FAQs
You ask, we answer. We’ve put together some commonly asked questions to help you find out more about offshoring in South Africa and us.
Offshoring vs Outsourcing
Communication
-
I think the simple answer to that is “as easy as it is to speak to any of your UK staff!”
First of all, about half the population of Durban and the vast majority of Durban Offshoring employees have English as their first language. In addition to English, South Africa has ten other official languages but everyone who speaks those also speaks English.
We strongly recommend that communication between your UK and South African staff is done via Microsoft Teams or Zoom but if you have a VOIP telephone system, you can also send a handset so that the staff member is on your internal phone system. This also means that it is easy to transfer to calls to and from customers and suppliers.
All Durban-based staff have two screens so as part of training or general work can share screens with you.
Significantly as one of our clients said “the Durban accent is easy on the middle-class ear” which made us laugh. The point is that there will be no barriers to communication between the UK and SA staff and over time a good rapport will be built as the team and your business grow.
Supervision and training
-
No. We will undertake a basic induction on what we expect of a seconded employee but they will be your employees so the rest is up to you. They will work using your systems, reporting to your staff, using your technology and applying your standards.
We can provide you with templates to support your employees with reviews and salary increases and we’ll provide advice to ensure you are compliant with South African law. But everything else is up to you. If you want them to match your working hours, they can; if you want to give them 40 days of annual leave (unlikely we know), you can.
-
If you have any issues with offshore team member that need someone locally to resolve, you can contact your dedicated Recruitment Consultant who will be able to help resolve any issues as quickly as possible. We also have a South African lawyer who will be able to advise on any difficult or delicate issues.
Location
-
Our standard monthly office and facilities fee includes a desk at our main offices in Durban in a shared space with other Durban Offshoring staff who are seconded to other clients.
All our staff have signed contracts of employments with strict confidentiality clauses so even if another staff member inadvertently saw company information on screen as they walked past your employee’s desk, they are bound by the terms of their employment not to disclose anything.
-
We organise our office space so that if you had more than one member of staff, they will be sitting together. If you have a larger team and want them to have their own space, we can source a self-contained office although this is likely to be subject to reasonable extra costs.
-
Absolutely! We would love to see you in Durban, and you can meet lots of other members of the Durban Offshoring team.
If you are able to sleep on planes, the easiest way to travel is on an overnight flight from Heathrow. You’ll arrive first thing in the morning in Johannesburg and can then get another connecting flight to Durban.
The best time to visit is the UK winter (because it’s the South African Summer). We’d recommend combining it with some tourist trips. There are some great safari resorts two or three hours drive from Durban, you can visit Rorke’s Drift scene of the battle between the British and the Zulus in 1879 made famous by the Michael Caine film, Zulu in 1964 and we’d also recommend a visit to Mahatma Ghandhi House on the outskirts of Durban where the great lived for twenty years.
If you like your sport, try and combine your trip with a visit to Kings Park where Natal Sharks rugby team do battle or Kingsmead Cricket Ground where Durban Super Giants 2020 cricket team play.
Employment law
-
This is an interesting one.
South African employment law recognises Durban Offshoring PTY ltd as what they refer to as a “labour broker”. We are considered to be the “de-facto” employer, but your company will be considered to be the real employer because the member of staff will work under the control and management of your or other members of your team.
Our contracts with you and the employer will refer to you as the employer and our South African company (Durban Offshoring PTY Ltd) as the employer’s agent.
-
The simple answer is yes. As the “real” employer, you will be required to comply with South African employment law.
But don’t worry too much.
First of all, South African employment law is remarkably similar to UK employment law. The good news is that it is much more prescribed and therefore if you needed to make a South African employee redundant (known as retrenchment), the process is much quicker and cheaper than it would be in the UK.
Secondly, generally speaking as long as you treat staff fairly, you won’t run into any problems. And anything you are unsure about can be discussed with us before acting. In addition to all the in-house experience of South African employment law, we have a specialist South African law firm that can advise on any difficult situations.
-
Our standard employment contract provides for a three-month probation period. We will advise you when the end of the probation period is approaching, and you then have three possible courses of action:
Make the position permanent
Terminate the employment of the individual
Extend the probationary period (usually for a further 3 months)
Probation periods are not governed by law, and it is possible to extend the probation period beyond 6 months, but you will need to have an exceptional reason to do so.
You can download a full comparison of UK and South African employment law by clicking here.
Range of roles
-
The simple answer is that anything that can be done remotely, can be done in Durban!
If you have never employed offshore staff before, then you might consider relatively support roles to start the process including:
• Office assistant / receptionist
• Customer support
• Bookkeeper
• Telesales
• IT assistant
• Admin support in anything from HR, credit control,
Once you’re up and running, the only limit is physical presence.
But even there, having offshore staff can help by leveraging the time of your UK team for example liaising with customers and suppliers on behalf of field operatives.
Beyond that every profession that exists in the UK will exist in South Africa and we will be able to find candidates for positions in your business. The list is endless but might include:
• Surveyors
• Engineers
• Lawyers
• Credit controllers
• HR specialists
• Management accountants
• Researchers
We could keep going.
If you’re not sure if it will work for you then just try out a recruitment campaign and see what candidates we can find for you.
Security
-
The management team of Durban Offshoring have years of experience working in an offshore environment. We adhere to UK DPA (Data Protection Act) & EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) to ensure your data is safe. We also have firewalls and protection against Trojans and viruses through anti-virus software on our systems, laptops and internet filters. We also conduct regular penetration tests and scans to ensure that the network and systems are secure.
Data security is one of Durban Offshoring’s top priorities. We provide strict security protocols in our network infrastructure and operations including:
• Setting up your employees with the same security that you use for your remote workers
• Tailoring our systems to meet your exacting security standards
• Ensuring a no mobile phones / gadgets policy within workstations
• Implementation of website blocking policies as required
• Secured data endpoints guarded by an anti-malware solutions provider
• Ensuring all our offices are physically secure and providing private offices if extra confidentiality is required
Durban Offshoring’s service ensures that your offshore staff have access to all the necessary IT tools to perform their daily tasks efficiently. Our management team also guarantee our clients’ data privacy by implementing data security procedures and data security risk mitigation within offshore business operations.
-
No, is the simple answer! As long as we have an agreement in place to treat the data in the same way as if it were processed in the UK. This is known an International data transfer agreement (IDTA) and will state that Durban Offshoring PTY Limited is a processor of data for your business and agrees to act in accordance UK DPA (the UK version of EU GDPR).
The Information Commissioner’s office considers that this is Appropriate for Safeguarding data if it is bound by a signed contract.
-
Durban has something called loadshedding and this means power is shut down for small periods of the day in certain areas.
We use laptops and battery backups for our infrastructure to keep us working through these loadshedding periods. Also, laptops enable staff to work from home if allowed by you choice. Even if we had another pandemic, your staff would already prepared to work from home!
-
No, we are just providing the PC and a desk - the rest is up to you!
Your offshore employee should have the same access and tools as your UK team including an email address, Microsoft Teams or Google Chat account and remote desktop.
You may also want to provide them with a softphone as well. Whilst we don’t provide this, we are happy to assist with setting up the system the way you want it!
Do you have any more questions?
Attend one of our free discovery webinars (which run every fortnight) to ask all of your questions and learn more about how we can help you offshore in South Africa. Or contact us to book a 1:1 consultation.