Behold, the workforce landscape is changing and it has already begun. Time is changing and so does the way we work. If you are smart and knows what the future holds for businesses, you know you have to keep your company up with these changes.

Outsourcing will further rise as a business strategy according to business experts. Also, there will be a spike in the demand for remote workers to help businesses of all sizes remain efficient without breaking the bank.

So it’s only a matter of time until we can see a future workplace that are seamlessly intertwined with internal and third party external outsourcing partner. Such scenario is not hard to imagine, considering the number of advantages and benefits derived from the outsourcing and remote staffing set-up.

Before going any further, let’s first take a look at present business landscape.

What Companies Today Look Like

Many big companies today are still made up of many departments where specified and distinctive functions are being performed by full-time workers. Generally speaking, this setup in the workplace is the result of the growth of enterprise business models.

However, employing highly-skilled workers can be costly as they needed to be compensated well. Small businesses find this setup hard to follow. But this was then the only way to achieve cost efficient production of goods and services.

Due to so many factors, companies today are expected to be strategic. Companies who value quality will simply not use cheap raw materials or cheap labour to survive amid an unstable global economy.

Today, companies are no longer limited by this workplace setup following the rise of business process outsourcing from low-cost of labor offered by companies in the Philippines, India and China. Hiring a virtual worker to do non-core functions can be an effective way to boost profit growth without sacrificing quality and delivery of customer demands.

It is already impasse to see outsourcing sector that offer dirt cheap services because premium outsourcing services are becoming more attractive among middle to large enterprises. Today, even small businesses consider outsourcing from a low-cost BPO company in the Philippines that offer premium outsourced services. The game has changed tremendously over the last two decades.

The Future Workplace

The 21st century’s key workplace has shifted. And there is a 2015 article published by The Guardian that sees five trends that will define and shakeup the world of work in the future. They are:

1. Managers, who worries about the health of their staff, would want to keep track of their health;
2. Many companies will employ freelancers or remote workers, fueled by the innovations and advancement in cloud computing. As technologies become more accessible to low-cost countries, the pool of freelancers who are available to work on demand from remote locations will also increase.
3. Even today, automation has already become increasingly prevalent. When companies use them, the purpose is to seize the cost-saving advantages offered by these technologies. Enticing to use, artificial intelligence are marvelous to behold as they boost convenience and productivity. But this trend can also be destructive — the worst case scenario would be the replacement of professionals working in companies.
4. Shift in workplace structures, if not its collapse, are a trend now and will continue in the coming years. Loyalty to management will no longer be the basis for promotion. As corporate structures become more diverse, combined with technological advances, there will be an increasing need for employees to collaborate and companies will adopt a more flexible working environment. Flat management will increasingly be adopted.
5. Retirement will gone extinct as employees in their senior years will continue to stick around for longer period of time rendering their experience and service.

Where does outsourcing come in

Technological innovations are seen driving the shift in the way companies will conduct their operations and business. When companies outsource, collaboration is possible between their internal and staff from an outsourcing company in India or the Philippines, for instance. In the coming years, these countries will remain as top suppliers of competent workers in BPO industry.

Startups in the coming years will more and more need the help of third party outsourcing companies. Companies can either choose and combine from the two types of outsourcing setup.

First, outsourcing firms with their own in-house staff such as the Big Outsource in the Philippines; second, websites or virtual working platforms that pool freelancers and remote workers. Depending on the nature of a business, the two are designed to suit various business setup and requirements.

Startups and established companies can become more efficient when they entrust their non-core operations to external vendors. Companies can have more room and time to focus on their core operations and for its improvement.

In a survey conducted during the Global Leadership Summit in London, it was revealed that 34 percent of business leaders who attended the event believed that companies’ workforce will completely absorb the outsourcing structure by 2020 and will create an “out-of-office” production as a business trend.

The outsourcing landscape will experience a boom for promoting flexibility and offering low-cost services. Businesses of the future will more and more embrace how the outsourcing landscape create values to their bottom line.