Offshore support in the age of AI: what work is still worth outsourcing?
A lot of the enquiries we get at the moment start the same way.
Hiring in the UK has become expensive, the workload hasn’t dropped and someone has been asked to look into offshore support.
That’s a sensible place to start.
The latest ONS figures put UK vacancies at 707,000, the lowest level outside the pandemic since 2014. The biggest fall was among businesses with 1 to 9 employees, while feedback to the ONS suggests rising labour costs and other operating expenses are stopping some firms from recruiting.
For smaller businesses in particular, it creates a familiar problem.
The work still needs doing. The cost of employing someone locally has gone up. But hiring another full-time person may not make commercial sense.
Offshore support can solve part of that problem.
The question is what you actually offshore.
The task list is usually the wrong place to start
Most businesses come to us with a list.
Inbox management. Diary management. Data entry. Chasing invoices. Updating records. Preparing reports.
All real work. And all work that can take a surprising amount of time away from someone whose attention is better spent elsewhere.
But there is another question worth asking before moving those tasks to an offshore team:
Should a person still be doing them at all?
Some administrative work is already moving quickly towards automation.
The International Labour Organization’s research on the Philippines found clerical support roles had the highest exposure to generative AI, particularly routine activities such as data entry, record keeping and administrative support.
So building an entire offshore arrangement around repetitive admin probably has a fairly short shelf life.
It may be cheaper than hiring locally today, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the right operating model for tomorrow.
Split the work between people and technology
Our approach is to separate the workload.
The genuinely repeatable parts can be systemised or automated, so nobody is paying a person to do something software can already do reliably.
The work that requires judgement, chasing, context, communication and an understanding of how the business actually operates stays with the offshore team member.
That might include:
managing exceptions rather than simply processing information
following up with customers, suppliers or internal teams
coordinating work across different people
spotting when something doesn’t look right
keeping processes moving when they fall outside the usual workflow
learning how the business works well enough to make sensible decisions
That is where a good offshore team becomes genuinely useful.
And importantly, that value can grow as technology improves rather than disappear because of it.
Offshoring itself isn’t disappearing
We are already seeing this shift at scale.
Revolut plans to have around 40% of its global workforce based in India by the end of 2026, with roles spanning areas including product development, customer support, payment processing and fraud investigation.
These are not simply low-level administrative jobs.
It is a useful example of where offshoring appears to be heading.
AI is not necessarily replacing offshore teams. It is changing the type of work those teams are being asked to do.
For smaller businesses, the principle is much the same.
The objective shouldn’t be to move every manual task somewhere cheaper.
It should be to work out which activities can disappear, which can be automated and which still benefit from a capable person taking ownership.
Better offshore support may mean buying fewer hours
This is sometimes the slightly unexpected outcome.
Once the repetitive work has been stripped out, businesses often need fewer support hours than they initially expected.
But the person they bring in becomes far more valuable.
Instead of simply being available to complete a list of tasks, they become part of how the business operates.
That is a much stronger foundation for offshore support, particularly as AI and automation continue to improve.
If you’re considering offshore support, start with the workload rather than the job description.
Ask three questions:
What can we stop doing?
What can we automate?
What still needs a good human being behind it?
The answer may lead to a smaller offshore team than you expected.
But probably a much better one.
If you’re weighing up offshore support and want a straight answer on which parts of your workload are worth giving to a person and which aren’t, we’re always happy to talk it through.
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Read more: Vacancies and jobs in the UK: August 2026 (ONS), Generative AI and jobs in the Philippines (ILO), Revolut to base 40% of its global workforce in India by 2026 (RTE)