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External consultants bring with them a wealth of specialist expertise and flexibility, not to mention a helpful, objective approach.

Plus they can save your organisation money, including on overheads. What’s more, they allow you to focus on what you do best – running your core business. And, if you outsource, you typically enjoy access to a wider range of high-level expertise than you have in-house.

According to DemandSage, last year in the UK the most commonly outsourced functions included:

• Tech and innovation
• Marketing
• Customer service
• HR
• Finance
• Design

Meanwhile, other frequently outsourced services included payroll. But IT remained by far the most common function for external hires, with more than a third of UK companies looking outside their own business for this support.

But, at the same time, these are far from the only areas in which some external help could prove invaluable. Here are two examples of services which could transform your business if you outsourced them:

Hiring a wellbeing coach

You may not previously have considered hiring a wellbeing coach for your business or yourself. But you could be amazed at the transformation one brings about in the way you feel about work and life generally. After all, we all feel overwhelmed at times, and if you’re a senior manager in particular, there’s a constant bombardment of decisions and choices to make. It can be easy to feel as though you’re barely treading water.

Here’s how a professional health and wellbeing coach’s holistic approach could help:

Reduced stress levels: Learn to identify the key sources of your stress and come up with strategies to address them. Stress is, after all, behind numerous health problems, from heart disease to depression, anxiety and more.

Sleep better: Talk to your wellbeing coach about your sleeping patterns and how you could improve them. Poor sleep is very common and, again, can lead to a number of health issues.

Boost your energy levels: If you’ve noticed that you have low energy levels, you’re far from alone. But this can lead to fatigue along with other problems. Find out the underlying cause – and work towards a solution.

Enhanced mental clarity: This is clearly crucial to making the best decisions, problem-solving and focus. Again, it’s all about finding causes and strategies for improvement.

Boost your immunity: Your coach can talk to you about ways to boost your immunity, and help identify what may be weakening your immune system.

Increased self-confidence: Low self-confidence is extremely common, and it can have a significant impact on the way you feel about yourself and your work. Your coach will discuss a number of tips and tricks for boosting your self-esteem and feeling more self-confident.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

In today’s world, it has never been more important to be visible online and attract organic traffic to your website. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of doing exactly that and improving your website’s rankings among key search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. So SEO boosts web traffic and drives business results.

But understanding the discipline’s various intricacies takes time, expertise and an understanding of the constantly shifting search-engine algorithms. It’s very much a long-term game, with little in the way of quick wins. But by using the skills and knowledge of search engine optimisation consultants, you can ultimately boost the performance of your website and convert your online visitors into new paying customers.

So – when it comes to outsourcing, think beyond traditional payroll and IT functions to what other services could do for you and your business. The results may surprise you.

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