Pros
I recognise that it can be challenging to make an offshore team feel fully integrated into the wider organisation, and I want to commend the leadership for making an effort in that regard. It was clear that there was some awareness that the offshore team consisted of real professionals and not just low-cost resources, which was appreciated. Oli was always open to listening when it came to discussions around benefits and general concerns, and there was a willingness to hear feedback.
Cons
However, the day-to-day experience did not always reflect those intentions. In practice, the offshore team was often given the least desirable roles positions that had been sitting for months or that the UK team did not want to work on. Higher-quality opportunities were typically kept within the UK team, and there was a sense that the offshore team needed to “earn” access to better roles despite having the same responsibilities and targets. At times there was also a tone of passive aggressiveness in the way the offshore team was managed. It sometimes felt as though our professionalism and experience were questioned, and raising concerns could easily be interpreted as a lack of effort rather than a genuine attempt to improve the situation. Being fully remote made this even more difficult, as visibility of our work depended heavily on perception rather than actual output. When the quality of roles assigned is low, it becomes very demotivating something any recruiter understands and working on those types of roles consistently makes performance and morale difficult to maintain.
