With the recent shift to work from home caused by the pandemic, a significant number of professionals have opted to take positions working from home or have left their jobs to seek opportunities that allow them to. This has left employers (those who allow remote work) with a much bigger pool of candidates to comb through. This also means that companies have 3 methods of hiring now, traditional in-office, remote freelancers, and remote staff through a business process outsourcing company (BPO). While freelancers are often hit or miss, a remote staffing company is the safer bet in order to avoid complications as well as all HR-related tasks. So the big question then is, “does the country where my remote staff work matter?” In short, yes it does.

Price Comparisons Between Countries

One of the driving factors of remote staffing is cheaper costs. This allows departments that companies couldn’t afford to create to be made in a cost-effective way that increases their bottom line.

The following are based on data from Numbeo (a website that calculates several financial statistics around the world). All of the following are net calculations in US dollars.

Note that these are averages and the actual salaries of each individual employee will be different. Please reach out to your remote staffing company of choice to ask about salary ranges for specific roles.

English Proficiency

Another factor to take into consideration is how proficient the general populace is. You won’t get very far with remote staff if you aren’t able to communicate effectively with your team.

These stats were taken from Education First’s website and are based on their research. Their research included testing 2.2 million adults in 100 countries and regions in order to gather data.

  • Poland ranks in 16th
  • Romania at 17th
  • Argentina at 18th
  • The Philippines at 19th
  • Ukraine at 44thm and India at 50th

This variable may or may not matter as much depending on the role you want to outsource. If you want customer service or tech support staff and the language requirement is English, this will matter more for you than if you were hiring for an accountant. Of course, you and your staff need to be able to express your concerns to each other without anything lost in translation, but you won’t need to have a certain accent for that.

Skill Sets

This is a trickier requirement as they differ from person to person. The following details are just a generalized look at what each location offers in terms of specialized skills.

India used to be the go-to location for general outsourcing needs. It was the most cost-effective place to get support style staff, customer service, tech support, developers, graphic designers, etc. Important to note that in terms of developer jobs, India scored significantly lower on tests involving PHP and HTML, meaning that they’re weaker on the web development roles.

The Philippines has taken over India’s spot as the most cost-effective outsourcing destination. As with India, the Philippines is a hub for a wide range of jobs. Though it is most popular for jobs catering to those who need high level English communication skills, there are also professionals of every job that can help. From graphic designers, to accountants, to developers of any kind, you can hire professionals with any level of experience you need in this market.

Ukraine is a hotspot for IT outsourcing. The IT industry in Ukraine has seen exponential growth in recent years. They are considered to be a one-stop-shop for developers of any kind. The downside is the higher cost versus other countries that also have high level developers and the possible language barrier.

Poland is the most economically stable choice out of the European countries to outsource in. They are known for their HR, accounting, and IT services. Poland actually placed 3rd in the HackerRank’s best developers list, which is a series of challenges/tests they created to see which areas of the world specialized in what programming disciplines. 

Romania is one of the best spots for accounting and IT outsourcing. Their education system is focused on math and computer skills, which results in professionals who are focused on those fields. They also rank highly in HackerRank’s developer list, though not as high as Poland.

Argentina is the nearshore version of the Philippines and India. Effectively a close to home jack of all trades center.

Wrap Up

Location determines several factors you should always take into consideration when looking for a remote staffing partner. Everything comes at a certain cost, where there is usually some sort of trade off. Certain countries have higher English proficiencies with different accents, others specialize in certain industries, and usually the biggest deciding factor, the cost. Outsourcing is supposed to be a cost-effective method of filling roles you need in order to grow your business successfully, if the salary of a role is the same in your country as it is overseas, it wouldn’t be the best option to hire abroad unless your domestic market is lacking a skill set.