Page 29 - Nearshoring to Romania

4.4.3 Communicate expectations
For people working off-site it is always difficult to form a complete picture of what is going on at the
receiving end. This lack of overview may hinder their potential to optimize efforts towards the end
result, for example by focusing on aspects that are irrelevant to customers or end users. The separation
of the IT department from the core business may already expose this problem in a traditional situation;
only exaggerating it when IT tasks are being offshored.
For this reason it is essential that all people working off-site have a clear picture of the requirements and
most importantly the expectations on the receiving end. This requires an effort from both local and
remote management.
4.5 Continuing the cooperation
Starting the cooperation and the combined process is one thing, keeping things running smoothly is
another. Once the cooperation becomes more of a routine people could become sloppy in keeping to the
rules and levels of communication. This, in turn, could induce the “dangers” that are specific to
nearshoring. It is essential to stay disciplined and put an effort to keep the cooperation fruitful for both
parties.
4.5.1 Involve
A potential pitfall when working with two teams on different locations is that teams can get alienated. In
a nearshoring situation this would imply that in due course the nearshoring team feels less connected to
the “mother ship”, resulting in loss of motivation and quality of work. When everything is new and there
is movement this will not happen so quickly. But once the cooperation reaches a certain level of self-
organization and becomes routine, this danger becomes present. People in the remote team could feel
less appreciated or involved in the project and as a result become less motivated or even start looking for
another job. In order to prevent this, the remote team should continue to be involved in the process. This
can be done by regular trips, (video-)presentations to the remote team, combined team building
activities etc. (anything that can be done to keep the remote team involved in the process that happens on
your side).
4.5.2 Keep track of progress
The more the remote teams are working independently, the higher the risk that they will deviate from the
planned track. In order to prevent this it is essential to keep tabs on the remote team. This goes above and
beyond tracking reports or asking local management. Regularly sampling the actual output yields a
clearer picture of the end result and will forewarn deviations. In software development, using agile
development methods will facilitate this. Agile development calls for incremental development, where
requirements can be changed on a regular basis because of customer demands or insights based on tests
with earlier versions.
4.5.3 Consider the hierarchy
As indicated elsewhere in this guide, hierarchy is more important in the Romanian work ethics than in,
for example, the Netherlands. This has at least two implications that need constant attention. First of all,
some communication could be interpreted as a command or order rather than as just the remark it was
meant to be. For example, a casual remark about something that needs attention at some point in the
future could be interpreted as a command to start fixing it right away. This results in time spent on
activities that have no high priority. The second implication is that orders coming from one person could
be considered overruled by someone higher up in the hierarchy. To this end, make sure to know which
communication end-points are in use. And make sure to be always able to see what the current activities
are.

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Nearshoring to Romania, NRCC 2013