How to Build Global Teams Without the Guesswork
Most conversations about offshore talent still start from the assumption that outsourcing is primarily about cutting costs. In a recent webinar, Global Talent Partner Brian Matney joined Josh Beasley, Senior Vice President of Emapta’s Global Talent Partner Program, to demonstrate that the real value of offshore talent lies in building scalable, high-performing teams, not simply reducing costs.
Their conversation, “Start Small, Scale Smart: A Practical Guide to Building Global Teams,” moved past theory into what building and scaling a global team really looks like in practice.
The Old Assumption Is Outdated
There is still a perception that offshore teams exist mainly for cost savings, repetitive work, or entry-level roles. Matney has seen that assumption break down repeatedly over the past three years. If a role can be hired in North America, there is a high likelihood it can be found anywhere in the world.
“Once you realize that there’s a global talent base that you can choose from as you’re filling roles, it really opens your eyes to what’s really out there,” Matney said.
The roles being filled globally now span far beyond what most leaders expect. Matney has placed FP&A managers driving finance processes, revenue cycle specialists in healthcare, engineers designing manufacturing components, and full legal operations teams including paralegals and case managers. One partner filled both an entry-level bookkeeper and a CFO through the same process.
How to Build Successful Offshore Teams
Building a successful offshore team takes more than hiring the right people. Even technically strong hires can struggle if the right foundations are not in place. Matney pointed to a consistent set of reasons this happens.
The first is a poor onboarding process. Global team members will not know a partner’s internal workflows coming in the door, so training on process, not just skills, has to happen early. Without it, even the right hire struggles to perform.
The second is isolation. When someone is left out of team meetings, recognition, or day-to-day collaboration, they stop feeling like part of the business. Matney described the fix as treating global hires as an extension of the onshore team rather than “a cog in a machine.”
The third is a lack of engagement at the management level. If managers across the organization do not understand that this is about extending capability rather than cutting costs, that disconnect shows up in how the hire is treated day to day.
What Culture-First Hiring Actually Means
According to Matney, culture-first hiring starts with finding people who align with your values and culture, not just your technical requirements. It then relies on open communication, shared accountability, and meaningful inclusion in everyday workflows, meetings, and team celebrations.
Some of the strongest signals of inclusion are often the simplest. Recognizing milestones, celebrating achievements, and involving global team members in the same rituals and experiences as the rest of the team reinforces that they are a valued part of the business.
The Five-Step Framework: Start Small, Scale Smart
Matney laid out a straightforward process for building a global team without overengineering it.
- Identify the repeatable pain – Look at the roles you cannot fill, the skill sets you cannot find locally, and where backlogs keep building.
- Pick a place to start – Whether that is one role or fifty, the goal is to begin where the return on investment will be clearest.
- Build the process – New hires need a clear picture of how the business runs so they can integrate quickly.
- Measure the outcomes – Turnaround time, accuracy, and SLAs are the kinds of KPIs that show whether the model is working.
- Scale intentionally – Growth should follow the need identified through the process, not a guess at headcount.
“It’s not just throwing a dart at the dartboard in the dark and hoping that it sticks,” Matney said. “It’s taking the process that you’ve created and figuring out where the need is, and then hiring based on that need.”
Scaling Looks Different for Every Partner
There is no single scaling pattern, and Matney was clear that is by design. One partner started with one or two finance and accounting roles, expanded into IT and marketing after six months, and now runs a team of five to seven. Another committed to fifty roles from day one and has since grown past seventy-five.
More than 60% of Matney’s partners started with an initial goal of one or two seats before expanding well beyond that. The common thread across both examples is staying connected as a strategic partner well past the initial ramp-up period, not just filling the first round of roles and stepping back.
Where This Is Headed
Looking three to five years out, Matney expects the line between onshore and offshore work to keep blurring. Skill access will matter more than geography, and hybrid, globally distributed teams will become the default rather than the exception.
AI is already part of that shift. Emapta is training staff to work with AI tools before they are placed, which reflects the broader move toward hiring the top 1% of highly-skilled talent, trained to work with industry-leading AI tools for greater productivity and efficiency.
Where to Start
For any leader considering global talent for the first time, Matney’s advice was simple. Do not overcomplicate it, pick a role, and start where you are ready.
“Let us take on the brunt of that work,” Matney said. The rest, from sourcing to onboarding to scaling, is built around meeting a business exactly where it stands, whether that is one hire or a hundred.
The full conversation, including a practical framework for where to start, is available on demand.
