management Archives - Page 2 of 6 - Offshore Staffing Services in the Philippines

Quick Tips to Hosting Better Team Meetings

Team meetings are important for catching up with your co-workers regarding your group’s weekly or monthly accomplishments and challenges. It strengthens the communication between employees and designated leaders within the workplace. Being in charge of a team meeting can be daunting to some, especially for those who are doing it for the first time. The following tips can help you get on track and start organising amazing meetings!

1. Enumerate objectives to set the tone

Before starting a meeting, list down your agenda for the whole session. You can dedicate a slide to this at the beginning of your PowerPoint presentation or write in on the board. This gives the participants an idea of what to discuss and which topics are to be prioritised. Anything outside the list of objectives can either be discussed in another meeting or if there’s time left. Having a prepared list also helps everyone stay on track in means of topic and time.

Additionally, it’s better to have this agenda list crowdsourced beforehand: ask participating members in advance if they have core issues they want to share in the meeting that can be part of the objectives list. This way, you are giving them an everyone a fair chance of getting their voices heard.

2. Encourage participation

Always dedicate even just a small part of the meeting to hearing out everyone present in the room. Even quiet members can sometimes have great ideas and opinions to share. Keep a mindset of hosting meetings not just because you have something to say to everyone, but rather, making it a platform for everyone to be heard. You can also take the time to ask everyone about their weekend, share a piece of good news from their personal lives, or a short weekly update on their tasks. This can help liven up the meeting or serve as an icebreaker and help lighten up the mood.

3. Find solutions as a team

Though different tasks and challenges are delegated to each member, it’s important to also steer focus on working together to help each department lead or participating member who’s experiencing difficulty come up with action plans. Adopting this into practice further develops communication between employees and provides a fresh perspective in approaching different issues. It also builds a strong sense of camaraderie and increases the probability of having more successful interdepartmental collaborations.

4. Incorporate something new

Having weekly meetings can get monotonous especially when you keep following the same format. To spice things up, you can try adding something to break up the pattern: show a related Ted Talk, bring in snacks, ask everyone to dress the same colour or have the meeting at a different location. Introducing variety even in the smallest of ways can help make the meeting feel different every single time.

Mastering the art of leading an engaging meeting can be very tricky, but we hope that these steps will help turn your reporting into something your team members can look forward to every week.

Overcoming Outsourcing Fears

For entrepreneurs dipping their toes into outsourcing for the first time, the venture can be really scary. It’s understandable that business owners develop a fear towards the industry, as there will always be negative connotations attached to this process. However, a huge part of this fear usually comes from past experiences with hiring offshore or from angry reviews written by disappointed customers online.

AJ Agrawal, founder of Verma Media, shares about the most common concerns regarding outsourcing and how these fears can be quelled. According to him, good communication plays a major role in eliminating risks and in ensuring a smoother transaction. He addresses the root of popular outsourcing misconceptions and how you can avoid it.

You can check out this article to learn more about outsourcing myths, or read AJ’s full entry.

How to Work Smarter and Quickly Avoid Burnout

Careers, Employee Performance, Employee-Well-Being / By DBOS

As working adults, burnout is something we have felt at least once in our lives. It’s natural to get tired from constantly working hard day and night, after all, we’re only human. However, there’s a solution to help you avoid this so you don’t get sidetracked from reaching your goals. We’ve compiled a short list of tips to help you stay focused and refreshed.

1. Set clear boundaries between work and play

From the very second, you leave the office, set aside anything that’s work-related. Tomorrow’s tasks is tomorrow’s problem, and quit checking your emails outside your shift. You can choose between leaving your work phone behind or use apps like Cold Turkey or Focus Booster to help encourage you in keeping your mind off from work. The time you spend outside your job should be dedicated to your home life, other interests and self-care. My friend from Japan shared that her bosses advise her to turn down clients when they call her outside her shift. Even the mere act of answering their texts can give them the impression that her time isn’t as important as theirs.

2. Take things one at a time

Some people are born multitaskers, while the rest of us try in vain just to keep up with the demands of our job. There are ways to help you manage your time better, all of which you can easily adapt to your daily routine. Forcing yourself to do two different things at the same time might compromise the quality of your output and unnecessarily stress you out. Research has shown that when multitasking, your brain spends 40% more time to process switching between tasks. Additionally, a study by Stanford University discovered that even people who believe they are great at multitasking to tend to make more mistakes and took longer to complete tasks. The efficiency of multitasking is a common misconception and it’s better to focus on doing one task instead and then transition into another once it’s accomplished.

3. Don’t be afraid to ask for help

Outsourcing small tasks can do so much for time management. Apps like TaskRabbit allows you to hire people for specific tasks and you can always check out UpWork and Fiverr for freelancers. Not only will you save on time, you can also save on energy and materials to get things done. You can also opt for a personal virtual assistant to help you plan ahead and manage your schedule better. There are also other productivity apps like Indigo, Hound and EasilyDo that can serve as your personal assistant if you’re tight on budget.

4. Mental health is just as important as physical health

Self-care must always include checking on your psychological health. However, not everyone can afford to go to a therapist regularly which makes it harder for people to get the proper help that they need. When things get tough, you can opt for cheap and virtual alternatives such as Talkspace and BetterHelp which connects you to a licensed professional and allows you to have counselling sessions without ever leaving your home.

Staying motivated may be hard, but it’s not impossible. It just takes the right approach to help make sure you are on the right track to success.

Branding Matters: Why You Need Social Media Marketing

Outsourcing in the Philippines, Social Media Marketing / By DBOS

With over 2.072 billion active users monthly, Facebook has become the biggest Social Networking Site (SNS)–trumping both Instagram and Twitter with 800 million and 330 million active users respectively. It only makes sense for businesses to use these online avenues for advertising their products and services. This rising marketing trend led to the creation of social media marketing and has proven itself to be very effective as a means of directing traffic. BPO companies around the world began offering social media management services, so businesses can get a boost in their online presence.

Reach a wider audience

Using Social Media Platforms broadcasts brand awareness to a wider, international audience. Social network platforms also come with built-in tools that will help you gauge analytics and enables you to choose a specific target audience for marketing. Facebook and Instagram for example, allows business profiles to create a paid advertisement and customise parameters in order to filter in users who are likely to be interested in your product or service. You can also easily monitor the progress of your marketing campaigns through page insights, complete with options for optimising the visibility of your page and its content.

Create an online personality for your brand

Ever since the advent of the internet, viral content has the potential to reach “immortality”–funny and interesting videos, pictures, and any kind of engaging content remain relevant for years and even decades. This is why brands have started launching their own viral marketing campaigns on their official SNS accounts that help attract new customers for your product or service. Among the most memorable examples would be the Wendy’s Twitter account, that shot to fame overnight due to its hilarious comebacks and sarcastic replies to people who tried to engage with the official account. In fact, the marketing stunt was so popular, people have started making fan art, fan fiction stories, and even dressing up as Wendy’s iconic mascot. The viral marketing campaign had dramatically raised their social media engagements, resulting in a profit of around $64 Million that year. Social media marketing brings your brand closer to your audience by interacting and engaging with them through a defined personality according to your brand’s tone and image. You can also opt for hiring a community manager which can further drive people towards your online channels.

Community Managers vs. Social Media Managers

You can broaden your reach by hiring community managers to support your official SNS profiles. Community managers create their own persona and endorse the brand to followers in their accounts. The main difference between a social media manager and a community manager is that the former engages with people already familiar and following your brand, while the latter is responsible for bringing the brand closer towards people outside your normal reach, and help more people discover your products or services. Community managers help your business become more accessible to potential customers as they are not confined to a corporate tone or persona when engaging with other people online.

Overall, your business will surely benefit a lot from social media marketing, especially when it’s done right. Not only does SNS help people connect with each other, it also helps you connect with your target audience!

Want to give social media marketing a try? Check out our services to see which staffing solutions can help you amp up your branding online!

Top Benefits of Outsourcing Your Accounting Operations

Accounting Outsourcing, Offshore Back Office / By DBOS

Every business, no matter the size, needs a reliable accounting department to sort out any financial matter. However, since the demand for highly qualified accountants is constant, hiring a team can get very expensive depending on your home country’s wage rates. This can put a strain on your budget, especially for startups and smaller enterprises. Luckily, the business process outsourcing industry makes it easier for companies of any scale to hire an offshore staff to render their accounting services needs. We’ve compiled for you a short list of reasons on how your business can benefit from outsourcing your accounting services!

Virtually risk-free service, made affordable for you

Accounting outsourcing has made great strides in improving business systems around the world. Having professional accountants do your bookkeeping and whatnot also increases the efficiency of risk management and reduces the probability of errors. This includes fraud checks as well, as your service providers will be held responsible for the processing of every transaction making accuracy control stricter compared to a more relaxed in-house staff. Today, most offshore back office services have achieved a 99.95% accuracy level. Since highly-skilled experts are handling your data processing, data encoding, and other accounting services, you can rest assured that your data is in safe and capable hands. In Australia alone, a regular accountant can cost you around $4,600 AUD per month on average, that’s twice or even thrice the wages an offshore accountant usually charges for the same quality of output. Not only will you get security, you also get to save your hard-earned money.

Access the latest technology, trends, and accounting standards

One of the best advantages you can get when you outsource is that competent BPO services are always up to date with their systems and staff training. When you hire an offshore staff, seat fees and set-up fees are already integrated into the billing. These added expenses are well worth it because it is what a BPO company uses to equip your staff with the latest tools they need to perform their job. BPO companies also encourage their employees to regularly upskill themselves through sponsored training or boot camps. This gives outsourced accountants an edge over in-house hiring.

Allows you to focus on your core operations

Smaller tasks under accounting services such as data encoding and data processing can get very tedious due to the nature of the job. Smaller enterprises tend to bypass this problem by having their staff multitask and handle several responsibilities. To avoid overworking your in-house team, outsourcing your back office accounting work can free your staff and help you save time. Another thing to consider is that most back office functions do not drive revenue. Spending more on labour fees for non-profiting posts, especially when you’re only working with a limited budget, is pretty unwise. Outsourcing will help you direct more funding on aspects of your business that will increase your revenue, thus effectively improving your cash flow.

These are only a few of the many benefits you can reap from outsourcing your accounting operations. Smarter solutions don’t necessarily need to be expensive. Hiring an offshore staff can help you further grow your business through efficient services, and it starts with finding the right BPO company to partner with.

Interested in outsourcing? Check out our services to see which options fit your business best. You might even find what you’ve been looking for all this time!

Why You Need a Virtual Assistant

Outsourcing in the Philippines / By DBOS

When starting a business, it’s understandable that you put in a lot of work to get your company off the ground. We all know being an entrepreneur is very challenging, and there will be times when you are better off getting help. Hiring a personal assistant eases the management of your tasks, as you can have someone else do half the work you are doing and allow you to focus on your priorities. But sometimes, business owners stray away from the idea of hiring additional personnel because an in-house personal assistant can cost you a lot of wages. Fortunately for us, a new trend is beginning to gain popularity among professionals: getting remote assistance through an offshore virtual assistant.

What is Virtual Assistance?
BPO companies now offer virtual assistants under their back office services. A virtual personal assistant is someone who can help you with administrative tasks such as responding to emails, scheduling meetings or booking travel tickets, accommodation and more. Any business-related task that could be done online can be delegated to your virtual assistant, and hiring one comes with several benefits that could help you save both money and time.

Virtual Assistants are a great investment
Unlike in-house personal assistants, VAs are twice or even three times as cheap which means you can hire more people with different specialisations to handle different tasks. Since you no longer have to allocate extra resources for office space and equipment, you can use the money you save on growing your business. In addition, labour rates are usually charged per hour of service rendered, and are commonly available on flexible schedules. This, in turn, can save you more money in the long run, as you don’t have to pay for your VA’s downtime. Most small businesses don’t have enough tasks to keep a full-time assistant busy, which makes hiring a virtual assistant ideal.

Increase your productivity while avoiding burnout
Being a business owner can sometimes require you to be a one-man team, leaving you with too many responsibilities and stretching you out too thin. Hiring a virtual assistant is a great way to ensure you don’t get burned out from the daily grind–you can just focus on your expertise and core priorities while your VA can handle the rest. Since technical tasks like accounting, data processing, or market research can be done on a computer, you can easily outsource these responsibilities remotely to your offshore assistant. There are BPO companies that train VAs for different fields, but you can also opt to train your assistant according to your business process and standards.

Having a virtual assistant lessens the hassle
BPO companies make the process of hiring a virtual assistant faster and better. As compared to hiring in-house which can cost you a lot of energy and resources that could negatively impact your business. With outsourcing, you can opt for a BPO company with an interactive hiring process so you can monitor and screen the quality of candidates that your outsourcing partner will provide you.

Virtual Assistants can not only improve your productivity, having one also raises your quality of life. By allowing you to save money and time, you can then spend it doing more productive tasks or take a break to recharge and refresh your mind so you are better prepared for the challenges that running a small business entails.

Want to get your own VA? Check out our services or send us a message at [email protected] to see how we can help you find the perfect offshore work companion!

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