Why Australian Companies Are Building Offshore Teams, and What It Means for Workers in the Philippines and Beyond

News · 2026-09-10 · 5 min read

Kumusta! Here is something worth knowing if you are building a career that crosses borders. Many businesses in Australia are paying a hidden price for vacancies they cannot fill quickly, and fresh workforce research from ConnectOS, a company that specialises in offshoring, shows just how expensive that price has become. For HR and operations managers, a slow hiring process has stopped being a minor annoyance. It now eats into sales and into the trust customers place in a business.

Whether you are already working in the Middle East or still back home in the Philippines, these findings also help explain why Australian employers keep looking further afield for skilled people. Let us walk through what the research found, one piece at a time.

Empty desks, unhappy clients

An unfilled position can look like a short-term problem, but the survey paints a harsher picture. About one employer in every three said trouble hiring had already lost them customers, and roughly the same proportion admitted their standard of service had dropped. Close to a third had missed deadlines on projects. More than a quarter had lost contracts or seen them pushed back, and over a quarter had said no to new work altogether. Put together, a staffing gap starts to look less like an HR issue and more like a cap on how far a company can grow.

Before turning to offshore hiring, many of the surveyed firms had important local positions left vacant for 30 to 60 days. In a crowded market, a month or two is plenty of time for a client to lose patience or for a project schedule to fall apart.

The reasons behind the move have changed

Offshoring itself is growing, but the bigger story this year is the motivation. Two pressures now share first place: not enough skilled people, and wages that keep climbing. Each was named by about four employers in ten. Compliance costs and risks sit just behind them. Saving money, which used to be the standard reason for sending work abroad, has dropped lower on the list.

Almost two-thirds of the businesses surveyed already have offshore teams. Of those that do not, two-thirds plan to expand that kind of investment within the next two years, and very few are scaling back.

From customer support to cybersecurity

The types of jobs going offshore are just as interesting. Customer support is still the biggest category, yet work that companies once kept close to home because it felt too sensitive or too specialised is now routinely handled by global teams. That includes IT and engineering, data and analytics, finance, cybersecurity, and even legal and HR. Employers say offshore roles over the past three years have become clearly more strategic and more knowledge-heavy.

Good news for the Philippines and the wider region

South-East Asia is still where most of this activity happens. The Philippines remains the number one single destination, with India and Eastern Europe next in line. Vietnam and Malaysia are growing as other options, each with its own mix of skills, costs and rules. In other words, employers are spreading their hiring across several markets instead of relying on just one.

Where AI fits in

Plenty of people expect AI tools to reduce the number of offshore jobs. According to the research, that is not what employers are seeing. Two-thirds of them already use AI in some way, and their offshore staff are taking it up as fast as, or faster than, the people working onshore. Data analyst, AI engineer and automation specialist are the roles growing fastest within offshore teams.

The lesson is that AI takes over repetitive work, while the need for people who can use good judgement, make sense of data and manage AI systems properly is going up. Training has some catching up to do: nearly a third of employers give their offshore staff no formal training in AI whatsoever. If your employer does not offer it, building these skills in your own time can help you stand out.

Offshore staff are staying put

A common belief is that offshore workers change jobs often and do not feel connected to their company. The employee survey says otherwise. Most offshore staff said they were proud of where they work, intended to stay for the coming year and seldom thought about looking for something new. Their engagement scores were well above both Australian and global benchmarks.

Still, loyalty is not unlimited. A notable portion of staff said a better offer would tempt them away, and flexibility and pay came out as the two things that matter most for keeping people. So stable teams still depend on employers who keep investing in them.

The compliance blind spot

For companies setting up or expanding offshore operations, compliance may be the most practical issue to fix. Most businesses agree the expectations have gone up a lot in the past three years, but only around a quarter feel truly confident about where they stand. Nearly a third are unsure which regulatory standards even apply to their offshore set-up. That matters as rules on data privacy, information security and modern slavery keep getting stricter around the world.

What workers can take from this

The research suggests the employers likely to gain most are those that treat offshore teams as a core part of the business, putting the same effort into AI readiness, clear compliance and a good employee experience as they do at home, rather than simply hunting for the lowest wages. For workers from the Philippines and elsewhere looking at roles with Australian companies, the message is encouraging: skills in data, technology and careful judgement are in demand, and employers who value their people are the ones worth choosing. Keep learning, check that any employer you join is legitimate, and look for one that invests in training and flexibility.

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