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How much does it cost to hire employees in South Africa?

More and more businesses are choosing South Africa for business processing outsourcing, but how much can hiring employees cost?

The dominant reason for adopting business process outsourcing solutions is to drive down costs. In a globalized marketplace, the ability to offer better value markets can be a great way to reduce operating costs and maintain margins. With business costs rising across the board, finding savings where possible can be invaluable. From that perspective, South Africa offers an attractive proposition. Labor costs are below average, and although there are cheaper options elsewhere, South Africa’s value proposition is about much more than single-sum issues. Here you have an almost unique mix of low costs, high skills, and a diverse multicultural workforce capable of providing high-quality, cost-effective services.

The cost of labor

First the basic costs. While South Africa’s growing economy means labor costs are not as low as in some of the traditional outsourcing hubs of India or the Philippines it is still much lower than in the West.

South Africa benefits from a diverse, well-educated workforce capable of offering expertise in a wide range of industries. The culture is a good match for the West with a high work ethic with access to a wide range of professionals. As such the quality of work is likely to be much better in South Africa across even more skilled professions.

Where outsourcing has come unstuck in the past companies have focused on cost at the expense of quality. In areas such as IT, software development, or content writing, mistakes are caused by miscommunication or poor-quality work and expensive reworking. For example, imagine you’re outsourcing content to a country where English is not a first language. The cost of that content might be extremely low, but if the quality is poor, you’ll have to hire domestic copywriters to correct the errors.

A higher skilled workforce offers a better chance of getting services tasks right at the first time of asking. South Africa offers a highly skilled multidisciplinary team capable of providing highly professional services in a wide range of different industries. The South African BPO sector is expanding in areas such as telecoms, finance, healthcare, and marketing. It’s a versatile market capable of providing high-quality individuals and services across the board.