To think we need to start talking about the lack of jobs?

The UK for the last 15 years under a conservative government has been encouraging nonsense like this and actually it’s not good for the UK at all. It’s people playing at running businesses playing employing people the moment actually they need to work out a viable business plan. they cant.
Right back to the days of Henry Ford the planning included the factory staff being able to afford to buy Ford cars if you can’t do that you literally don’t have a business and there’s been far too many people playing shop
Being subsidised, not fairly contributing and now the game is up

why does this country need business owners like this? He just made two thirds of his workforce in this country unemployed?

its a bit like marks and Spencer telling everyone to shop at temu

You always see it because it’s a viable option for some people and there is tons of work available in various aspects of the vast industry. But let’s face it, some people think they’re too good to work in health and social care at a low pay rate, so will continue to lengthen their gap of not working, therefore making them less employable. Often these people are subsidised by their parents or partners who work full-time.

Not for the parts of the business that depend on face to face interaction, and no, zoom calls won't hack it in some markets.

Precisely, they’re literally slitting their own throats the audacity of coming on here and telling us that we don’t know how to run businesses when they are literally sealing their own doom and exploding the Third World while they’re at it

So how does working in an office prove your job can't be done cheaper overseas?

Im intrigued by this too particularly as you say it happened pre covid.

Should say ramped up not trapped up.

how did he fund the training?

He's working in a competitive market. He either matches, preferably beats, what his competitors can offer or he goes out of business

with connectivity as it is now and more UK businesses outsourcing to staff abroad, more business owners in those countries will be able to offer similar services to customers here & undercut UK businesses.

Exploit them 🤣. He pays well over the odds for the job in the Philippines, they are ecstatic to be exploited by him.

He trains young people up to very well paid careers, he has no ladder.

He isn't Elon Musk, he's just an ordinary guy who will retire comfortably but not filthy rich in an ordinary house on an ordinary housing development in a nice village. He's the kind of SME business builder that this country needs as many of as it can get hold of.

Absolute rubbish.

There were thousands of companies already outsourcing work to the Philippines and India and so on for years before COVID.

My Mum went to the Philippines to train call centre staff for a telecoms company in 2008. Why? because it was cheaper for companies.

You're telling me your mate was forced to source cheap labour from the Philippines because after COVID his workers chose unemployment instead of going back to the office? Not buying it.

And that still has nothing to do with your original point which was basically that 'WFH proves your job can be done cheaper overseas'

So how does working in an office prove your job can't be done cheaper overseas?

I work in the tech sector (AI related) and doing things like you describe will make zero difference. Also AI is already at a level where it makes less mistakes that humans. What you're describing isn't AI anyway (electronic check out isn't AI it's just a machine).

Change and guardrails to mitigate AI need to be a government-level, potentially international level to have any impact. It's already on a roll and only government policy can look at what to do next. Companies are motivated by profit so governments may need to look at incentives to keep people employed.

The impact of it will be devastating if not mitigated. I worry daily about what I'm seeing on my end.

Moving from apprentership and worked based roles with evening college was a better fit for many industries - where people could learn on the job and do the qualifications in the evening or on day release to college. This has placed people in an academic environment which isn't moving as such a fast pace as the workplace - so has great disadvantages

@samthepigeonI think that was the case but not necessarily now.

Worlds tiniest violin being played in the background.

He's working in a competitive market. He either matches, preferably beats, what his competitors can offer or he goes out of business.

Most people on this forum have zero idea what it means to run a business and provide jobs for people.

Somebody took the time to train him and to instill the knowledge into him and he is pulling the ladder up behind him.
it’s been difficult for everybody to do everything for the last six years. Good business owners did not go running after the Third World to exploit them as I say one to avoid so I’d be careful how much information you share about this business.

I have worked with clients on overseas outsourcing models - all have been excellent. Higher qualified employees, incredibly talented and quick to learn, the transition of work has been smooth and successful.

Actually they are very highly skilled and doing a better job than the people he was employing in the UK, so those jobs won't be coming back any time soon.

He didn't pull up any ladders behind him. He has consistently taken on young people and trained them up and trapped up their salaries with their increased experience. His difficulty in the last few years is finding younger people with the resilience to accept constructive criticism and work hard.

This always makes me laugh. Is he doing that out of the goodness of his heart?
He’s moved those jobs to make more money if the business wasn’t viable for seven people wouldn’t have the jobs in the first place and neither would he so it’s perfectly viable and it could be running in the UK. He’s just choosing not to do that because it’s more profitable to outsource the other jobs and he is exactly the kind of business that we all need to make a concentrated effort to avoid.

It's unskilled work, most of it is obvious so yes. It's already considered that and lots of unskilled people already doing it.

Agree it’s very concerning for young adult dc.

Not sure this has been thought through. If robots do the jobs so none of us have jobs we have no money just who are they expecting will be their customers?!

The whole point of any system is to give the majority jobs to use their skills and support themselves who can then pay tax to support schools hospitals disabled. Take away the jobs the whole system fails.

But working from home means you don’t commute - fewer jobs needed in train/bus stations, garages, newsagent, picking up a coffee n the way. Fewer office admin starter jobs, receptionists, cleaners.

If there are fewer human in real life interactions there are fewer jobs. This isn’t a judgement H hybrids WFH. But he’s in his 50s, has his professional and personal networks, wife, teens and a demanding computer engineer job, it’s not just the starter jobs, if there are fewer jobs with human interaction youngsters don’t meet work friends, start networking, go out after work on way home. Supermarket pickers and delivery drivers are jobs which have been created but they are not as much building a young life with potential friends and colleagues. Supermarket online shopping has created jobs just shifted them from the cashiers.

People don’t need excuses why they don’t go shopping in person other than they don’t want to and the online options are there, we all have the same choices. No one, people with children or not, are going to do things which are more time consuming, more expensive and with possibly less choice just to keep jobs available for other people.

I was just pointing out to the general comments on lack of student and starter jobs that we all contribute to this new normal in the world of real life work. So the youngsters have to think differently in ways that haven’t been thought of before.

It's s not a red herring at all. Many employers in small companies wouldn't have dreamed about employing people overseas until COVID got everyone working from home and trained them that it was feasible, then employees refused to come back to the office and the benefits of having people in the office weren't there, so there was nothing to lose and everything to gain.

COVID WFH acted as one giant feasibility study for whether small companies employing small numbers of professionals overseas would work.