This story appears in the December 2025 issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.
The word “offshoring” can carry a negative connotation — often evoking images of shuttered manufacturing plants and American jobs lost to overseas production. While offshoring is a hot-button political talking point, is offshoring talent an advantage or cause for concern?
There’s no denying companies are feeling the crunch for a more affordable workforce. Whether driven by financial targets, rapid scaling or simply a desire to expand access to talent, companies are increasingly turning to offshoring to stay competitive and meet their hiring goals. Some estimates suggest that over 300,000 jobs transitioned to offshoring and trade between 2017 and 2020, a number that shows no sign of decreasing.
Offshoring — different from outsourcing — specifically involves relocating employment, manufacturing and other business practices overseas. Historically, it has been associated with fields such as customer service, IT and software development. However, with the expansion of tech-enabled remote work since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are looking to fill other employment gaps with remote global talent.
Several high-growth businesses in Utah heed this call. Companies such as Kajae, CoDev and Bloom are rapidly expanding to meet an explosive demand for top international talent.
Redistributing opportunity
Garrett Blood, CEO at Kajae, has a very clear mission.
“I’ve come to believe that talent, strengths and brilliance are perfectly and fairly distributed around the world, but opportunity is not,” he says. “My goal is to connect the brilliance, talents and strengths of amazing people with quality opportunities to change their lives.”
Billed as premium staff augmentation, Blood and his Lehi-based team are committed to closing the opportunity gap and connecting experienced international hires with U.S.-based roles. They currently have talent pools operating in 29 different countries, drawing from a wide experience base to recruit the best talent. Many Kajae team members hold master’s degrees and PhDs, most have experience working at Fortune 500 companies, and all are prepared to fill a variety of key roles. According to Blood, clients save an average of $60,000 to $100,000 per year, per position, in addition to the benefits and other costs Kajae covers.
Kajae’s Lehi-based neighbors, CoDev, are also looking to elevate the offshore hiring experience. Their goal, according to Rachel Libby, VP of marketing at CoDev, is to “provide hand-picked teams that feel like your own. We’re really focused on the precision-matched, seamlessly onboarded and outcome-driven type of talent.”
Drawing from a network primarily based in the Philippines, CoDev hires from the top 2 percent to connect highly skilled staff with U.S.-based clients. Their service models are flexible, meaning clients can fill a single role, onboard full teams or take the managed service route. CoDev manages projects and operations, driving results directly.
One of CoDev’s biggest differentiators, Libby says, is their ability to keep clients’ data secure and compliant across global borders.
“Because we operate legitimately and offer fully equipped facilities, we support clients who need higher compliance or data security,” she continues. “We see a lot of people coming from fintech, SaaS or healthcare. … Because we have all of this security and this infrastructure, there’s a lot more confidence in [the team’s] ability to deliver.”
The roles Kajae and CoDev are filling are diverse. The majority of Kajae’s team is comprised of accountants, mechanical, electrical and civil engineers, and social media managers. CoDev initially launched with a focus on connecting software developers to U.S. roles, but has since expanded its offering to include marketing operations experts, sales development representatives, administrative support and customer service. They also have an expanding pool of AI and machine learning experts to support a ravenous U.S.-based AI market.
These roles are, according to Libby, “high skill but hard to fill,” due to outpaced demand or prohibitive costs.
“[CoDev clients] are looking to flex. They’re looking to grow … or test something out,” she says. “And for them, it’s a lot easier to scale with offshore talent than something domestically.”
While cost can often be a major driver in offshoring decisions, the benefits are more than financial. Hiring offshore staff can enable companies to tap into a broader talent market, diversify their skill sets and reduce employee burnout. It can also allow businesses to expand the working day without requiring longer hours from onshore teams.
“I think a lot of businesses are trying to figure out how they can be a little bit more innovative,” Blood says. “They want to see if they can open up … multiple time zones, so that work is getting done while everyone here is asleep.”
Lifting where they stand
The most striking difference between traditional, call center-style offshore staffing and Kajae and CoDev’s approach is the commitment to the social impact of offshore hiring. The offshoring and outsourcing market is no stranger to bad actors, and international staffing can sometimes venture into potentially exploitative and underhanded territory. However, both Kajae and CoDev, as well as other Utah ventures like Bloom, have identified the offshoring space as an opportunity to address a domestic need while also making a positive impact internationally.
Kajae offers team members up to 10 times more than the average living wage in their location, with the ultimate goal of lifting every employee from poverty into the middle class within 60 days of employment. Blood takes pride in seeing the strides his team members have made in their lives. Thanks to the job stability these remote jobs offer, these individuals have been able to have children, receive medical care and purchase home internet access for the first time.
“If you take one person from poverty and you move them into the middle class, it actually lifts 10 other people around them,” Blood says. “The goal is to keep these individuals in their country, so that they can lift where they stand.”
Libby says the chance to work with experienced international talent without having to navigate complicated immigration systems can benefit everyone. CoDev aims to empower team members to “work directly in their home countries, giving them the tools … that can help grow their local community. [Team members] have a U.S.-based job with great take-home pay, and they’re able to then take that and give to the local economy.”
Similarly, Bloom was founded with a philanthropic mission in mind. With a focus on “social-impact staffing,” the Lehi-based venture has an ambitious goal of creating 10,000 remote jobs for job seekers in emerging markets. Utilizing the BYU Pathways network to find international talent, they claim to have increased team members’ salaries by almost two and a half times what they started with. As one of Utah’s fastest-growing businesses, this socially conscious model is paying dividends at home and abroad.
“An offshoring model allows Utah businesses to access the skills that they need while deferring or even avoiding … immigration issues.”
— Phil Kuck
The payoff back home
Despite the undeniable benefits to both domestic businesses and international talent, the mention of offshoring still raises hackles among the local workforce. Even as these Utah-based companies continue to grow, there is always an undercurrent of concern that Utah jobs are being funneled internationally. After all, how valuable is the growing Utah business sector, if it doesn’t translate into more jobs and economic growth for the community?
Moving roles offshore isn’t a simple one-in, one-out policy. It’s multifactorial and affects different market segments and skill levels in different ways. A 2018 report published by the U.S. International Trade Commission stated, “Studies tend to find that low-skill workers are harmed by offshoring, while high-skill workers benefit.” Offshoring is associated with higher wages and a greater relative demand for skilled workers, while simultaneously displacing lower-skilled jobs. There is some evidence that the increased productivity driven by offshore labor could still translate into an overall net increase in employment. To further complicate things, technological advances and automation also play a major role in the shifting demand and availability of labor domestically.
In response to this question, Blood says, “We’re not looking to replace American jobs. What we’re looking to do is augment; add to the good that companies are already doing.” Libby takes a similar stance. CoDev is looking to be a force multiplier, not to detract from local talent.
“We’re finding that [when] offshore staffing is done right, it will complement the local team,” she says. “It’s not to replace them, it’s to help them become more productive … [and to be] strategic in the way that they think. It frees up local teams so they can focus on the big picture and the strategy, while … the more day-to-day, actionable items are done at a quicker, more affordable rate.”
Not to mention, the rapid growth of companies like Kajae, CoDev and Bloom has translated into growing Utah-based teams. In a similar vein, a 2020 study of Danish manufacturing companies that offshored a portion of their labor found that not only did domestic manufacturing not decrease, but most firms increased their domestic hiring as they ramped up R&D and innovation-related tasks. While the immediate effect of offshoring may raise concerns, there is evidence to suggest the outcome may not be entirely negative.
Looking ahead in an age of uncertainty
Recently, the Trump administration announced sweeping changes to the H1-B skilled visa, one of the most common immigration avenues for companies hiring international employees to work in the United States. A new, eye-watering $100,000 annual fee will be levied on employers for H1-B visas issued after September 22 of this year, and could push even more companies toward alternative hiring routes.
According to Phil Kuck, associate immigration attorney at Dentons, Utah has historically had a high demand for H1-B visas. While there are other visa options available, Kuck says, “The fact is…if [the talent] does not exist in the United States, it reshapes how those companies are going to try to meet that demand. They might triage roles in certain instances. They might shift certain roles offshore, nearshore [or toward] remote talent.”
While the ultimate fate of September’s executive order is being worked out in the courts, financial targets and hiring goals can’t wait — and Utah businesses may not be willing or able to navigate the hiring uncertainty.
“An offshoring model allows Utah businesses to access the skills that they need while deferring or even avoiding … immigration issues,” Kuck says. “I think companies in Utah and throughout the United States will likely adopt [a policy of] bringing people onshore for the critical leadership roles, but for the ones that they were filling with H1-Bs that weren’t particularly as critical, we’re going to be seeing an increased use of offshore or nearshore [hiring].”
However the H1-B question resolves, it’s clear that offshoring isn’t going anywhere. The offshore staffing market has grown into a $121 billion industry and is projected to continue growing by 8.6 percent by 2028. As the market grows, providers are building more expert talent into their service offerings in order to remain competitive. CoDev has been building out teams of subject matter experts and is focused on delivering results and growth over seat-filling.
“In order to do that, we need to have the right experts to not just hire the right people … but also to train our teams,” Libby says. “We want to truly be the experts and have those subject matter experts, and not just [be] a glorified recruiting system.”