Company culture is a big deal. The shared beliefs and behaviors that make up your organization’s personality have a huge impact on performance, retention, brand – pretty much everything that matters. So when you decide to partner with an outsourcing provider, maintaining that culture can feel risky.

But it doesn’t have to be! With some thoughtful planning and effort to get aligned, you can absolutely preserve the culture that makes your company special.

In this post, we’ll look at why culture matters so much, challenges that come with outsourcing, and most importantly, some solid tips to keep your culture vibrant across both internal and external teams. Stick with me – this is crucial stuff for any business looking to outsource without losing their identity.

What Makes Company Culture So Important?

Before we get into the outsourcing part, let’s look at why company culture deserves so much attention in the first place. Culture is the sum of shared assumptions, values, practices, and environment within an organization. It shapes everything from how people interact to how decisions get made. Some key elements of culture include:

– Values: The guiding principles that influence priorities and behaviors. Examples are integrity, innovation, accountability, community, etc.

– Practices: The habits, rituals, recognition programs that signal cultural importance. These could include team lunches, awards ceremonies, open door policies, etc.

– Narratives: The stories conveyed about the company that illustrate core values. These help build emotional connections.

– Language: Company-specific terms and acronyms that facilitate communication and reinforce shared identity. 

– Environment: The office layout, decor, amenities and virtual work spaces that reflect company values. Casual spaces can convey collaboration, for instance.  

A strong, positive culture boosts engagement, morale, fulfillment, and belonging among employees. It also makes a company attractive to future employees seeking shared purpose and values. However, culture must adapt as organizations grow and evolve.

Why Company Culture Matters

Maintaining a consistent, healthy company culture delivers quantifiable benefits:

– Talent recruitment and retention: A LinkedIn survey found 94% of employees consider culture before applying for a job. Shared values and purpose boost fulfillment and retention.

– Productivity: Workers are up to 20% more productive when placed in a positive culture encouraging of innovation.

– Profits: Cultures focused on adaptability and customers generate 25-30% greater customer satisfaction and profits.

– Change adaptation: Shared rituals and resilience help companies maneuver change and disruption. Rituals boost endurance.  

– Strategic alignment: A unified culture strategically aligns worker activity without control measures. Employees direct their own efforts.

– Risk avoidance: Cultures centered on ethics reduce reckless behaviors and legal risks. Rules and processes alone aren’t preventative.

– Distinctiveness: Unique, differentiated cultures build brand recognition and affinity. Customers gravitate toward purpose-driven brands.

A BPO provider that shares your values can uphold your culture. But cultural dilution often occurs when outsourcing business activities. Thoughtful steps must be taken to retain culture.

Challenges of Outsourcing and Maintaining Culture   

Outsourcing any business processes to an external provider can disrupt your existing company culture. Common challenges include:

– Physical separation: Remote workers physically isolated from peers may feel less connection to culture.

– Communication barriers: Differences in language and reduced informal interaction can inhibit cultural transmission. 

– Process mismatches: Incompatible systems and workflows hamper collaboration critical for culture.

– Skill mismatches: Training differences lead to conflicts around problem-solving and decision-making.

– Isolation: Lack of cultural integration and bonding events leaves outsourced workers feeling isolated.

– Control limitations: Leaders have less visibility into remote teams to shape desired cultural behaviors. 

– Fluidity: Frequent turnover and worker fluctuations strain cultural continuity with a provider.

Without thoughtful mitigation, these challenges introduce cultural dilution and fragmentation between insourced and outsourced teams. Leaders must take proactive steps to uphold consistent cultural alignment.

Tips for Retaining Culture When Outsourcing

When outsourcing business functions, leaders can take numerous approaches to sustain cultural alignment with their provider and remote teams:

Choose a Provider Who Shares Your Values

Prioritize choosing a provider who shares your cultural values from the start. Assess providers on:

– Values fit: Do they showcase similar values and purpose? Look for cultural similarities.

– Employee satisfaction: Do they invest in culture initiatives and boast strong employee satisfaction? Happy employees signal strong culture.

– Leadership ethos: Do their leaders embody your values? Cultural tone flows from the top.  

– Work practices: Do their workflows, communication norms, and work styles match yours? Seek methodological similarities.

– Cultural training: Do they train staff on your company values and purpose? Proper cultural education is critical.

A provider already culturally aligned requires less heavy lifting. You can focus on sustaining culture rather than building it.

Clearly Communicate Your Culture 

Educate outsourced teams on your history, stories, values, and purpose. Set their cultural knowledge baseline through:

– Immersion training: Dedicate training to explaining cultural elements, including values, artifacts, language, and stories.

– Leadership messaging: Ensure upper management directly conveys culture and expectations to staff.

– Ongoing refreshers: Reference culture in team meetings and project launches. Use reminder collateral like posters.

– New hire onboarding: Integrate required cultural training into onboarding programs. Start new hires off immersed in your culture.

– Accessible resources: Create intranet pages, handbooks, and resources explaining culture. Make them easily accessible.

Frequent, practical cultural education helps remote staff internalize values. It keeps culture top of mind.

Encourage Two-Way Communication

Communication barriers lead to misalignment. Encourage consistent two-way interaction between teams through:

– Collaborative tools: Provide intranet platforms and social tools for team interaction, bonding, and knowledge exchange. 

– Cross-team projects: Drive collaboration through assignments requiring blended teams. This builds relationships beyond outsourcing contracts. 

– Virtual watercoolers: Host video chat sessions for informal peer bonding and culture sharing beyond work topics. 

– Accessibility: Ensure insourced staff remain accessible via messaging and open door policies. Make relationship building easy.

– Translated resources: Provide materials translated into providers’ local language. Break down linguistic barriers.  

– Feedback channels: Create anonymous channels for outsourced teams to provide feedback on culture or collaboration gaps.

Rich interaction sustains culture while revealing friction points to address.

Build Strong Relationships

Cultural cohesion requires healthy working relationships. Invest time to build trust and familiarity between teams via:

– In-person kickoffs: Launch key projects or new contracts with handshakes and face-time between blended staff.

– Staff introductions: Host video or chat sessions for colleagues to introduce themselves and their roles. Humanize interactions.

– Cross-mentoring: Pair staff across teams for mentorship relationships, enabling culture sharing.

– Offsite gatherings: Social trips, dinners, or activities help build camaraderie and relationships.

– Team mixing: Avoid isolating outsourced staff. Blend teams for tasks and meetings.

– Management mingling: Ensure middle managers collaborate regularly. Culture is shepherded through middle management ranks.  

Relationships enable healthy culture transfer and sustain cohesion between onsite and outsourced staff. 

Establish Clear Guidelines and Expectations

Grey areas lead to misunderstandings that can fracture culture. Provide clear guidance around:

– Desired behaviors: Establish conduct guidelines reflecting cultural values, like collaboration and accountability.

– Communication norms: Define expected frequency, channels, and response times for seamless interaction.  

– Performance metrics: Ensure outsourced teams have aligned metrics and key results driving desired behaviors. 

– Decision frameworks: Provide clear protocols for decision-making, escalation, and feedback.

– Rewards programs: Recognize and reward behaviors reinforcing cultural values, even small wins. 

Well-defined expectations prevent misaligned activities from taking root. Both parties understand proper cultural behaviors.

Provide the Same Training

Training inconsistencies lead to execution gaps undermining collaborative culture. Align training by:

– Equal access: Ensure outsourced teams can access your full training curriculum to absorb company methodologies. 

– Shared calendars: Coordinate training schedules between teams for shared participation and relationship building.

– Standardized programs: Manage training centrally rather than differing by team. Content should be identical between insourced and outsourced staff.

– Joint refreshers: Run refresher courses together. Don’t let outsourced teams’ knowledge lapse. 

– Skills audits: Periodically audit and address any missing skill or knowledge gaps that may breed resentment. 

– Training feedback: Gather outsourced teams’ input on training. Look for improvements that better fit their needs.

Joint training sustains seamless workflows and skill alignment between teams.

Enable Periodic In-Person Interactions  

Limited face-time hampers relationship building critical for culture. Enable periodic in-person interactions by:

– Onsite rotations: Schedule outsourced team members to periodically work onsite. Facilitate shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration.

– Leadership visits: Send executives to periodically visit outsourced teams to reinforce culture and provide face time.

– Conference attendance: Include outsourced staff in key company conferences and events.

– Retreats: Conduct periodic retreats bringing together both insourced and outsourced staff for immersive culture sharing. 

– Celebrations: Invite outsourced teams to company events like holiday parties or major milestones. Make them feel included.

– Team summits: Hold regular all-hands meetings for leadership updates and cross-team bonding.

In-person activities strengthen relationships and make culture tangible for remote teams.

Show Appreciation and Recognition 

To sustain motivation and retention, provide outsourced teams equal appreciation: 

– Peer bonuses: Enable insourced staff to nominate outsourced team members for monetary bonuses or awards. 

– Public praise: Recognize outstanding work by outsourced staff in company meetings and newsletters. Give equal visibility.

– Culture perks: Offer remote staff access to special company perks like product discounts or event tickets. 

– Anniversary acknowledgements: Mark outsourced team members’ anniversaries to show you value them long-term.

– Creative rewards: Develop recognition programs tailored to what motivates outsourced staff based on cultural insights.

– Gratitude events: Host video sessions for insourced staff to share “thank yous” and appreciation. 

Fair recognition prevents outsourced staff feeling undervalued, boosting retention and motivation.

Monitor Progress and Provide Feedback

Sustaining culture requires ensuring aligned behaviors. Routinely monitor and address issues through:

– Behavior audits: Use surveys and observation to audit how well outsourced teams embody desired cultural behaviors. 

– Anonymous feedback: Collect anonymous insights on potential culture gaps or misalignments requiring attention.

– Course correcting: If audits surface issues, respond quickly to realign behaviors before problems multiply.

– Progress tracking: Track relevant metrics like collaboration activity, training KPIs, or performance scores to catch emerging issues.

– Periodic checkpoints: Hold regular meetings to discuss cultural alignment and address any friction points.

Proactive monitoring ensures you catch issues early before culture drifts. Quick interventions realign behaviors.

Be Flexible and Open to New Ideas

Rigidity can inhibit the adaptation so critical for culture. Remain open by:

– Fresh perspectives: Embrace outsourced teams’ diverse viewpoints. They can enrich your culture.

– Localization: Allow slight localization of rituals or practices to suit outsourced teams’ regional needs if alignment isn’t compromised.

– Feedback incorporation: Integrate outsourced teams’ ideas into cultural initiatives. Co-create culture.  

– Fluid governance: Establish collaborative processes for evaluating and integrating cultural enhancement ideas.

– Required innovation: Challenge outsourced teams to regularly suggest culture enriching initiatives. Make it a requirement. 

– New hire influence: Task new outsourced hires with sharing fresh cultural insights from their onboarding. 

Thoughtful, selective adaptation prevents your culture from becoming stale and fragmented.

Conclusion

Outsourcing critical business functions can pose risks to sustaining your existing company culture. But with a culturally aligned partner and thoughtful mitigation strategies, you can uphold an integrated cultural environment across both insourced and outsourced teams. Invest time upfront to educate partners on your values. Encourage constant collaboration and rich communication between teams. Monitor for emerging misalignments, and be proactive and swift in interventions to prevent divisions. Approach the partnership with flexibility, not rigidity. Remaining open to new perspectives and behaviors enriches culture. With meticulous cultural diligence, outsourcing can strengthen, not dilute, the very heart of your organization.