Global Corporate Xpansion

BACK OFFICE

BACK OFFICE: FRONT AND CENTER
The complexity of back office operations
requires an onshore workforce.

By David Hodes

There are a dozen or more reasons that companies decide to locate or relocate their back room operations where they do. Sometimes, operations remain part of the relocation of the headquarters. Other times, it means a move just across the street. And in other cases, proximity is not as important as economic necessity.

One of the biggest reasons to undertake a shift or adjust for growth in today’s increasingly high-tech industries is workforce. Brain power is in high demand. That, in addition to keeping the workers closer to where they live, has become a higher priority, especially with the continued increase in gas prices and plummeting equity in real estate.

“Workforce is the key driver here,” says Todd Gillingham, assistant marketing manager, Fredericksburg Regional Alliance, which includes the city of Fredericksburg, Va., and the counties of Caroline, King George, Spotsylvania and Stafford.

The FRA is actively soliciting for company headquarters to locate in the area, hoping to attract them by both location and workforce. “We get a lot of companies that are looking into cutting costs and opening an operation to where their workers don’t have to travel in order to work,” Gillingham says. Currently 60 percent of the skilled labor force in the Fredericksburg area is traveling outside of the region to work, mostly to northern Virginia.

Potential businesses coming to the area want to know what kind of workforce is here and what kind of industries they are already working in, Gillingham says. There are more than half a million IT professionals in and around the area, he says, mostly in support of defense contracting business in Dahlgren Naval Surface Warfare Center; Fort Hill, a year-round all purpose military training base; and Marine Corps Base Quantico, home to the Marine Corps Combat Development Command. “The concentration of IT