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?

Absolutely agree re the job market being finally extended outside of London, this was a long time coming development and a welcome one. Next one to go, London subsidies covering the costs of travelling (no longer required), and therefore payment of equal wages for equal work throughout the country.

I think it is more likely WFH jobs will go to cheaper UK counties.

Why pay South East inflated job cost (linked to high property / commuting cost in the SE) when you can get qualified, native speakers, etc. from regions with cheaper living cost?

I love how people answer this question as if their job is the only one that matters. Some jobs will go elsewhere, some will stay. Those who believe they are safe will also be affected in ways they don't want to admit if there is a big reduction in employment here. People will have to stop buying their services, companies will need less other services in UK, not just staff, tax revenue will reduce meaning public services have to be cut, which also has an effect on jobs etc etc.

If nothing else, this whole thing has really shown up how insular people are, with no concern for developing the next generation or the impact on anyone except themselves.

@Alongcameacat

How did you obtain the skills? I think there is a possibility that whatever course you completed to do your job will be offered online and experience (unless face to face) will come with time as it does with all jobs.

Is working in a benefits office a niche job? Here it is a civil servants job.

However I assume public jobs will stay in the country of origin.

I acquired my skills in my industry partially by growing up in the UK, being a service user of our industry. We operate in both England and Wales and there is a huge difference in understanding across that border.

I'm not saying it's impossible for a foreigner to have that knowledge. Just so unlikely as to be impossible - in fact, someone with that knowledge would probably a world expert in the subject matter across many countries and be more expensive.

There's lots of skills and knowledge that aren't teachable online. This flood of globalised workforces might be accelerated by the dire financial outlook, but not because roles have become more possible to do from home.

Don't fall for the dreary and now predictable rhetoric of those with investment in landlords and Pret.

DH works in software - used to be for a large company whose management decided that they could save money and time by outsourcing testing to India. Absolute disaster.

He works in a small company, now. We're already in a cheap part of the country so they are never going to attract workers from anywhere where salaries aren't equally low. Most of their recent projects have been for clients in other countries - he's currently working on a Swedish transport infrastructure system. He is the cheap labour!

I work in housing and we are already needed back in the office. Most of us have been there throughout the pandemic. Some jobs could be outsourced, not others.

I think some will, but what may be more likely is the end of London salaries for some jobs, if they can be done outside the South East, with some attendance at a more local/regional office.

As for the whinging of the government about Pret and other cafes, if they were that concerned about companies whose staff are largely from parts of the EU, then they would do a Brexit deal quickly.

Yes, I accept that I'm fungible and that many of us are. Yes, the potential scale of unemployment is disturbing for personal and social reasons.

Nonetheless, I firmly believe that there is no shortage of work to be done - there is a lack of political willingness to pay for that work. But I'm unconvinced that allowing millions of people to fall into the misery and blight of unemployment (that will disproportionately ruin the generational chances of some people) will suddenly compel technical innovations that will save us all.

Is working in a benefits office a niche job? Here it is a civil servants job

What are you assuming here about the skill set of Civil Servants? Most people in my department didn’t just get a ‘qualification’ and get to work. They built up deep experience of how the UK functions of on social, political and legal level in order to assist Ministers in devising workable policy and get legislation passed through Parliament. I’m not sure how many people in,say, Estonia understand how to draft instructions on how new legislation would work in the UK or plot their way through various parliamentary and regulatory requirements?

@Oblomov20 we must be in the same line of work. I’m just picturing our elderly clients lining up at the Post Office to post their tatty old case of paperwork to India or wherever it’s going

(Very small firm here)

I have worked from home as a freelance writer. Lots of people on the popular freelance sites think they can compete with me in the UK and when you're working remotely and sending stuff by email it really doesn't matter where you're based.

People working as writers in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ghana, Eastern Europe are cheap. They charge as little as $1 per 500 words which is a fraction of my rates. But their work in general is crap. They are not native speakers of English. They don't use English in a natural way. They mostly don't have a degree, or much work experience, no knowledge of British terms or local culture. They just can't compete.

A cheap job won't be professional.
A professional job won't be cheap.

@PurplePansy05

And the final consideration is data protection and security, a key issue before any outsourcing can take place, and a potential big headache (and rightly so).

Very good point. I'd be fantastically surprised if any of the columnists holding this as a threat over people know about the recent implications of various judgements on the matter of GDPR and non European third countries.

I need to hold my hands up because one member of our staff left just before covid, and we outsourced the IT support part of his role - to a lovely bloke who already worked from home in my suburb and who is brilliant (knocks spots off the moody bullying sod he replaced).

Well, thanks to Embarrassing admissions, I have added the word fungible to my vocabulary. If you'd asked me yesterday, I'd have guessed it was something to do with mushrooms or the damage a broken gutter can do to an inside wall!

Neighbours of ours run a small highly specialised IT business (I'm IT clueless so can't explain better)& they outsourced almost all of it to Sri Lanka five years ago & its worked very well for them. Our neighbour acts as the face of the business dealing with UK & US customers but almost all the work happens elsewhere. People are being quite naive if they think people outside the developed world aren't highly skilled & don't speak fluent English. Plenty of them do

I don't fall for the unemployment argument either. The reality is that whilst many people will be affected by unemployment, and yes, it inevitably will affect other industries, the recession will be a) temporary and b) not as gloomy as some seem to paint it. Those most affected now, i.e. travel, hospitality, arts & entertainment will eventually bounce back, over 2-3 years, and in a lot of these jobs, the same people will be needed purely because of their experience. The lower paid job will be affected and I feel very sorry for these people indeed as they'll have to reinvent themselves. Professional services know that there will be a bounce back and tbh, they're likely to shed some dead wood now because it's a good opportunity to do so. But mass-scale redundancies in professional services are only likely in those firms that have had little financial back up or relied on the above sectors heavily. In any event, these people will be needed again in the future.

So there will be a lot of people looking for work, a more open London market, more options than ever to work online, more options to open a local business (and local businesses are actually thriving - and this trend will likely continue) - is is all that bad? No, but there's been a shift, and those that can follow it will be absolutely fine and thrive. This needs to be encouraged. The economy won't be killed, it will be different.

I think OP is getting confused over lower skilled and higher skilled jobs.

I can wfh but my role requires me to visit clients locally - a huge part of my role is relationship building (over years) I'm successful as I've done it for so long. I think there will be an element of AI to my job but as we are working out it doesn't replace the human to human contact.

I work with huge global organisations who have offices worldwide - because people from those countries are needed to do those roles. Eg accountants - lawyers - Engineers etc - these roles can't really be outsourced as local knowledge - customs - law!! Is required.

I work for myself. I get work from clients because they know me - and they know that I sit on a bunch of committees, know lots of people in the profession and in the industries from which my clients are drawn, and I know how things work in the industries themselves (mostly from visiting work sites).

It's conceivable that someone in another county could develop that network and knowledge, and its extremely unlikely that anyone would do so.

country, goddammit

@Multipack5678

The simple answer is yes, I expect this to become a trend. If a company doesn't need people to physically attend an office and you can get the work done to the same standard more cheaply, why wouldn't you?

No. I wouldn't . I think , as pp have said, that people think office jobs are low skilled. Not the case

But surely the increased demand for outsourcing will naturally lead to a higher quality offering - if more companies want to start hiring abroad and more overseas roles are on offer, people will start to rise to the opportunity; the basics are excellent English and IT skills - most are already there with the IT, so I can see English schools becoming more popular to teach working English, and possibly the additional skills needed.

Obviously this won't replace all jobs, but a fair few could be transferable

Outsourcing overseas doesn’t mean you are having work done by uneducated and untrained employees. Our offices in India are staffed by fluent English speakers (some did their degrees at UK or US Uni’s), they are experienced in their field and they have a degree and often post grad qualifications.

There's such a focus on IT jobs on this thread - there's always been a risk of them being outsourced and there's absolutely nothing new about this.

There are far more professional roles that can be performed remotely than just IT. And I'll repeat again, those of you who state that these roles are dispensable and easily outsourced clearly do not perform them. There's certainly a noticeable dose of envy and bitterness in some posts, which is likely linked to the fact that some find it difficult to accept that "office workers" actually do more than typing up pointless emails, that they often work extremely long hours, that their qualifications and experience actually mean something and that finally they have an option to improve their work life balance. Well, I for once am not sorry about that, I worked for this all my life and will fully embrace it, and will not give a second thought to the bitter opinions.

I am more concerned about workers rights in this country being removed rather than outsourcing.

Workers protection was already a worry due to Brexit as a lot of it was European law - I can see a lot of protection being removed by the Government under the guise of encouraging employers to have more jobs in this country!

I don’t work in an office job or with IT and cannot WFH but have noticed that my commute to work is so much easier! Far less people travelling into work.
Long may it last!

Very good point. I'd be fantastically surprised if any of the columnists holding this as a threat over people know about the recent implications of various judgements on the matter of GDPR and non European third countries.

They probably don't, but then some of the coverage we've seen appeared to be motivated by self-interest rather than a good faith appraisal of the circumstances. Basically, I wouldn't necessarily trust the likes of the Telegraph to bother readers with a legally accurate view of GDPR even if their staff are capable of providing one.