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?

It definitely can happen. My previous role got outsourced (and was similar). I fear my employer might realise it's cheaper to hire people abroad.

But those trumpeting about their years of experience and expertise... are you going to be passing this on to anyone else? I don’t think so, if you are in your home office and never meet any underlings

I agree.

Can you remember a few years ago when companies made a point of advertising they had UK based call centers and support teams?

There was a reason for this. They tried off shoring and it didn't work. I don't know if you've ever tried calling an offshore support line but I was with virgin when they offshored their call centers and it was horrendous. We had issues every month. Nextdoor was always late paying his bill and for reason known only to Virgin they would cut off our supply instead of his. I used to have phone once, promise to go and buy a new network cable and call back half an hour later because they had to follow the script. They either refused to deviate or did not have enough English to deviate. Like many other virgin customers I cancelled and went to BT.

Virgin now have UK based call centers.

@Alongcameacat it was a Q&A session with leadership - I do know it’s very much on the agenda behind the scenes as I’m involved in it.

For reference, I don’t want to say my employer, but big high street bank which currently has offshore contact centres. No frontline offshore people have been allowed to WFH - some have migrated to back office roles which have been allowed. The leadership roles have continued but from home. I don’t know all the details behind that decision though.

it was a Q&A session with leadership

The last Q&A I attended (virtually) involved showing profit analysis for the last quarter and a reassurance that there would not be any redundancies. Two days later they announced redundancies.

This one was about changing customer and colleague engagement - they did admit a recruitment freeze but nothing about redundancy yet

I work in IT I’ve seen it been tried before and end up cost the business more in the long run. Even very basic script based call centers don’t do it well. I can understand why people are thinking this way but practically it just doesn’t work

I'm not worried about being offshored. Because if they want to, they can move the office north anyway, and it cost way less. I work in telecoms, and this is big news
www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/05/bt-to-close-offices-in-more-than-270-uk-locations

If we are to accelerate remote working, then it's less likely I'll lose my job because they decided to consolidate all offices into 9, and that some people are now 100s of miles from their nearest office. There are a lot less of them in the south.

Just before lockdown, we have already gone through restructing, and they say they are centralising operations in that big city up north (that northern powerhouse). Everyone in that division down south was made redundant. That's why I think going remote is actually safer for me because they can no longer use that as a reason to get rid of us in the south.

Sorry that one was one year old. This is recent
inews.co.uk/news/business/bt-openreach-uproot-staff-jobs-uk-latest-remote-working-629946

But basically it's ongoing.

Its certainly possible for some of us to be passing on our experience in primarily wfh roles. I've actually supervised junior staff remotely before now.

@IrmaFayLear

But those trumpeting about their years of experience and expertise... are you going to be passing this on to anyone else? I don’t think so, if you are in your home office and never meet any underlings. You may know your employees now, because you worked with them in person back in normal times, but going forward do you give a damn about new people, or care about their careers or whether they gain knowledge?

It will be a sterile world where everyone stays in their narrow lane.

I went in yesterday to meet our new starter.

He's spending the whole week doing 121s with his manager in the office. Individual staff are all meeting him online to introduce him to their area of work each day. He's taking independent learning home each afternoon to feed back the following day.

Next week, he meets the whole team in person over two days. Those meetings occur fortnightly now for sharing ideas.

There's a weekly team catch up with his immediate team in the "off" week, plus he can be in immediate touch with his line manager. Plus any other web team meetings we have in the interim.

But those trumpeting about their years of experience and expertise... are you going to be passing this on to anyone else? I don’t think so, if you are in your home office and never meet any underlings.

Yes, we will be. Like I and many others said earlier, training and development of new and junior staff is one of the things that will continue in the office and we will continue working in mixed mode. It really doesn't have to be 100% WFH as some seem to think and for most of us, mixed work mode is the future.

Honestly, it doesn't sound like OP actually knows much about the practicalities of remote working.

Outsourcing abroad was all the rage a few years ago, especially for call centres and IT.

An awful lot are bringing the jobs back in-house or have done so already. It sounds ideal on paper, but often doesn't work in practice, not least because outsourcing means divided loyalties and ignorance of local procedure and tradition.

We’ve outsourced a lot of functions to Poland and India. It’s working well - some areas - particularly financial analysis of data, very well but it’s taken huge amount of time and effort by everyone involved.

Parker231 Do the benefits outweigh the cost? Do you see it as a long term gain? Would you do it again? What about those in specialist roles?

We’re a global business so outsource some functions globally. It’s worth it’s weight in gold now but it takes time to develop an understanding of how different countries work. The employees in India are highly skilled and have made huge improvements to our systems and speed of response time to clients. They are specialists in their own right

@IrmaFayLear

But those trumpeting about their years of experience and expertise... are you going to be passing this on to anyone else? I don’t think so, if you are in your home office and never meet any underlings. You may know your employees now, because you worked with them in person back in normal times, but going forward do you give a damn about new people, or care about their careers or whether they gain knowledge?

It will be a sterile world where everyone stays in their narrow lane.

@IrmaFayLear - Hmmm, it depends on the role and the individuals.

Some people just pick up the phone and ask what they need to ask, ask you to share your screen, use microsoft paint for illustrations.

A lot of roles can be trained remotely. to the PP who said her husband has difficulty collaborating over zoom, I've brought to zoom's attention some limits and they have not even acknowledged my support tickets. There are a lot of other collab software that can do when the PP said couldn't be done. A lot is possible.

Also takes a willingness to make it work.

@LemonDrizzles

Also takes a willingness to make it work Can't the same be said for offshoring? Parker321 said it was difficult but is paying dividends and specialist roles are offshore too?

Obviously not all businesses can do this but finance, which is my background too, certainly can.

[quote Alongcameacat]**@LemonDrizzles

Also takes a willingness to make it work Can't the same be said for offshoring? Parker321 said it was difficult but is paying dividends and specialist roles are offshore too?

Obviously not all businesses can do this but finance, which is my background too, certainly can.[/quote]
Yes and no. My specific comment is about training up an individual one-on-one. You only have to learn the communication language for those two parties. There is a vested interest for the learner to "get it right" as they could potentially be the successor of the trainer - with all the benefits.

Offshoring is complex. It can work, it can be successful, but it takes a lot of work. A lot of work.

@Alongcameacat - did you raise this question because you are worried your role will be outsourced? If so, there is every potential you could be the "chosen one" who stays in house to manage the outsource team...

Yes, I too have seen it work in Finance (In the Finance function in my organisation). Nobody really noticed because it was done incrementally over 10 years! And, no, not to India. Nobody even regards it as offshoring

Plus we outsource stuff anyway and no one is up in arms about that - eg payroll, investment management, it’s not offshore but still outsourced . It’s just down more efficiently (and cheaply)

I should probably clarify I meant the financial sector rather than a finance dept.

but finance, which is my background too, certainly can.

I think that explains why you maybe don't find it so easy to understand why some other sectors are less easy to offshore.