In the second installment to my blog series “Exploring the Future of Remote work: Why Companies Continue to Deploy Virtual Offices,” let us look at what competitiveness looks like in the ever-expanding and hyper-accelerating digital world.

I will anchor this in the word change, which, as everyone knows, is the only constant in this existence but is expressed on a large scale in the business world. In the last blog, I talked about talent recruitment and retention and how providing remote or virtual work options, which is a huge step into an uncharted territory, gives companies a winning edge or competitive advantage over the playing field with today's employees demanding job flexibility and better working conditions. 

What Does Competitive Advantage Mean?

According to Investopedia, competitive advantage is "what makes an entity's products or services more desirable to customers than that of any other rival, which can be broken down into comparative advantages and differential advantages:

• Comparative advantage is a company's ability to produce something more efficiently than a rival, which leads to greater profit margins.
• A differential advantage is when a company's products are seen as both unique and of higher quality, relative to those of a competitor.”¹ 
  
  

Competitive Advantages of Remote Work

Having a remote-enabled business allows you to both harness the smartness of remote work while keeping the benefits of a physical office:

• Digital native – Companies in remote network have adopted a level of virtualization and remote readiness higher than office-driven companies, making then more agile, flexible, and capable to operate anywhere.
• Virtual tools-ready – Keeping the in-office setup does not mean you cannot adopt the remote setup. But remote is built in a way that demands tools that sometimes look like just complementary tools for offices, and you end up neglecting their value because you’re relying on physical connection. A simple example is the virtualization of meetings. With it, you simply gather the team the second after reading this paper saving you time and the shrinkage associated with getting everyone into the room that may not be equipped with the HDMI adapter that fits in your PC… who has not experienced that?
• Recording – At the end of the meeting, you have logs of participation and recordings you can use to provide coaching to your team members or use to get something you haven’t captured in your notes.
• Cost- savings – While delimiting the needs for resource mobilization, companies not only reduce the office and real estate costs, but the shrinkage associated with the physical mobilization of resources.
• Acquisition and retention of talents – Furthermore, remote work brings other opportunities, such access to talent in T-2 locations with other compensation layers, reduced attrition and hiring with shorter learning curves.
  
  

Comparative Advantage

What does comparative advantage look like? As social distancing policies tightened around the world during the pandemic in 2020, Teleperformance implemented a work-at-home (WAH) business model that saw 200,000 employees working from home in just two months, which at the end of the year, ballooned to more than 250,000.

In this case, ensuring business continuity during a global crisis is an example of comparative advantage as that quick as a lightning response was unprecedented across industries at that time, which now post-pandemic gives one of our brand promises to companies, ensuring business continuity deep credibility.

How does it apply to employees? We surveyed our employees on their preferred work location, asking “Is it remote or is it office?" 

The survey had 128,000 answers in more than 40 countries, and the data showed that 74% of respondents say that they prefer to work exclusively from home, full-time from home, and only 10% prefer to work from the office. 

The 2022 data revealed that only 10% of the people prefer to work from the office versus 22% from 2021.²

How did we respond? As with our clients, we listened intently to our employees to meet their needs. Caring for our people is in our core that is why 97% of our employees worldwide work in independently certified great employer operations.

Differential Advantage

Our Teleperformance Cloud Campus (TPCC) solution, which the pandemic tested, is now recognized as an industry-leading solution for remote service delivery by the Everest Group for its work-at-home innovation, security, and talent management. 

TPCC is an integrated hiring, training, and people operations platform that offers unlimited access to resources in any language or time zone while connecting and engaging remote teams via centralized, integrated, and secure operations. 

Our differential advantage, TPCC, is a work-from-anywhere (WFA) enabler. There is nothing like it in its field.

Adapt to Master the Future

As a forward-looking company, aware of the need to stay competitive, Teleperformance embarked on a significant transformation journey. From being the worldwide leader in outsourced customer experience (CX) management, we transformed into a global leader in outsourced digital integrated business services, catering to cross-industry digital transformation needs. 

These are the kind of competitiveness, strength, and flexibility we offer businesses. In a world that’s increasingly embracing remote work, our message is you don’t have to go at it alone or build from scratch. It makes more business sense to partner with a trustworthy provider that provides simpler, faster, and safer solutions. 

Join me again in the next installment as we explore the topic of highly secure workplaces regardless of location that help raise the bar.

Sources:

1. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/competitive_advantage.asp
2. https://www.teleperformance.com/en-us/insights-list/insightful-articles/global/embracing-the-future-of-work/