Will WFH be outsourced to cheaper countries?

[Alongcameacat]

Following on from a recent thread where the majority of people believe that they will remain working from home permanently, is anyone concerned that their jobs are now high risk?

Why would companies continue paying people their current salaries when there is no need for people to be in the same place at the same time?

Surely it makes sense that companies will outsource most if not all of their WFH workforce to countries like India and Eastern Europe where labour is significantly cheaper?

As for going to the office one or two days a week - Zoom, Google Teams, would suffice for the most part and any inconveniences would be more than offset by huge financial savings?

Tech will become more automated but the adoption curve will be slower than it could be.

Part of my degree - 35 years ago - involved discussions of "teleworking" as it was called.

Along with the Henry Ford quote about the future, people should remember what Arthur C Clarke said ....

@DGRossetti

Tech will become more automated but the adoption curve will be slower than it could be.

Part of my degree - 35 years ago - involved discussions of "teleworking" as it was called.

Along with the Henry Ford quote about the future, people should remember what Arthur C Clarke said ....

Indeed! I started WFH partially for health reasons, and had a lot of staff "checking up" to see if I were actually working on that day. (unhelpful, I was trying to concentrate) Nobody showed any interest in taking the option themselves.

Now they are happy as Larry.

@DGRossetti

Tech will become more automated but the adoption curve will be slower than it could be.

Part of my degree - 35 years ago - involved discussions of "teleworking" as it was called.

Along with the Henry Ford quote about the future, people should remember what Arthur C Clarke said ....

He said quite a lot of things ... which one did you have in mind?

I know what Gnome saying about Managers expecting a lot is true.

I hope coding isn't the only thing that's going to be required in the future, when 80% of current jobs have gone, to to AI etc.

@bravefox

We were discussing this earlier today. It's less about outsourcing to different parts of the world, but saying if you don't need to conjure why do you need to live within traveling distance of the employer's Haq?

Some jobs cone with a 'London Premium' due to the cost of living in London. If it doesn't matter where employees live this will surely be a thing of the past.

www.google.com/amp/s/deadline.com/2020/08/facebook-extends-work-from-home-until-2021-leases-new-office-space-1202941243/amp/

If you qualify for remote work and move to cheaper areas, you will have to tell Facebook, and pay will be adjusted accordingly, Zuckerberg said. There will be “severe ramifications” for those discovered to be falsifying addresses.

“We’ll adjust salary to your location at that point,” said Zuckerberg, who said the adjustment would be necessary for taxes and accounting. “There’ll be severe ramifications for people who are not honest about this.” He added the system will work on the “honor code,” but will “put in some basic precautions” to make sure that the honor system is being honest. Those methods were not detailed.

... we can safely expect every other publicly traded entity to take the same tack. Their shareholders will demand it.

I'm an accountant and have spent the full 30 years of my career being told that my job is going to disappear imminently and I will be replaced by AI of some sort. Maybe it will happen but I wont be putting myself out to pasture just yet.

For most people a switch from office working to WFH is an immediate payrise in terms of cash (no commuting) plus more time at home.

I can see a lot of companies seeing this as a way to reduce costs without too much pain.

I can also see HMRC getting very grabby about wanting a slice of the action ...

Couple of points:

-its quite funny to hear everyone saying, "I am indispensable because xyz", a lot of people who had their jobs offshored would have said the same thing

-despite my amusement in point one, I actually think the offshoring trend which started in the late 1990s is actually stabilising/coming to an end. The mega trend now is automation, because even in certain developing countries people don't work consistently for 24 hours a day salary free (outrageous I know!!). Think about it already if you are entering you bank details on your phone key pad, and answering a few yes know questions before a call starts you are actually doing work yourself that was done in a call centre in India (or the UK before that)

-There will likely be a lot of high paying jobs implementing the automation, but maybe not as many as it displaces.

I work in an industry where we already outsource a lot of work to “offshore” (India and Malaysia) and “nearshore” (Czech and Spain). We have found very the last decade we need at least 40% of people to be in the UK.

Partly it’s cultural fit, partly it’s because the people with the right skill sets for the work tend to gravitate to here. I have people in my “UK” team from India and Malaysia though, so it’s not about birth country.

I think in the UK we tend to put ourselves down and forget that as a nation we are highly skilled.

HMRC getting very grabby about wanting a slice of the action

HMRC already get lots of money in the form of income tax, and people pay for their commutes out of that taxed income. There is no tax relief on season tickets.

@GnomeDePlume

I'm an accountant and have spent the full 30 years of my career being told that my job is going to disappear imminently and I will be replaced by AI of some sort. Maybe it will happen but I wont be putting myself out to pasture just yet.

Accountants are still ok, as long as their jobs include some kind of analysis e.g. interpreting new guidance, contributing to company strategy, etc.

Junior staff in an accounting department e.g. bookkeepers, accounts payable and receivable, that sort of thing - ive been involved in several projects that removed those staff in favour of bots.

When I ran my own business I used an automated bookkeeping service where a CA reviewed my accounts once a month and checked over my tax bits once a year. That represents jobs lost as well.

I go to conferences where consulting firms crow about the loss of these jobs (aka "cost avoidance" and "cost savings").

Anybody who thinks History and Classics are a tame subject isnt worth listening to on anything beyond whats for tea.

And I cant wait to see how automation pans out when a £0000 printer cant keep going for a few sheets of paper

I don’t understand why so many people think WFH/office attendance is all or nothing. I think it’s more likely that companies will introduce a hybrid model of both with a focus on flexibility.

Just two cents I'd like to add about speaking English as a native language and the benefit thereof. I work in an international field where I'm one of the few native speakers. My colleagues all speak English fluently and there is very little value in all the in-jokes and subtleties of British English. International English is the standard.

WFH was what I did before Covid and due to the legalities of my job I have to be registered and qualified in the UK, but now I have 30 years in this trade I could work anywhere in the world with good Wi-fi.
Husband has a niche role which I worried about post Brexit in that his job would still exist but he would be expected to move to Germany, WFH means that he can now argue that he could continue to do this and travel for the occasional meeting. He did do this about 10 years ago for an American company from the UK, they wanted his expertise in UK and a American markets.
If too many people are outsourced who is going to be the end user, if we are all out of work China has no one to sell their plastic tat to. In fact wfh could open up work with people working wherever they want to in the world. It would mean country borders and immigration would not be needed in the same way. People with disabilities will be able to set up their workspace how they need it and when they change job they won't have to start trying to get everything in place again, they will be more mobile within the workforce by not having to consider the fight to get the right equipment when considering applying for new jobs.

Most jobs the admin was what employers insisted on the employees being in the office for and from my experience of companies (I deal with a lot of companies) the purely admin roles are back at work.

I am aware of companies who have outsourced large parts of their administrative arms and nearly lost everything with Covid because they had business continuity and the outsourced companies had it on paper. The outsourcing used many countries but China and India where the largest. When covid came the factories and administrative functions just closed down, the staff walked out and the authorities deemed them non essential, which left the companies using them very vulnerable, no bail outs, no way to get the administrative function back online and having to scramble to try and mirror the services in the UK whilst every other company was scrambling for IT as well. Amongst the many issues were finance and payroll.
I am sure they won't be the ones.

@Sparklesocks

I don’t understand why so many people think WFH/office attendance is all or nothing. I think it’s more likely that companies will introduce a hybrid model of both with a focus on flexibility.

This is the sensible approach. Best for individuals, society, and the economy.

Yes @10pennychews makes a good point. Offshorers must balance cost reductions (which will actually become less as more people WFH - as less office space will be required) against a number of factors including privacy laws, reduced control over workforce, taxation laws, government regulation and - importantly - sovereign risk.

The fact that more people WFH will merely prove that work can be done outside the office by some of the staff some of the time. It does not automatically mean most or even many employers will jump to the conclusion that offshoring is now a fabulous idea.

Sure it might make offshoring a bit more attractive to a limited group of employers, but to conclude that it means the 'end of days' for most workers is naive.

As part of the management team at my previous firm, we looked at offshoring. We decided against it because of the issues above (sovereign risk being a significant factor), despite what would potentially have been a huge cost saving. Offshoring would actually be less attractive to that firm now, due to increased global uncertainty and potential labour supply issues.

What is “sovereign risk” in this context?

People are highly educated abroad

Can I fix that.

There are some people abroad who are highly educated.

There are also people who have limited education.

@marcopront

People are highly educated abroad

Can I fix that.

There are some people abroad who are highly educated.

There are also people who have limited education.

As indeed is the case for the U.K. We don’t hold a monopoly on education.

Rvby:

"Junior staff in an accounting department e.g. bookkeepers, accounts payable and receivable, that sort of thing - ive been involved in several projects that removed those staff in favour of bots."

I see things a bit differently. All the bot, receipt-bot, xero and receipt-bank, all fine, I use a lot of it.

But who is entering the data, scanning all the documents? Someone still has to do that.

Who is reconciling your control accounts. Who you gonna call when your payroll goes wrong.

Do you know how to fix it when it goes go wrong, which it invariably does. Traipsing through 1000's of transactions, of someone else's 'work, who doesn't know what they are doing, is harder, than doing it correctly yourself in the first place.

So long as you can find someone with those skills, quickly, to fix your problems quickly, and are prepared to pay their higher rate, then all is good.

People are highly educated abroad

This comment is just as weird as the one that claims everyone who speaks English as a second language does so to a level that is easily understandable to native speakers.

Why are people being so weird in this thread? "Abroad" in this instance means literally everyone in the world who doesn't live in the UK. They are a pretty diverse bunch...

Who did all the/your payroll recently? 🤣
When all the staff were furloughed. Who calculated 80% and entered it onto the HMRC portal. With everyone's NI number, (in an attempt to deter you me thinks) every-single-time-you-made-an-application.

Some, with outsourced payroll, found that the companies who were supposed to be providing this service, were uncontactable at the beginning of covid.