opportunity to become a virtual CEO: he was his own boss, had his own company, and a couple of hundred people working for him. If he was ever going to go virtual, this would be the time to do it.

He says, “I wanted to get to the point where I was focused on more than just my company. I wanted to be focused on my family more. I wanted also to start focusing a little bit more on my other entrepreneurial projects.” The motivations for becoming a virtual CEO vary from person to person, but in his case, Chris says, “I never liked being handcuffed to a desk.”

Before setting out to become a virtual CEO, figure out your motivations.  As Chris explains, “[it] comes down to a passion to want to make it happen. A lot of people like the idea of being out of the office, but when it becomes a reality, they get really antsy about the whole thing and end up coming in the office everyday.” If you’re not clear about why you want to remove yourself from certain roles within your company, it will be a lot harder to succeed.

Create Your Exit Plan

As Chris details, “To be able to get to the point where you can start taking yourself out of the office on a regular basis and [become] more virtual, you really only have to do one thing: delegate. I hired nine people to replace myself in a number of areas across the business, everything from sales and marketing to operations, HR, accounting, training, the whole lot.” It was a year-long process based firmly around specific goals he wanted to achieve and tasks that he knew needed to be outsourced in order to free himself from the day-to-day operations.

Four steps to creating your plan:

1. Set clear and incremental outsourcing goals. “The nine people I hired, I didn’t just hire all at once,” Chris explains, “They were very systematically put in place throughout the course of 2010. That one year-long goal I broke down into twelve monthly goals, so for instance, January I wanted to take myself out of as many email loops as possible. When I eliminated that, overnight, it freed up three hours of my day.”
2. Decide how you will recruit. What you need in the way of virtual support will determine how you recruit. Some tasks and projects are one-time, while others are recurring, and you may prefer hiring a virtual staffing company over several individuals.
3. Hire the right person for the job. It’s unlikely that one person will handle all of your outsourcing needs. “I get emails from people all the time that say, ‘I need a virtual assistant to handle my blog for me, do my SEO, handle my flight itineraries, and do my graphic design.’ This is four people we’re talking about here,” he explains, and “the first problem entrepreneurs make is that they expect that one virtual assistant can do everything.”
4. Spend enough time training new recruits. Another common mistake, Chris adds, “A lot of people look at outsourcing as a magic pill. They expect it to work perfectly from day one.” Plan to spend enough time training new members of your virtual team on how you like certain tasks done, making sure to be very clear and direct with instructions and feedback.

Develop Trust and Avoid Micro-Managing

When you’re first getting started with your virtual team, or even with an individual new hire, it can be challenging to establish the trust that important tasks will be completed. Chris adds, “It’s hard to be able to just turn around and trust [a new hire] and expect them to get on with the work.”

In the beginning, it may be helpful to closely monitor the work of a new hire. Chris recommends using tools like Hive Desk, which “allows you to keep a tab on what people are doing. They have to clock in and out, just like they would in a regular office environment, and it takes screenshots of their computer every ten minutes,” which can give you a bit more confidence from the start.

It’s important, he adds, not to micro-manage. After the initial few months of working with someone, you should have a pretty good idea whether or not they are going to make a productive addition to your team and if you can trust in their abilities so that you can provide them with the autonomy they expect as virtual workers. “Something like Hive Desk is great to begin with,” he says, “but once that rapport and relationship is starting to be built, you should be able to take your eyes off the ball a bit and just make sure they do what they’re being paid to do.”

What tips do you have for getting started with a virtual team?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Steve Keys

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After I’d nearly come to the end of my rope, I was asked why I didn’t just cut some corners with some of my projects. My immediate gut instinct was to refuse that option, and I had to step back for a bit to reflect on why I was so against the idea. Was I seeking the unattainable — perfection — or was it something else?

I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t seeking perfection. Although there have definitely been times along the way where I got too wrapped up in minor details and perfectionism, I’ve gotten to a point where I can quickly recognize that in myself and quit while I’m ahead. No, it wasn’t that I was seeking perfection, but excellence.

Certain parts of my business are what I’m increasingly becoming known for, and if I hope to continue standing out in these areas, I have to continue to seek excellence, and to me, excellence is not the same as perfection.

Perfection is not attainable, and chasing it is pointless. Excellence, on the other hand, means not letting yourself off the hook, not cutting corners where it counts, and not copping out. It’s about being extraordinary, which, as Steve Harvey says, requires doing extra. Extra isn’t always easy.

If you want to be a cut above your competition, the go-to expert in your field, and the name that stands out in the minds of your customers and clients, then you have to strive for excellence. You have to know when you’re giving too much attention to things that don’t really matter and when you need to give extra attention to those that do.

How do you maintain a higher standard for what counts, while letting go of the need to perfect what doesn’t?

Photo by Flickr user indywriter, licensed under CC 2.0

Divide and Conquer

To get started breaking down what needed to be done so that I could effectively delegate or outsource certain responsibilities, I first had to figure out what I did all day. (Oddly enough, this wasn’t exactly easy, at least not at first.) How do you name all the things that have to get done in a business each day?

To get a handle on it, I started at the top. What did I do immediately after coming into the office each day? From there, it would be easier to move through my day and week.

• First, I generally did a quick check of my email to see if there were any time-sensitive to-dos or messages waiting for me, but there was nothing there to delegate, really, at least not at this point.
• After that, I went to my Backpack account, where I keep all my recurring to-dos. (I have a template that houses a weekly checklist sorted by day that I simply copy each Monday for the new week.) Within my checklist, I had a variety of tasks. Some of them had to do with things like planning and accountability, others had to do with my writing, but most of them were administrative in nature (prime territory for delegation).
• At some point each day, I had to go back to my email box to sort through any new appointments and book guests for my radio show, magazine interviews, and podcast, which meant adding data to my calendar, as well as other locations to keep my content production schedule running smoothly.
• I also needed to sort through pitches and press releases each day, figure out who I wanted to book, and coordinate interviews.
• Then there came the actual production of content, which included things like editing down recordings and transcribing some of the interviews.

On and on, I went through my days, figuring out all the steps required to do every job I do. I noted each task on a separate index card and then divided them into groups based on context (grouping scheduling/booking tasks together, editing and publication tasks together, lead generation tasks together, and so on).

Once I had all the roles and responsibilities divided, I could decide what would be most beneficial to outsource or delegate at this point, but that required me to break things down a little more.

Focus on Highest and Best Use

To keep everything in perspective, I had to think in terms of “highest and best use.” There were certain tasks that were absolutely the most important things for me to be doing in my business. They weren’t the urgent fires. They weren’t the tasks that needed to somehow get done by someone at some point. They were those tasks that directly generated income or interest in my business, and there were only a few of them. Those few tasks were my “highest and best use” tasks, and I knew that they should have the majority of my attention each day.

In an ideal setup, I would only focus on those tasks 100 percent of the time. Of course, perfection was out of the question, but I could at least organize my workload, as well as the workloads of those who work alongside me, to focus on our individual highest and best use tasks as much as possible.

Obviously, the administrative tasks were not my highest and best use activities. I could quickly eliminate around 25 percent of my workload by delegating those to someone who charged 25 percent of what I made, so that had to be the top priority.

Organize and Execute

I decided to start with getting help in two main areas — scheduling and editing/transcription, but before I could do that, I had to organize all the tools and resources and develop a specific system around each role. That included things like:

• Setting up a branded email address for my scheduling assistant.
• Creating an email signature to clarify to guests her role within my organization.
• Creating canned email responses within that assistant’s email account to communicate in a consistent way with guests
• Creating a step-by-step checklist of “how-tos” that outlined each and every task the assistant had to do.

Once I had all that in place, the rest was pretty easy. Each time I got a new appointment confirmation email, for instance, I simply forwarded it to the new scheduling assistant with the following action in the subject line, “[Book].” There are only five or six actions that my scheduling assistant takes care of each day, and I start each email type with one of those actions so that she immediately knows what to do.

Until I know she has the hang of it, I’m saving all of the emails I send to her in a separate folder. Once a day, I’m running through them and making sure that nothing is fallen through the cracks. There have been a few hiccups, but nothing earth-shattering, and I’ve already seen a major reduction in admin time each day.

What steps do you take to make your outsourcing and delegation as painless as possible?

Photo by Flickr user Wonderlane, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The concept of outsourcing can go beyond using virtual assistants, web designers and programmers. By outsourcing chores, you can remove the stressful things in your life, and as a result, have more time to do the things you love.

Deciding What to Outsource

Web workers often do many tasks that go beyond their areas of expertise. It may be worth investigating the possibility of having someone else take on those energy-sapping chores. How do you decide if you should outsource chores, and which ones? Here are some factors to look at:

• Take an honest look at your life. Is your mind constantly racing because you have too much going on? Do you miss important events or milestones of friends and loved ones? Are you losing touch with friends and family due to an overloaded schedule? Do you keep thinking about work when you’re not working? What’s the point of earning money if you’re not going to make the most out of your life?
• Evaluate the time and cost. Figure out how long it takes you to complete the chore. Then, calculate how much you would earn if you drop the chore for more income-producing work. Use that number to help you determine how much you would pay someone to do the chore.
• Account for possible training time. Some chores may require initial training. To shorten the training time, document the process. Even though the freelancer might do this type of work on a regular basis, the process may not be identical for all clients.
• Review spending habits. You may find areas where you can buy fewer things and invest that into outsourcing to gain more time. It’s a sacrifice, but the extra time can be worth it.
• Consider chores you despise. These exhausting chores interfere with your emotional state and energy levels, which affect work and personal activities. Hiring someone else to take on hated chores could give you extra energy and time to do the things you enjoy.

Available Outsourcing Sites and Services

You can enter your zip code or city on many of the following web sites to receive a list of services in your area. Other web sites ask you to answer a series of questions and serve up a handful of matches. However, in researching sites that provide these services, I have seen some serious complaints. As with everything else online, do your due diligence.

For live advice, try LivePerson, a marketplace for chatting live with experts in many topics ranging from health issues to spirituality. Browse for the service you need for a list of experts along with their bios, their cost per minute and whether they’re currently available.

You can enter chore requests in DoMyStuff and RunMyErrand. RunMyErrand is limited to Boston, but other cities have similar services. TaskUs not only lists administrative and sales and marketing services, but also personal services such as event planning, selling stuff and travel help. Then there’s craigslist.

Another option is to use a search engine. If you have a specific job in mind such as a chef preparing meals or a dry cleaning service that picks up and drops off dry cleaning, a search engine can help you find local resources. For example, enter “dry cleaning delivery service” to see a list of local services that provide delivery. Some search results include ratings and reviews. If you’re traveling and in need of a suit pressing, use your laptop or cell phone to search for a local delivery service to take care of it for you.

What chores do you outsource or want to outsource? How do you find and evaluate the contractor?

Photo by stock.xchng user Sanja Gjenero

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I’ve looked at some of the common services that VAs provide, and found some free or cheap alternatives that you might want to look into.

Internet research

One of the most common services that VAs provide is Internet research. If there’s something you need on the web, but you can’t seem to find it within a few minutes of searching for yourself, it might be time to ask others to assist you.

When I need to get feedback and answers from businesspeople, I’ve always turned to LinkedIn Answers. The community there is generally friendly and helpful. When I’m researching a post I’m writing, I usually go there to ask for other people’s take on a subject. Alternatively, you can also use Yahoo! Answers and AskMetafilter.

Twitter can also come in handy for this purpose, whether you’re looking for a quick answer or if you want to meet a resource person who can walk you through a complex topic. The number of replies you get usually depends on the number of people who are online when you tweet your question, as well as how many followers you have. Still, I’ve had some questions answered by people who weren’t following me, so it’s not a strict rule.

Online forums are also a useful resource, especially if you’re researching a topic with which you’re unfamiliar. Just go to a forum specializing on the subject you need to know about and ask your questions. Usually, most members are willing to help you out.

Regardless of which research shortcut you use, you need to verify the validity of the information you’re getting. You can do this by asking the people helping you to include any online articles, books and other resources that will allow you to know more about the subject. While this means you might need to put in some extra work, at least these helpful people have pointed you in the right direction.

Most importantly, you need to be very polite and grateful. Give thanks and respect to the people who spend a few minutes of their day to help you out. Don’t forget to return the favor and give back to the community, too.

Appointment setting

Scheduling a meeting or a conference call can be a little tricky because of all the back-and-forth communication with the participants. This is why many people hire VAs to schedule these events for them.

But there are also some apps that make scheduling easier as well.  These include TimeBridge (reviewed here) and TimeDriver (discussed in a previous post). Aliza Sherman also listed several scheduling solutions in her post about must-have apps for web workers.

Restaurant reservations

While I was looking through the web sites of several VA companies, I found that restaurant reservations are among their most-requested services. The tech tool alternative to hiring a VA for this purpose is to use a service like OpenTable or DinnerBroker, where you can reserve and schedule your table online.

Of course, these sites don’t have all the available restaurants in the U.S. in their databases. OpenTable claims to have over 10,000, while DinnerBroker covers just over 1,000 restaurants. And for famous restaurants that are fully-booked for a month, you’ll have to get on a waiting list. To do that, you usually have to call the restaurant yourself.

Rule-of-thumb

Generally speaking, if you don’t have the money to hire a VA to complete a task, you can find a way to automate it.

Some of the more popular services that VAs offer include reminders and wake-up calls. I’ll skip discussing obvious alternatives (alarm clocks), but if you can get an app to automate your reminders, there’s rarely any reason to hire someone else to do it. If you use Google Calendar to track such reminders and appointments, why not get Google Calendar on your phone and let that handle your reminders?

Every time you wish a VA handled a repetitive task for you, find a tool that will help you out with it instead. I had a friend who hired someone to backup his Google Docs files one by one, but there’s actually a free and simple way to do that with the right Firefox extensions.

I’m not saying that all these apps and sites can easily replace a human virtual assistant: Having a VA can be very good for your business if you know how to delegate well.  But if you don’t have the budget for one, you don’t have to do all the grunt work the hard way, either.

Have you ever considered hiring virtual assistants? What kinds of tasks are you thinking of delegating to them?

Image by Lorenzo Gonzales from sxc.hu

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