Hire locally for the best results

In many areas of life we like to hire within the UK, and not just for roles that require you to be in a particular location to do the job, for instance construction work, but also for roles that can be fully remote.  For instance, most people would hire locally for anything to do with finances - bookkeepers, accountants, completing tax returns.  Equally, most people would hire locally for a role to increase the success of their business - eCommerce manager or a customer success manager.  The same would be true for other roles like a business consultant, or if you wanted to make a claim for R&D tax credits.

In so many fields, and with so many roles, the best result is found when hiring locally within the UK.  It's because people understand this is the way they most effectively get the end result they are looking for.

But for development roles, there is a real trend towards hiring abroad.  The reality however is that the perceived benefits of doing this really don't outweigh the actual benefits gained when hiring locally, here's why.

Your developer should be heavily involved with the team that operates your eCommerce store.  You should be including them in relevant meetings and communications via email or chat, regularly asking for their input around current or future development tasks, and expecting them to give valuable feedback on your ideas, and this feedback should form part of what guides the direction your eCommerce store should take.

You should be making use of them regularly in a consultancy capacity alongside actual development to help you understand the best direction to move in.  They can effectively advise on the technical viability of implementing ideas you may have for your store, but also give you a good understanding of both time and cost involved.

So a developer is really a key player in the overall success of your business, and with that being the case, why then does the trend seem to be to hire overseas when in other key roles in business the trend is to hire locally within the UK?  I think the answer is most likely down to the perceived cost of development work, but actually, this is not true.

Here are some key reasons why:

• You actually won't spend less using overseas developers
• You will gain in so many other ways as well by hiring locally

You're likely to find developers with the highest level of expertise working locally, as they understand that's the market where they can offer the greatest benefits to their clients.  So by hiring abroad you are likely to get a developer with less experience and expertise in their chosen field.  This might leave you wondering about a few points like:

• What will be the quality of the end product?
• Will it take more time to complete?
• Will it need rebuilding or fixing in the future?

Local hiring ensures a higher quality, longer lasting end result, and removes concerns like this.

The rate you pay for a UK developer could be more per hour than an overseas developer, but this doesn't mean the overall cost will be less.  A UK developer will have a much better understanding of your target market and the needs of your business because they have that local knowledge of the UK business ecosystem.  This means that each hour worked is an efficient hour where more and better work gets done in less time, and this brings the overall spend down compared to an overseas developer.

Combine this with the higher quality of actual work and collaboration on your project through consultancy and you can already see how much benefit a local developer brings to the table.

It's normal to expect other people in your business to keep standard working hours. Knowing your colleague is there to bounce ideas off and thrash out new ideas is key to innovation and success in business. Development work is no different. A UK developer will always be a better sounding board to spec and build your eCommerce project in the best possible way.

Knowing they are available and working when you are makes for better productivity and quicker turn around times for your project, as opposed to feeling like things are just crawling along when you don't get a reply to that ticket update until the next day.

Using a UK developer removes many hurdles to effective, efficient, communicative and collaborative working. This can be everything from knowing the target market and its needs, to perhaps a difference in language making it hard to communicate complex ideas, and these kinds of things can make progress feel slow and difficult.

By hiring locally these sorts of potential problems don't even need to be considered because you know that there will be certain knowledge the developer will inherently have which will greatly increase the smooth running and effectiveness of your eCommerce store team.  So don't underestimate the value of local knowledge in making the development process as smooth and as effective as possible.

Not even considering the pandemic, supporting the UK economy and keeping an increased amount of taxes here by hiring locally, should be a huge steering factor in when making hiring decisions for your business.  The more we put back into the system, the more we are likely to gain in the way of government benefits and initiatives.

Whatever your political persuasion supporting the economy of our country should be on your list of priorities, the same way as you might chose to buy goods from your local independent retailer rather than go to the supermarket.

The main point to take away from this is really that using local developers for your eCommerce store will bring so many benefits to your business on top of just quality development work, and also it won't cost you any more.

As it happens, Developer Connection is a service to connect with quality eCommerce developers from all over the UK.  We support many different eCommerce frameworks and it's totally free to find 5 high quality candidates with the skills and experience you are looking for. So why not find your next key team member today?