Different countries have different cultures. The sooner you understand them, the quicker you can embrace the virtual workforce you engage.

We use Fiji and Philippines as the two countries of choice. Fiji is a country where service is considered king! People are friendly, patient, and their English has a nice accent. Philippines have many hard workers suitable for back office functions. The Philippine American accent is sometimes rejected by businesses, however accepted when they expand products or services to overseas to locations like America. Matching the outsourcing countries culture and accent with your business needs is fundamental for your success.

An example of cultures includes differences in public holidays. Fiji includes 8 gazetted public holidays per year, Australia has about 8 (depending on the state) and Philippines reaches 21 gazetted public holidays each year. Philippines also have thirteen (13) monthly pays each year. (This number is not a mistake). Planning your business outsourcing needs includes the delivery data and how you will manage different countries public holidays.

For office work and administration type work, you need to have friendly and patient people. If you need other services, such as website developers or designers, you would look toward bigger countries such as Philippines, India or China.

Based on my experience, you must make sure that the company you deal with has a very solid Company Policy based on trust, honesty and integrity. They must also have a binding employment agreement and non-disclosure agreement.

Example – Michelle from Balloonaversal in Melbourne, Australia:

Creating a position that required “no-workers compensation” and “no annual leave” but still have a fulltime person, seemed like an impossible dream.

We already had an online CRM (Customer Relations Management) in place which handles all of our quotes, invoices, and purchase orders tracking the sales. It also includes client files, booking Calender, and artists/performers. These days it is called a “Cloud CRM,” so I believe we were considered as “technology early adopters.”

Then we decided to search online for a resolution to our problem and found Greymouse. The owners are Marisa and Kelvin who reside on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but have their back office team in Fiji. We approached them with our dilemma, and they helped us create our “impossible dream.”

We recruited Alisi (an employee of Greymouse), whom we really adore as she does such a great job for us. She has really stepped up to the plate and closes sales better than ever (even better than me). Alisi works 40 hours per week (Mon –Fri, 9am-5.30pm) around $500 per week giving us a HUGE saving of 50%.

‘Understanding the culture of the country you outsource to’ is akin to visiting an airport. Until you land and go through the ‘arrival doors’ you do not know how they will welcome you. With guns or playing guitars!

Until you talk to a person, you do not know anything about him/her. You ask the first question and the rest will follow.

– Anonymous

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