In 2024, the IT outsourcing market had a combined revenue of over $540 billion dollars.
Far from being a fad, remote IT teams are quickly becoming the backbone of modern organizations. Businesses, big and small, are turning to remote offshore workers as the solution to the challenges besetting their industries.
This article explores the best practices for managing offshore teams, as well as the pitfalls everyone should avoid.
Read on if you’re looking to build an offshore IT department that outclasses its peers.
I. Why Businesses Are Shifting to Remote IT Teams
According to Statista, the tech space leads all industries in remote work. An estimated two-thirds of tech professionals work outside traditional office settings:
At first glance, one might wonder why businesses choose to transfer the tech team working down the hall, to a place, usually on the other side of the globe.
But when we factor in the benefits, it quickly becomes clear why this is actually a smart move.
Here’s what offshore outsourcing offers:
1. Cost-Effectiveness
The shift to remote IT teams is, first and foremost, a cost-saving measure. Organizations working with remote professionals stand to save around 70% in labor expenses.
With the cost standards for Western companies skyrocketing, such a cut is a welcome development for enterprises hoping to stay competitive.
For instance, a local hire, say, a Cisco engineer, would cost around $115,031 annually. The same talent working from the Philippines only costs $31,600. It’s easy to see what a savings of 73% would look like for the bottom line.
Still, labor is just one of the ways businesses enjoy reduced expenses.
Outsourcing offshore also eliminates expenses related to office space, utilities, and equipment. Since employees are working independently from their homes, the company foregoes maintaining expensive offices—making remote workers an even more attractive option for tight operating budgets.
But cost isn’t the only advantage. What happens when your local talent pool dries up? The solution: going global.
2. Access to Global Talent
Depending on the IT skill required, hiring locally might not only prove impractical. It might very well be impossible. What does one do when the talent is just not there, or when he is already working for your competition?
In addition to sky-high salaries, US companies bemoan the shortage of talent, especially in IT. Organizations often turn to the rest of the world for their developers, cybersecurity experts, cloud engineers, AI engineers, and IT support.
Remote staffing allows companies to get their hands on top-tier talent that exists outside of their countries, and often in the more affordable regions.
This is especially crucial in industries requiring niche skills: AI development, blockchain, and DevOps. These specialists can be hard to come by locally but readily available overseas.
But cost and access to talent are not just the advantages. What if you could grow your IT team overnight without the headaches of traditional hiring? That’s called scalability.
3. Scalability and Flexibility
Offshore staffing ensures that teams can be scaled up or down without so much as a fuss. With traditional hiring, scaling up can take months. Similarly, downsizing can also be just as costly, thanks to things like severance packages and obligations.
Businesses can sidestep all these woes by partnering with a remote staffing provider. They often have standing, vetted professionals who can hit the ground running—ideal for peak months when companies need to increase their headcounts.
When the rush is over, or when a specific project phase is done, the company can downsize just as easily.
Finally, we round up this list of advantages with something that customers really like– non-stop service.
4. 24/7 Ops
Around-the-clock service is needed especially in IT, as one doesn’t know when equipment failure or tech glitches come for a visit.
Having 24/7 coverage is expensive, with nighttime differentials at play. However, with a globally distributed team, businesses can provide round-the-clock support while managing costs.
Clients rest easy knowing that there’s always support whenever they need it.
Also, by tapping remote teams, companies experience continuous productivity. While one team sleeps, the other team on the other side of the world holds the fort. Progress is handed off as one shift ends and the other begins.
With these benefits in mind, we understand why companies are highly motivated to make remote arrangements work. So that said, let’s look at what it takes to run a high-performing remote team.
II. Best Practices for Building a High-Performing Remote IT Team
1. Hire the Right Talent from the Start
Ideal candidates will have a mix of both hard and soft skills. Hard skills ensure that the potential employee has the ability, technical know-how, and experience to do his job. Soft skills ensure that he can work well with others.
It’s a team you’re building here, so you don’t just look for technical chops. The candidate should be able to communicate well and have an attitude that fits well with the organization.
There’s always a risk of favoring one or the other. But both hard and soft skills are required.
How Outsourcing Agencies Help Reduce Hiring Risks
An organization might be excellent at IT. They may not necessarily be proficient in hiring the best people. Partnering with specialized remote staffing agencies can help because:
- They have robust pre-screened talent pools: Agencies have in-depth frameworks to properly vet candidates and assess their technical skills.
- Agencies offer trial periods for flexible hiring: Businesses can try out candidates before making longer-term commitments.
- Agencies handle legal contracts, payroll, tax compliance, and other administrative work so clients can focus on the IT side of things.
Consider a U.S.-based fintech startup that struggled with delayed software releases due to an understaffed development team. By leveraging offshore IT specialists from the Philippines, they not only filled the talent gap but also cut hiring costs by 65%.
2. Clarify the Roles and Duties of Team Members.
In a talented IT team, any individual can perform a broad range of tasks and wear multiple hats. And in an IT process, there are multiple ways of doing things.
For instance, tech folks will have different ways of optimizing web performance, or their own approaches for deciding on a tech stack. This can cause confusion if not properly reined in.
As a team manager, you need to establish—early on—the roles of individuals. What tasks and duties fall under each one? This prevents overlaps that can afflict a multi-talented team.
Delineate the scope of an individual’s job so that people know exactly what they’re supposed to do. Establish duties so that they’re aware of what’s expected of them.
Provide metrics, benchmarks, and project deadlines.
Then show them the workflow and their place in it so that they understand the value they bring to the group. Doing so informs people of how their work affects others—like how a delay from their end can upend the whole process.
GitLab, a fully remote company, exemplifies this spirit in their Handbook—which they dub as “the single source of truth for how we operate.” It goes into painful detail about every aspect of working for the company, from style guide to issue escalation.
Google has recognized GitLab’s contributions by giving it the Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year Award for four years in a row.
3. Establish Communication & Collaboration Processes
In #2 we prevented confusion. Here, we’ll prevent friction.
We’re done delineating the circle of responsibilities for each individual. This time, we’re going to connect those “dots” or “circles” and facilitate cooperation.
The key to all this is: Communication.
In a remote setting, a team rises and falls on communication.
You need to teach your guys how to interact with each other. Otherwise, you’ll end up with highly-efficient silos, and a project that goes nowhere.
Teach your team communication protocols and do that early on.
This includes establishing guidelines on things like:
- What platforms to use (and when to use it)?
- Who to contact (and for what purposes)?
- What type of information to communicate (and how)?
- How quickly to respond?
This puts a structure on the process and sets up duties and expectations. In a distributed team or a team that works outside the office, robust communication is crucial.
Here’s a quick example of how a communication protocol can help resolve an issue:
| 1. Detection: The monitoring system alerts the remote IT team via Slack that the production server’s response time has spiked.2. Immediate Communication: The on-call engineer receives the alert and posts a quick update in the designated #urgent channel on Slack, stating that they’re investigating the issue. 3. Quick Sync: 4. Diagnosis: 5. Action: 6. Resolution and Documentation: |
Because individuals know the protocols and have been briefed about how to communicate, they were able to quickly resolve the issue without unnecessary delay.
Without clear, standardized communication procedures, even the best developers, engineers, and cybersecurity experts can get their signals crossed—resulting in errors, delays, and missed deadlines.
For a team to work like a well-oiled machine, reduce friction by laying the rules for communication early on.
4. Use Automation and AI Everywhere
The IT guy for an online travel agency was concerned about website slowdowns during high-traffic, summer booking season. So he implemented a predictive intelligence system that monitored the site for early signs of trouble.
During one peak booking day, the system flagged a situation. The IT guy received the alert and promptly investigated, and discovered that a particular module responsible for handling search queries was becoming overloaded. By optimizing this module, he ensured the website remained fast and reliable, even as customer bookings soared.
This is how AI and automation can impact business.
They significantly reduce manual workloads, while at the same time increasing productivity.
Instead of waiting for a decision to be made or for a colleague to get around to doing some task, streamline the whole thing and let AI and automation take over.
For example, use some form of IT ticketing system that automatically categorizes and assigns priority to incidents. Use AI to analyze historical tickets and predict which issues might escalate.
Whatever your process is, yes, “There’s an AI for that!”
Conduct a process review and hunt for:
- Routine, repetitive tasks
- Bottlenecks and slow-moving parts
- Time-consuming tasks
- Quantity-heavy tasks
By making your processes “smart,” you free up your human capital to work on higher-value tasks.
5. Track Performance
Measure! Measure! Measure!
Managing remote teams requires clear performance benchmarks and real-time tracking. They help ensure accountability.
How is your team performing?
For example, in a call center operation:
- What’s your team’s Average Handle Time?
- What’s the call Abandonment Rate?
- What’s the Revenue Per Call?
There are plenty of metrics to look at, depending on your niche.
There are plenty of general-purpose project management tools that help gauge your team’s performance. Here’s some of them:
| Tool | Key Features | KPIs Measured |
| Toggl Track | Time tracking, reporting, integrations | Time on tasks, productivity rate |
| Clockify | Timesheets, project tracking, billable hours | Hours worked per project, team efficiency |
| Hubstaff | Activity levels, screenshots, GPS tracking | Active vs. idle time, project hours |
| Jira | Agile tracking, sprint planning, issue tracking | Sprint velocity, task completion rate |
| Trello | Kanban boards, workflow automation | Task progress, backlog management |
| Asana | Project timelines, team workload view | Task assignment efficiency, project completion rate |
| ClickUp | Custom dashboards, automation, real-time tracking | Task cycle time, workload balance |
Knowing your metrics shines a light on your next moves.
For example, a call center manager noticed that Average Handle Time had risen to 7 minutes and abandonment was spiking, while Revenue Per Call was falling. She quickly convened a meeting and was informed that problems in their automated call routing system might be the culprit.
The team quickly tweaked the routing rules and updated call scripts, and within a week, the metrics improved—Average Handle Time dropped to 4.5 minutes, abandonment decreased to 6%, and Revenue Per Call began to recover.
This data-driven approach enabled the team to continuously optimize their performance and enhance service.
Know that when you’re looking at a high-performing IT team, you’re really just witnessing its latest iteration. You haven’t seen the early missteps and false starts.
Speaking of which, let’s now talk about the pitfalls to avoid when building an IT A-team.
III. Pitfalls to Avoid
1. Poor Onboarding Process
Onboarding—the process of integrating new employees into the organization—is crucial for employee success. Without a robust process, new guys will feel lost, unprepared, and unproductive. Imagine how that would impact a company in a highly competitive space.
Onboarding is crucial because it sets the tone for the whole employment. You are setting standards early on. The new guy thinks, “So this is how it is here.”
If anything, you put your best foot forward. If you show a disorganized face, giving off the impression of incompetence, the new guy will only be so happy to fit into that system.
Many companies take onboarding for granted and give scattered info that has very little to do with the job. They know they hired a good one so they think they can hold off the gas pedal a bit.
But remember when talked about clarifying roles and responsibilities and establishing communication protocols? They happen during the onboarding process.
Onboarding is not just about giving out passwords and making someone watch a company video. It’s making sure people have the wherewithal to succeed. Because for all intents and purposes, your company’s destiny is now tied to this newest member of your team.
Action Plan:
Create a detailed checklist covering company culture, role expectations, communication protocols, security training, and tool setup. Assign a mentor or buddy to guide new hires through their first few weeks.
The pair should have regular check-ins to ensure smooth team integration.
2. Micromanaging Remote Workers
People drawn to IT are some of the most independent and motivated folks there are. The worst thing you can do is to micromanage them.
Studies show that, among others, micromanagement:
- kills creativity
- dampens initiative and motivation
- reduces productivity
- reduces employee engagement and
- negatively impacts job satisfaction
A survey showed just how damaging micromanagement is to employees. It has been the bane of employees whether they work at the office or not:
Unfortunately, a lot of remote team managers, conscious of the geographical distance, unconsciously overcompensate for it. Without really meaning to, they end up micromanaging from a distance, virtually looking over employees’ shoulders.
They watch time-trackers like a hawk.
They control every aspect of the project, dictating all the steps.
They require constant updates.
They become inflexible.
All micromanagement is well-intentioned. But it ends up holding people back from their best work. Because every time your developer reads a line like, “Hey, just checking in! What’s the status?” he switches off from “deep work.” It takes him out of his flow state and kills his productivity.
Employees feel they have no autonomy, walking on eggshells even in the comfort of their own homes. The work then becomes constricting, instead of just challenging. That’s when they start looking elsewhere.
Action Plan:
Shift to an outcome-based approach.
Set clear KPIs and establish regular check-ins (e.g., weekly or biweekly meetings). End the practice of requiring constant updates. Doing so will unleash creativity and initiative from your team.
3. Not Providing the Right Tools
With the flood of AI and automation tools available today, some employers think, “This makes the job of my guys too easy. Then what am I paying them for?”
They hold back on deploying automation tools so their people “work hard” and earn their pay.
The problem is that his team is competing with groups employing the latest innovations in tech. Guess who’ll win each and every time.
(If employers really want their guys to work hard, they can ask them to turn off their laptops and write code with pen and paper.)
The era of “hard work” is over. This is the time for “smart work.”
According to the World Economic Forum, human-AI collaboration could unlock $15.7 trillion in economic value by 2030.
AI won’t replace the guy. They cover each other’s weaknesses. Tech mops up the “low-hanging” fruits, those repetitive tasks, so employees can focus on higher-value tasks.
Many of the automation your business requires are already available. And the good news is, they’re probably free. (If not, the initial investment will pay for itself over time.)
Action Plan:
Research and find out what tools your competitors are using. This will give you a picture of how they are creating value in your space.
Invest in and deploy the software that suits your own team’s needs and strategies. Provide training sessions so they can make the most of your investment.
4. Poor Cybersecurity, Compliance and Contracts
I grouped here three C’s that can bite in the future.
Cybersecurity
Hackers are getting smarter and so IT companies owe it to themselves to secure their systems and data.
The least they can do on this front is:
- Use encrypted connections
- Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Avoid using public Wi-Fi
- Implement role-based access
- Audit access logs
- Conduct vulnerability assessments
There’s no such thing as a “hack-proof” system as evidenced by the spate of big players falling victims, but companies owe it to themselves to deploy as much protection as reasonable.
Compliance
Remote teams operate from other jurisdictions and have to observe that country’s legal framework. Companies should carefully comply with the host country’s labor laws and practices to remain in good standing with its government. Otherwise, it risks being sued or banned from operating in the country.
Contracts
Contracts spell out the legal obligations of employer and employee. This is important for any business that manages a remote team. It serves as another layer of security and its terms should include things like:
- NDAs (Non-disclosure agreements)
- Non-compete and Non-solicitation clauses
- Data protection protocols
- Dispute resolution
- Liability protections
Action Plan:
You can definitely DIY these things by implementing the guidelines I just mentioned, but it’s much more efficient to partner with a reputable remote outsourcing provider to handle the myriad of issues connected to the 3 Cs.
They are already outfitted with the latest in cybersecurity tools, so you can piggyback on the existing infrastructure. They’re also already familiar with the legal requirements in the jurisdictions they operate in. And finally, they have ready robust contracts that cover most of the bases and provide you with solid legal protection.
5. Ignoring Team Morale
We’ve been talking much about tech tools and the latest in AI innovations, but there’s a very real human element in running a high-performance IT team.
Unlike AI, humans have bad days. They burn out. Their creativity comes in waves, and there will be days when nothing of value comes to mind.
When humans interact, there’s a potential for misunderstandings, confusion, and competition. A great remote team manager is someone who recognizes these challenges and actively works to create an environment where people feel supported, heard, and motivated.
A great manager understands that peak performance isn’t about pushing people to their limits but about creating conditions that allow them to do their best work, consistently.
Action Plan:
A well-supported team is more resilient, engaged, productive, and more likely to stay.
Organize virtual team-building activities regularly, and provide plenty of space for members to interact as individuals and not as company employees. Doing so improves cohesion and increases an individual’s stake in the success of the team.
Conduct frequent one-on-one meetings to gather feedback, recognize achievements, and discuss career development. People will feel seen and valued.
So those are your “best practices” and “baddest pitfalls” to look out for when building a high-performance remote IT team.
Want to start with that process? We at Kinetic Innovative Staffing can help.
