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?

they would need to be in the same time zone.

While it depends on the timezone, 9-5 doesn't exist for many people anymore. It is very easy to work with the East US schedule for instance.

We are in technology and can work from home, but still need the ability to visit plants and have workshops locally with the business.

Our user service desk/support, software build factory is in India, finance processing is in Budapest and they provide adequate (not by any means good) services cheaper, but there are many roles (Project management, Business Analysts, Solutions Analysts, Data Analysts, Infrastructure Architecture, Cyber Security strategy etc) that have been proven wouldn't work remotely from our UK and ROI plants for practical or cultural reasons.

Just another reason why we need to bin capitalism.

I can't see it happening where I work. For a start they would need to be in the same time zone.

Our offshore services work UK hours regardless of where they are. It is pretty common..

I'm more interested in knowing why large numbers of people WFH seems to gets the goat of others

You have jumped to conclusions. I agree with WFH. It creates a much better work/life balance especially for families with young chiildren. It is a legitimate concern as I know somebody jobhunting currently, The person is highly skilled and has previously been headhunted or walked into roles within weeks.
This time however, there are simply no leads. Companies may not be recruiting and unemployment is high but recruitment agencies are shaking their heads saying they are very very quiet.
Person was offered a role in Central Europe for half the salary. It is really concerning.

Acquiring the product knowledge, market knowledge and soft skills that everyone in my department has would take far too long for it to be cost effective.

Companies don't usually shutdown entire offices. They outsource a certain amount of work and keep a number of staff whose job is primarily training. Any difficulties the outsourced team have with the work are referred to the original team. The queries grow fewer in number naturally with time.

Lecturing can be done from home.

Putting aside the fact that 'delivering a lecture' is only one small part of an academic's job, recording a lecture in your home is not the same as delivering it to people in a lecture theatre. Yes, it is having to happen this term, and academics the country over will do their best to make them as good as they can be, but nobody wants to be in this situation and nobody thinks it is 'the same' as lecturing live.

Yes I think you're right. There's a very real risk to the large number of office jobs that aren't extremely niche or involve site/client in person visits. There are many fluent English speaking highly educated and skilled workers abroad, who can work for lower wages.

The poster who asked why someone wouldn't want long-term full-time WFH to become the norm. For the sake of the economy, people's livelihoods, mental health, and social cohesion. The initial novelty will eventually wear off. We'll all become more insular and isolated, companies will see standards of service fall, and team bonds will be lost.

The many staff not privileged enough to live in comfy spacious homes in the shires with a settled family unit will struggle. Working permanently from a small bedroom or cramped flat will be miserable. Young people and new starters will never get the chance to build a relationship or experience face to face interaction with their colleagues.

We'll also need tax increases to pay a massive unemployment benefits bill. Many many jobs rely on office based work - including transport, which will lose the funds required to keep it going. Leaving more people reliant on their cars (bad for the environment) and non drivers even more cut off. Or, we could not pay unemployment benefit (I except some might support this idea)...in which case we'll need tax increases to pay for dealing with the surge in crime and demand for social services and health care (mental and physical).

The best situation is a balance. 50/50 home/office.

No, if large numbers of jobs were outsourced there would be huge tax implications for companies involved and for the Government. What happens to revenue from income tax and NI? Which country would it be paid to? That has knock on effects on the entire country, NHS, pensions, benefits etc. etc.
Outsourcing has always been available so if it was so easy, successful or worthwhile why has the take up not been larger.

I’m not in the UK, but an English speaking western country. About ten years ago my company and others in the same space offshored their call centres and back end admin. Without exception, all have returned back to having everything in our country. Complaints from customers, confusion, security and a list of other concerns made it unsustainable.

Some other companies who didn’t return to home based call centre staff were completely screwed when COVID hit and they had no way of supporting or equipping their SE Asian staff to WFH. One was a health insurer. They lost about 60% of their share price in a week. This risk will be front of mind for many companies.

If anything now that all of our call centre staff can work from home, we aren’t burdened with the cost of having physical buildings in expensive cities and can hire people anywhere in the country.

We’ve also mothballed two of our capital city head offices because we now have the infrastructure for pretty much everyone to WFH successfully... both used to house between 5 and 7000 people day. Now they have about 10 for security etc. This alone is saving us about 1 million a month in property maintenance, security, utilities etc.

Assuming people who work in an office “just do admin” is very simplistic. I’m highly skilled with 2 degrees and 15 years of specialised industry experience and networks. When I retire or leave I imagine I will be replaced by someone from my company/industry with the same skills and experience, any initial savings of offshoring my job would probably be lost with one fuck up from someone who didn’t understand local nuances, have any networks or the relationships I have (or the ability to have a face to face with the stakeholder in the same day)

It’s not something I worry about at all

Large numbers of call centres were outsourced to the Asian subcontinent in the 90s and 00s. The customers hated it, customer experience dropped and people voted with their feet, moving to companies with uk call centres.

I worked for a large co. that moved their marketing function to Romania. In theory it should have worked, with high levels of graduates fluent in English. And yet it didn't because cultural references & humour are not the same
The same applies for any role that is based on a close working relationship. People normally prefer dealing with their own culture. Given the choice, I would choose a British designer or scriptwriter over a foreign one because they share cultural references with my target audience.

So no, I'm not too worried.

I think what a lot of people don't appreciate is that there was a movement towards agile working and WFH for a long time before Covid. Especially in the public sector. Covid has merely accelerated a process already in motion.

I'm not naive enough to assume my job couldn't be done by someone else in another country for half the money I earn currently. But I also don't think the public sector at least has the intelligence or infrastructure to actually outsource a lot of their WFH roles. In spite of how much money it would save them.

What people are also not accounting for is the possibility of wage increases in other parts of the world. As more jobs move to other countries, skills and education levels increase etc then the natural order of things would be an increase in wages. So surely eventually everything would level out.

My DH has a manual job that everyone turns their noise up at. He earns more than most people I know who work in office roles and quite frankly he has the best job security and prospects than anyone else I know right now!

this alone is saving us about 1 million a month in property maintenance, security, utilities etc
Yes it's so much more than just coffee shops. Large sections of the workforce rely on office based work. The economy is very interlinked. Property maintenance, security, facilities, office cleaners, coffee shops, dry cleaners - and transport, which needs passenger money to fund itself. So a more cut off, isolated, and insular society (with worse pollution due to more reliance on cars).

Tax increases will be needed. Either to pay massive unemployment benefits bill and/or to meet the cost of the knock-on effects of sudden large-scale unemployment - criminal justice sector, social services, healthcare including mental health support, etc.

The economies of off shoring of commoditised standard admin level office type roles have been ongoing for years if not decades. For instance all the telephone call centre basic personal banking and bank payment card roles etc have been based in other English language (as an acceptable second business standard) nations for years. The USA corporates started this trend decades ago using the Philippines and UK firms adopted the similar cost saving profit increasing business strategies with India etc.

Now we will possibly see slightly more higher level but still semi automated office roles following as the same lower cost off shoring route. Indeed ultimately as we all experience for some time already, some basic admin/office roles will be initiated using AI algorithms and then supported by university educated entry level staff in lower cost centre nations etc.

This ongoing Covid pandemic has brought forward both the technological digitalisation of basic office roles but also I believe a new global employee strategy where operating cost benefit analysis is geographically spread accordingly and irrespective of time zones as shift working becomes normalised.

Therefore only higher level more specific professional roles will (still) be geographically limited as these roles would still necessitate a localised human to client physical connection as well as in person team working in a flexible office setting. I envisage off shore teams working in this manner with lead senior and experienced instructors initially still based in the original locality.

The economy will evolve - it always does. I might not be spending money in my building cafe but the local deli near me is thriving because home workers are visiting every day.

Because I’m home, I can be here for cleaning and other maintenance services that we wouldn have taken care of or not bothered with.

My cities public transport system was at breaking point and without billions of dollars in investment it would have crippled a cbd based workforce. But that won’t be necessary now.

Things won’t change immediately, and there will be roles and industries impacted.... but that will always happen. The move to more agile, WFH based employment was always going to happen, COVID just escalated the timelines

The problems is if the change is sudden, drastic, and happens to large sections of society at the same time.

Change, particularly big change, planned out properly in advance and implemented slowly with an emphasis on balance could work out well.

@Steff13...Just saying my states Snap Customer Service line was outsourced to India 3 years ago

In jest (so not strictly serious) but if only we outsourced the UK political leadership with say New Zealand! Massively life and livelihood economic savings with opposite Covid outcomes.

Repeat only a bit of humour. Boris is sometimes funny but this Covid time we need the serious side not the clown.

My two cents.
I had 19 years experience in writing contracts for the government. To cut costs, they get in contractors from company BLAH to do the same work. Where they like to have a 3 day discussion trying to figure out why there are two different currencies on the payment table in a contract price breakdown. I pointed out the answer. They moved to another office and badmouthed me. Now I'm sure that type of work is easily outsourced, EVEN WITH confidential information. If it takes a native speaker 5 days to figure out 2 sets of numbers, i'm sure someone who speaks broken English (who can also give them the answer in 2 mins) can also easily be replaced with another non English speaker who will also take 5 days to do the same job.

So then after getting made redundant, I went into event work as unskilled labour. Now THAT type of work will always be around locally as you need people to set things up. Also can't get machines to do it as you need to plug in cables. And because it needs to be done FAST, they just get in more people.

So anyone who is concerned - figure out the specialty or niche in your type of work and learn it now.

I think a lot of jobs that are of risk at this have been for some time and employers have already acted on that - think overseas call centres, tech support etc. I'm not sure increased WFH will change too much more.

As to my job, at the moment it requires qualifications you can only obtain by studying for professional exams in person at two UK universities over a period of a few years so it's not an obvious candidate to be outsourced. It's not something you can qualify in outside the UK.

Jeez I hope not. I work for a very small company so I’d hope that for the amount of work we have it wouldn’t be worth it being outsourced and I think our clients would have an absolute fit.

How would it affect the economy if all of a sudden there was a lot less PAYE?

*at risk of this, even!

[quote Leaannb]@Steff13...Just saying my states Snap Customer Service line was outsourced to India 3 years ago[/quote]
In Ohio public assistance offices handle SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, and child support benefits, some of which require that the individual is seen face to face. Eligibility workers' jobs can't be outsourced.

I used to WFH two days a week before covid.

I do apm on websites, and whilst you could get someone overseas to replace me, you would be lucky to get one cheaper, especially when considering the flights and accommodation for the few times when I physically need to be in the office.

Even call center work, the experience is so much better with local knowledge. It is worth money to speak to a local person.

So no. WFH does not mean offshore.

Having worked with many companies who offshore, it is very hard to make it a successful experience.

I see both sides. I am a process engineer have lived and worked in several countries. I mainly work on compliance projects helping manufacturing companies meet certain environmental conditions in their emissions and effluent. I am registered in 3 countries where I do most of my work from so am working remotely most of the time. I also work collaboratively with engineers from these countries. Although living and working in them gives me an advantage in communication, culture, even expectations of deadlines and legislation, it would not be insurmountable to someone who does not live in the same country.

Also certain countries are better placed to provide with certain skills and specialisations. I wouldn't write off professionals abroad. Language is not a huge barrier like people make it seem (citing call centres is not necessarily comparable as the bar for education for certain jobs means you will probably be dealing with people who are fluent). Nuances in culture, yes but we still work with people from all over the world here anyway.

Most of my brother's colleagues are from abroad and have returned to their native countries to wfh as his company is not having people back in the office until end of 2021 unless you want to go in. There is no reason for this company to sponsor visas to come to the UK for the next couple of years as people can work from anywhere so I see that.

I do think we overestimate British exceptionalism sometimes. It will be a mixed bag. I cannot travel to conduct site visits which is a necessary part of my job for the foreseeable future so might be replaced by someone closer for certain contracts. Some jobs in the UK require face time -no matter how infrequent, that an overseas employee cannot necessarily provide even with the magic of ZOOM.