Page 17 - Nearshoring to Romania

Ÿ The risk the company is willing to take on when starting to work in Romania
Ÿ The ability of the staff of the home company to work in and with another culture
Further discussion on setting up a branch in Romania can be found in chapter 3; working with
a partner in Romania is discussed in chapter 4.

2.6 Type of work

Not all work is suitable for execution in Romania. The two main reasons to move work to Romania are
that working in Romania: 1) provides access to the Romanian market and 2) gives access to resources
(including well-qualified workforce) at an attractive price. Each of the reasons individually can be
enough to decide to move work to Romania or a combination of the reasons makes the move attractive.
In all consideration the transport costs of the end product are also an important factor to consider in the
decision to move work to Romania.
Whether companies choose to start their own branch or work with a partner it will take investment to
start working in Romania, especially at the start of the transition. For this reason it is important to have a
long-term perspective when moving work to Romania. It is not realistic to expect a high output from the
start; at the same time there are many companies who find out that after the initial teething troubles their
Romanian teams outperform teams in the Netherlands.
2.7 Impact on your home organization

When work is moved to Romania it will have an impact on the home organization as well. To ensure a
smooth transition management needs to be aware of the impact and actively support and guide the
transition.
Employees in the Netherlands might think that the Romanian teams are stealing their jobs; these
sentiments can result in attempts to derail the collaboration. The worries of Dutch employees should not
be ignored; management should take the time to explain to Dutch employees why they are moving work
to Romania, what their long-term vision is for the collaboration, how it fits the company strategy and
most important be honest about the impact working in Romania will or will have on current and future
jobs in the Netherlands. Even when all these conditions are met, it is very likely that when things go
wrong during the initial phases of the collaboration the Dutch employees will blame the Romanians for
the problems. It is up to management to find the cause of the problem and solve it at the root cause.

Despite all modern means of communication face-to-face communication is still essential to good
collaboration. Be sure to include enough in your budget for travels between the Netherlands and
Romania.
When work is moved to Romania it will require communication in English. Before the start of the
collaboration, companies should also consider whether the proficiency in English of their employees in
the Netherlands is adequate, especially when taking into account the daily and professional use of the
English language.

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Nearshoring to Romania, NRCC 2013