Canada’s burgeoning corporate scene is often cited as an example of how businesses can function smoothly while also ensuring the rights and interests of employees. Most Canadian businesses depend on outsourcing to reduce costs, focus on core business activities, and access talent locally unavailable, among many other reasons. Yet, outsourcing is a topic that often raises eyebrows in this famously polite and civil country. Let us take a look at how outsourcing evolved in Canada, and what businesses across this northern giant are currently doing to scale and multiply their profits.
Evolution of outsourcing in Canada in the last decade
Like in most developed countries, Canadian businesses began to seek cost-effective solutions across the world to meet growing IT and HR demands, since the 1990s. Companies have often depended on India, the Philippines, Bulgaria, Poland, and other offshoring destinations to meet their business targets. In the last few years, Canadian banks have sometimes received bad press for embracing outsourcing as a business strategy, with critics pointing out that Canadian employees aren’t adequately compensated for the loss of their jobs.
Yet, IDC Canada revealed that its survey found an increase of 45% in outsourcing contracts signed, especially in the area of infrastructure support tasks. IT offshoring is a $3 billion business in Canada and a strategy that has proved to work in the last 10 years. Early last year, CIBC was criticized for offshoring its jobs. However, companies often save between 30% and 40%, when they outsource maintenance and development tasks to India. A Deloitte report suggests that outsourcing is going to witness growth in all areas surveyed such as HR, IT and finance.
To find a middle ground and appeal to both sides, Canadian companies are increasingly depending on the dedicated hiring model to access talent, reduce expenditure, and scale quickly. Dedicated hiring offers Canadian companies the proverbial cake that can not only be had but can also be eaten.
How the dedicated hiring model is helping organizations meet HR Challenges specific to Canada
Much like everywhere else in the world, Canadian companies have had to face growing HR challenges such as attrition, higher compensation demands, the inability to find the right talent and changing employee attitudes. An interesting observation that has been made is that top-level executives have been leaving jobs too, increasing attrition levels among C-level executives.
As Canada faces an immense shortage of manpower and as immigration does not suffice HR requirements for more manpower, dedicated hiring has come to be a palatable solution. Dedicated hiring has also impressed the critics of outsourcing as this model does not actually lead to job losses in Canada. Instead, it allows corporations to hire external employees on demand, for a specific duration of time. Currently, Canada faces a number of HR challenges such as:
All these problems can be addressed with a dedicated hiring model, as it enhances the profitability of companies while ensuring existing employees’ jobs aren’t threatened. Dedicated hiring model allows Canadian businesses to sign contracts only for a limited number of hours or for the duration of a project. Such a contract gives them access to full-time employees employed by vendor companies, at a fraction of the cost. Most importantly, dedicated hiring ensures that short-term tasks and projects which need specialized skills can be completed seamlessly. Finally, dedicated hiring offers a sustainable model to scale for businesses that are driven.
There are a number of examples of how dedicated hiring is helping Canadian companies to succeed and grow. Let us take a look at some examples.
Digital Marketing Agencies: While every company needs some sort of digital marketing assistance, dedicated hiring ensures that there is always a digital marketing team on the standby to address all requirements related to social media and digital platforms, without ever having to hire a full-time team. A trucker based in Ottawa hired our digital marketing services to provide social customer service to his clients on Twitter. In addition, the client also used Indus Net technologies’ dedicated explainer video production team to publish corporate videos on YouTube, which the client later used as sales collateral as well.
IT Service Partners: There is nothing more panic-triggering than having to hire a developer who knows an exotic programming language, but his skills are required only for a few days or months. Many of our clients have hired our development teams for all kinds of short and long-term projects, without ever having to hire anyone full time. A Nova Scotia-based eCommerce store hired our Kotlin language programmers to build and maintain their website. Our dedicated hiring model helped the client finish the project quickly, and do what they are best at doing: selling online.
Startups: Startups often have very little money to spare on development, social media, HR and other functions. In fact, many startups are run by just one person alone, and it simply is not possible for one person to execute so many roles. A dedicated hiring model allows fledgling startups to offload their burden on vendors, while they can focus on building and marketing their business. Many Canadian startups hire our dedicated hiring solutions for various reasons. An Ottawa-based public relations startup hired our app development services to launch a time-specific application for their own clients. Our dedicated hiring model ensured that app development was completed in a short time, without having to hire anybody full time.
What to expect next?
In 1964, Bob Dylan wrote and sang “The Times They Are a Changin”, and we must admit they will continue to change in the future too. To ensure businesses are well-equipped to face the demands of tomorrow, they will need to focus on using emerging technologies such as blockchain, AI, and Analytics as a Service. These are all services that Indus Net Technologies offers. One can expect dedicated hiring to grow smarter in future, thanks to AI and machine learning.
How this will play out in the next decade or two is something we all need to wait and watch. However, at the moment, we can expect that Canadian businesses will continue to seek assistance related to Blockchain, AI and Analytics as a Service to gain a competitive edge, and also to grow quickly as a business.
