Martyn Butler, founder · Updated 19 October 2026 · 6 minute read
What the survey found
Deloitte surveys large organisations about outsourcing every couple of years. Its Global Outsourcing Survey 2024 asked more than 500 business and technology leaders, over 150 of them in the C-suite, what drives their decisions.
The share naming cost reduction as a primary reason for outsourcing has fallen a long way. In Deloitte's 2020 survey it was 70%. In 2022 it was between 40% and 57%, depending on the type of outsourcing. In 2024 it was 34%.
The most common primary driver in 2024 was not cost at all. It was improved access to talent.
| Primary driver for outsourcing, 2024 | Share of respondents |
|---|---|
| Improved access to talent | 42% |
| Increasing customer demands | 35% |
| Spend optimisation | 34% |
| Improved quality or performance | 33% |
| A flexible and scalable talent model | 23% |
| Access to new capabilities | 20% |
Buying outcomes, not hours
Respondents named more than one driver, so the shares add up to more than 100%. The same survey found 67% of executives using managed or operate services, where the provider answers for the result rather than just supplying people, up from 45% two years earlier.
In plain terms: the organisations with the most experience of outsourcing are moving away from renting cheap hours and towards paying somebody to make sure the work gets done well.
A word of caution
This is a survey of big organisations, many of them outsourcing IT, finance and HR at scale. A plumber with a van and a coach with a full diary are not in it. What carries across is the direction: people who have outsourced for years say they value the people and the flexibility, and the saving comes second.
Capacity: the work has outgrown you
Most small businesses reach a point where the owner is the bottleneck. Enquiries wait, invoices go out late and the admin happens at night. A full-time employee feels too big a step for the amount of work, and doing nothing means turning work away or doing it badly.
A VA fills that gap in steps. With us, part-time is 20 hours a week and full-time is 40, and you start with the repeatable work that piles up first, then add more once it runs without you.
Your own time
The useful question is not what a VA costs an hour. It is what you do with the hours you get back. If they go on selling, on the work only you can do, or simply on not working every evening, the sums look very different from a straight comparison of hourly rates.
A simple test: list what you did last week, and next to each task write what you would pay somebody else to do it. Anything you would pay less for than your own hour is worth is a candidate to hand over.
Cover and continuity
In a small business, the person who knows how things work is often one person. When they are ill, on holiday or leave, the work stops or somebody guesses.
Outsourcing can make that better or worse. A freelancer who leaves takes what they know with them, unless it was written down. A managed service should arrange cover when your VA is off and replace them if it is not working, and the procedures should belong to you, not to whoever wrote them.
With us, cover when your VA is off is arranged from the UK, and if a VA is ever replaced, your procedures stay with you. Whoever you use, ask how they handle both before you sign.
Access to skills
Deloitte's respondents put access to talent first. For a small business the equivalent is simpler: you need somebody who has done this kind of work before, and you do not have the time to find, test and train them yourself.
That might be a person who knows Xero, keeps a CRM properly, or has handled customer service for an online shop. It is also why the recruiting matters as much as the price: a paid task drawn from your real work, done before anyone is hired, tells you far more than a CV.
Cost still matters
None of this means cost has stopped mattering. Deloitte's own report says spend will remain a key driver, especially for businesses outsourcing for the first time. A managed VA costs a lot less than a UK hire for the same hours, and that is a fair reason to look.
The point is that cost alone is a weak reason to go ahead. If all you want is cheaper hours, you will pick the cheapest person, hand over in a hurry and be disappointed. If you want capacity, cover or a skill, you will judge the arrangement on whether the work gets done.
Our guide to what a VA costs sets out what a UK employee really costs, worked out on the statutory minimums, so you can compare like with like.
The reasons, in small-business terms
Most owners have more than one of these reasons at once. It helps to know which one matters most to you, because it decides what you hand over first and how you judge whether it worked.
| Reason | What it looks like | Hand over first |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity | Enquiries and invoices wait until the evening | The inbox, new enquiries and invoicing |
| Your time | Selling hours spent on admin | The diary, follow-ups and data entry |
| Cover | Work stops when one person is off | Whatever only one person knows how to do, written down first |
| Skills | Software you pay for and never use properly | CRM upkeep, bookkeeping prep and reporting |
| Cost | A UK hire is too big a step for the work | Repeatable screen work, part-time to begin with |
Choosing help when cost is not the only test
If capacity, cover and skills are what you are buying, judge a provider on those. Ask how they find and test people, what happens when your VA is ill or on holiday, what happens if it is not working after a month, and who owns the procedures you write together.
Then judge the result after three months on the work done, not the hourly rate: are enquiries answered, invoices out, and your evenings your own again? If they are, the rate was right. If they are not, a cheaper rate would not have helped.
When outsourcing is the wrong answer
- The work needs somebody in the room: viewings, a front desk, site work.
- The work changes every day and nobody could write it down.
- You cannot find a few hours over the first month to hand it over properly.
- The problem is too little work, not too little time.
- The work is regulated in ways that make an overseas arrangement hard. Take advice.
Questions to ask yourself first
- Which work would I hand over first, and could I write it down?
- What would I do with the hours I got back?
- What happens to this work when I, or whoever does it now, am off?
- Is there a skill I keep needing and never have in the business?
- Would I rather find and manage a freelancer myself, or pay somebody to carry that?
Working it out for your business
The free VA Action Plan asks about your week and tells you whether a VA would work for you now, which jobs to hand over first, and what it costs next to a UK hire. It takes about three minutes, and the answer is sometimes that a VA is not the right fix yet.