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?

I agree with@Hie2021, the tax implications will be an enormous barrier to outsourcing jobs. It would be a hassle for both the employers and the employees.

I'm sure a lot of companies will outsource to a country where they can pay cheap wages - and will then find out the hard way that they get what they pay for. Happens super often in software development. Of course there are skilled experienced workers in every country but they're the workers wanting good pay that the cost-cutting outsourcers won't offer.

The problem, OP, is that nobody wants to believe (or admit) that they're replaceable. Some aren't, but with time a large proportion of workers could be replaced with overseas staff.

Yes, I think a lot of these jobs will be outsourced now. Although office workers seem to think they’re invaluable and it won’t happen

If money is all that matters, I don't understand why companies wouldn't have done it anyway? They already had the option while they were paying UK wages plus office costs.

I do think outsourcing of jobs is a risk generally, though.

Am glad so many feel they are irreplaceable. Obviously the post-covid economy in the UK won't be as bad as feared by economists . I don't think for a moment OP means all jobs. Obviously many will remain in the UK. You can't deliver babies remotely (well most you can't) or make some site visits from abroad. I however wouldn't bet even my worn trainers that no jobs will be outsourced, both high skilled and low skilled. I think the post covid economy, WFH and AI will mean different combination of factors will be at play in deciding outsourcing (from past failed and successful forests). So for those that say "I have six years experience and my job is niche, I cannot be replaced with someone abroad", great. But for others, they will have 10+ years of experience and work in niche markets. Still a combination of educated, skilled, experienced but cheaper persons abroad will make them replaceable. Some abroad will even have UK experience/language fluency and have gone back home. Others will be complimented by an algorithm/ai (regardless of how imperfect). So the idea that op is absolutely wrong is very likely wrong. I think the questions are who will be replaced and the scale.

I think the questions are who will be replaced and the scale.

I agree and I agree about AI. Work was changing anyway.

I think we are in for a rocky ride.

I do think we overestimate British exceptionalism sometimes

So true. Somehow, no one low wage can understand or speak English better than Brits (I know differently and never mind that educated persons abroad are more likely to speak English and another language or more compared to Brits. But that's not valuable to international companies, right?). Or have longer or better experience (some might have more years in a similar job in various countries but if course that can never be!). No low wage country is better educated (hmmm, say what?). I think some of the arguments being made for why "I can't be replaced" are a wonderful insight into the exceptionalism thinking

There are a few issues with this such as data security, fraud, and IP theft. The people abroad who are skilled enough already get top salaries in IT which are comparable to the West. The ones who get less lack the skill and end up being more expensive due to mistakes. Many companies already tried this before the pandemic and lost money.

Not RTFT but if your job is IT/AI vulnerable, then it will be cheaper to send it overseas prior to bringing in the robots:

willrobotstakemyjob.com

If you look at any job probably a significant proportion of it could be automated or outsourced.

The bit that cant be automated or outsourced is the bit which needs local experience/intuition/specialist training/network of contacts. What also cant be automated or outsourced is knowing when/where that local experience/intuition/specialist training/network of contacts needs to be used.

It's a bit like the old television engineer joke of charging a customer £75 to walk in to their sitting room and bang the top of the television to get it working again. When the customer objects to the cost the engineer explains that banging the top of the TV cost £10. Knowing where to bang the top of the TV cost £65.

Probably 75% of my job could be done by someone who earns half my salary. The other 25% of my job could be done by someone who earns twice my salary plus you would also need to employ someone to know when my job needs to be done by the expensive person or the cheap person. At least at the moment it is cheaper to employ me.

Just because a job can be done from anywhere doesnt mean it can be done by anyone.

Police force civilian staff working from home won’t be replaced from people from abroad 😂

If all roles are outsourced who pays for the goods those companies are selling & who pays for the UK public services.

I have worked in 3 industries over my career. Two couldn't wfh and one can and was slowly replacing west European workers with cheaper workers via freelancing before covid.

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.

Yep I think some don't realise this.

Reading with interest. They say that all accounts and book keeping work will disappear and become in-needed. I'm just not sure how quickly that will happen.

Also people forgot that other countries & there workers don't just want our "scraps". The costs of outsourcing to China grew quite quickly & in EE lots of people want parity with WE in terms of minimum wage.

@Oblomov20 the last 2 companies I've worked with have outsourced payroll bureaus but to other parts of the UK. Looking at ones abroad just wouldn't interest them.

At the other end of the spectrum, even highly skilled jobs would be at risk. There’s a really good Making Sense podcast with Matt Mullenweg (creator of Wordpress) talking about distributed networks and work, and one of the points he makes is that when employers truly embrace this, they realise that their potential recruitment field covers the whole world: they can recruit talented, skilled workers from anywhere in the world to work together. It’s potentially huge.

Some will, some wont.

YANBU
I recently got made redundant for this exact reason. The company are replacing me in a cheaper cost centre abroad.

The graveyards are full of irreplaceable people.

It is true that in many cases existing roles are 'safe' from outsourcing, but often that's because people have subtly made sure of that, by not sharing knowledge and information even with their own colleagues. The workflow that has generally evolved tends to support that approach. However, if that is properly broken down and analysed, that approach can be challenged.
As a very simple example, I'm sure many of us have witnessed the situation where all decisions have to be signed-off by some middle-manager who has made themselves "irreplaceable", yet by simply empowering more junior staff, that middle-manager suddenly becomes surplus.

If it can be done from an office here it can be done from an office abroad.

The real question is are employers likely to want to reduce costs by moving jobs overseas. Answer is yes, in some cases. My former employer is shutting his London office and opening ones in Ireland and Lisbon so he can continue to freely trade with the EU where 90% of his business is. That’s 25 British jobs gone and 25 new Irish and Spanish ones.

@Oblomov20 I have been an accountant for 30 years. In that time there has been a huge amount of change in terms of technology and working practices. IME a lot of the basic repetitive data entry work has already long gone.

My own work has changed hugely. Where in the past a lot of work went into getting the right number in the right place now a lot more time is spent on interpretation and understanding of information. I was busier than ever during lockdown as forecasts were constantly changed and revised.

Senior management of businesses always want what they havent got. They also want to have it at no expense. They want to have an agile business with low (or better still, no) overheads. At the same time they want to improve margins which means reducing variable costs. They want to reduce the workforce but dont want the capital investment to replace that workforce with machines. They want automation but dont want to pay for the automation to be implemented and then maintained/improved. They want tomorrow's questions to have been answered yesterday but at the same time want to have today's questions managed as top priority.

I do find senior managers tiring to deal with!

People are highly educated abroad.
Not in my area. Its not taught in universities in India, China etc, and is niche in some Western countries. There are about 50 of us worldwide, 400 if you take a REALLY broad view.
I do expect salaries to go down slightly as commutes get fewer, but that’s fair enough.