To be successful in business, any problem must be solved by a specialist in the relevant industry. Such problems are easily solved today by numerous customer support outsourcing companies. However, it is not profitable to maintain a team of many specialists in different fields. Outsourcing and outstaffing are undoubtedly a solution to this situation. Both terms denote a special relationship between an organization and its personnel outside the staff, providing an effective solution to primary tasks. We will talk about the difference between outsourcing and outstaffing in this article. 

What does outsource mean?

Outsourcing is the delegation by one company of certain tasks to specialists of the corresponding profile from another company. It is a kind of flexible personnel management, which gives the opportunity to receive the necessary results without the need to carry out the standard measures of control over the employees.

Outsourcing helps to successfully carry out: 

• search and selection of personnel for a certain period of time to carry out specific work; 
• effective management of employees;
• writing reports, making personnel decisions and solving office workflow problems in the organization;
• accounting of taxes, salaries and contributions;
• drawing up documents and required reports for inspection bodies;
• keeping of personnel documents. 

The service of customer support outsourcing companies differs from leasing and renting employees by the presence of the business process itself and the qualified service provided by the mutual agreement. 

The concept of outstaffing

Many people mistakenly think that there is no difference at all between outstaffing and outsourcing, or they believe that outstaffing is a type of outsourcing. However, such assertions are not true. Outstaffing implies the transfer of employees to an outstaffer company without changing their functional responsibilities. In other words, it is as if the employee is transferred from one company to another, while continuing to perform the obligations imposed on him by the previous company. Organizations engaged in outstaffing provide their customers:

• transfer of employees to its own staff from the client’s personnel office;
• conclusion of employment agreements with the transferred employees;
• maintenance of all personnel records; 
• accrual and payment of wages and salaries;
• monitoring compliance with current legislation;
• certification of workplaces;
• safety briefing; 
• organization of scheduled medical examinations;
•  calculating all necessary taxes;
• record keeping of incapacity for work;
• drawing up sick pay and business trips;
• resolving labor disputes.

Outsourcing is an advantageous measure in the case of job cuts, if the company wants to avoid losing experienced and professional staff. With this method, you can reduce the burden on the human resources and accounting departments of your company by more than 15%.        

So, the difference between outsourcing and outstaffing is that outsourcing is the delegation to a contractor of the rights to perform certain business tasks, while outstaffing involves the employment of the client company’s staff by the contractor. 

If you need experienced employees to perform demanding tasks in another part of the country or in an industry different from your own, you will need outsourcing. If you need to reduce maintenance and taxation costs when you have staff, then outstaffing is the best solution.   

Outstaffing services also have the advantage that you can benefit from the results of labor of foreign employees, the cost of maintenance and taxation of which will be assumed by customer support outsourcing companies. So, outstaffing will significantly save your money by reducing the amount of standard staffing tasks and transferring them to the outstaffer.