Outsourcing to Virtual Employees: Latin America vs. Philippines

A virtual professional can support your business in its daily operations and specialized areas like marketing, design, business development, IT, financial, and administrative, just to name a few. For some U.S. employers, finding committed, professional applicants in the current hiring pool have become a challenge, leading more small businesses and start ups to outsource their teams. But when it comes to outsourcing a virtual employee, where should you look?

For more than two decades, the Philippines has been the go-to outsourcing standard for small businesses who needed low-cost virtual assistants or other employees. Now, the notion of outsourcing is trending down while nearshoring is taking the lead—in Latin America.

Employers are looking for employees who are closer to home in Latin American countries like El Salvador, Guatamala, Honduras, and Argentina. The closer proximity to the States offers many benefits to U.S. businesses seeking to build their team. Here are 6 of them.

Time Zone

Latin American countries are located in the same time zones as the U.S., making it easy to conduct business and interface with your team members in real time. Employees also get to work on regular daytime schedules making their lives much more normal and manageable. The Philippines on the other hand is 12 hours ahead of the U.S. east coast, making it less convenient for employees and employers to interact during the day.

Logistics

Because Latin American countries are located closer to the U.S. than the Philippines, travel is much easier should the job necessitate a face-to-face visit. Additionally, shipping goods, services, or resources takes less time to and from Latin America.

Culture

Because of the shorter distance between Latin America and the U.S. and Canada, Latino virtual employees are more similar to Americans than Filipinos. Many have traveled or studied in North America, making them a more well-suited employee for U.S. businesses and startups.

Bilingual

It’s easy to find employees in Latin American countries who are well-educated that speak fluent English. Due to the large number of Hispanic people living in the US, having native Spanish speakers working with you can often be an advantage. Hispanic accents are often easier to understand than a Philippine accent as well.

Cost-Effective

When you nearshore virtual employees from either the Philippines or Latin American countries, you get more value for your spend. Highly skilled team members are a fraction of what you pay for U.S. talent, but Latin America has an edge when it comes to the quality and professionalism.

Less Turnover

As U.S. companies continue to experience higher turnover rates from American-based employees, they turn to outsourcing. Because Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) in the Philippines is more developed than that of Latin America, Filipinos are more apt to job-hop from one employer to the next; whoever pays more. U.S. companies will be better served by nearshore employees from Latin America who are specialized, and more apt to develop longer-term working relationships with less turnover to worry about.

The nature of work has changed, making remote operations the new permanent normal. Now, more than ever, it’s more beneficial for U.S. companies to hire global employees who have the same or better skills and training.

Teamswell is a nearshoring company dedicated to helping US companies fill job positions with highly educated, English fluent, Latin American professionals at a fraction of the cost of traditional US employees.

Let us help you find your high quality, nearshored talent today.