Workforce dilemma – offshore or AI it?

Date: 9th october, 2025   location: jellyfish, The Shard, London, SE1 9SG

Event Summary

Growing top line revenue has proved a stubborn challenge for many businesses and focus has shifted to the bottom line.

There has been a significant trend to explore hiring talent further afield and offshoring business functions/processes, and customer support.

This all takes time, careful planning and requires deep knowledge of HR practices, data protection and employment laws elsewhere.

When will investing in AI and going on that journey make more sense?

Highlights

1. Matt Knopp shared a resident spotlight on how to offshore well – check out his framework below
2. Panel experts Tejal, Carley, Leah and host Lauren discussed how to think about this workforce dilemma and the cultural implications
3. Our workshop – building on a practical model and offshore / AI fit scorecards

How to Offshore well with Matt Knopp

Matt Knopp – Vice President, Global Talent Acquisition @ Accelya Group shared with residents a piece of offshoring workforce strategy he had conducted.

Like so many pieces of work we tackle in the community as leaders it started with a very brief, brief!

Matt shared his methodology and some of the learnings and pitfalls he experienced.

His top tips:

1. Go deep – this takes time, but utilise all available data
2. EoR’s – do your research!
3. Creating local entities takes longer than expected
4. ChatGPT is very powerful for quick answers, but make sure you check the outputs carefully.

Check out his end to end methodology here

Panel: Offshoring, AI & the impact on culture

Lauren Peake, Managing Partner @ Bond hosted a panel with 3 thoughtful and inspiring panel members:

• Tejal Shah – Global Head – Talent, People Development and Organisational Effectiveness @ Kantar
• Leah Sutton – Chief Portfolio Talent Officer @ Balderton Capital
• Carley Lencofski – Global Senior Talent Acquisition Director @ Jellyfish

Lauren probed around the speakers experience of delivering AI transformation, on offshoring pros / cons and lessons. The panel also delved into the cultural implications of these cost efficiency approaches.

Some of the key insights covered:

– The importance of the up top strategy before diving into workforce transformation mode
– The importance of leveraging existing global presence before expanding to new locations
– Advised against relying on outdated assumptions about cost arbitrage, especially in tech hubs like India
– Key learning from a failed offshoring attempt in Mexico, emphasizing the importance of avoiding a “cheap resource” perception. Highlighting the need for senior roles in offshore hubs to ensure cultural connection and success.
– Stories of AI adoption efforts, including horizontal (company-wide literacy) and vertical (specific process automation) implementation. The challenges faced with data fragmentation, capability gaps, and balancing experimentation with governance.

A lively Q&A then opened out with the whole room.

Workshop: Step by step approach

If you were asked to create efficiencies in the business and explore offshore and AI solutions.

What steps would you take?

We provided each table of residents with a high level step by step approach + some scorecards and asked them to “rip em up” and make them better.

Check out the full report below