Outsourcing work to foreign countries is a great practice when it works well. There are some great rules you should follow when you select work to be outsourced, but the selection process itself can still be a challenge. This isn’t like the blanket notion of “send it overseas” a lot of companies practiced back in the 90s, after all.

In this day and age, a company needs to have a good reason to send a position overseas. In some cases a dedicated, salaried position can be turned into someone’s occasional freelance work. In a lot of cases outsourcing to a freelancer can save more than just benefits and Social Security. It can even save regular salary, because freelancers aren’t a constant drain on your resources the way employees are. However, when you decide how much of your work you can farm out to freelancers, one very important point remains: trustworthiness.

The most important rule when you run part of a business is that you need to trust everyone who handles anything your office can’t do without. In most cases this means keeping them within physical proximity of the rest of your team and under your direct supervision. If you can’t supervise them directly what you can do is ensure they complete their assignments early by assigning conservative deadlines and having backup people in place. While it might sound paranoid, you need to keep your employees close and your critical ones even closer. You can outsource anything you can stand to be without for one month or more.