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 work with the UK tax system on a complex advisory matters.

Yes, I can see them potentially outsourcing UK tax compliance (tax returns).

Could they outsource my job? Doubt it, as why would someone abroad learn about a different country's tax system and undertake 3 years of training+ in order to get the possibility of doing what I do? Plus clients I work with (high net worth) prefer in person meetings, so realistically it wouldn't work regardless as they want a personalised service.

@PurplePansy05

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.

Where do you live in the UK now?

Let's imagine that you live and work in London. You are paid more for doing your role because it's in London, and London is expensive.

You are told your job will now be 100% working from home. You might have to go into the office once or twice a month but otherwise, it's remote working full time.

Would you need to stay living where you do? Or could you sell your valuable London house, relocate to York or Leeds or Newcastle? Or the Kent coast? You could end up with £200k in your pocket from the house sale and still be able to hop on a train and be in central London in two hours ish.

Now, in a few years you move on from that company. They need to replace you. But in those years, they have downsized to a much smaller office to save on costs as most of their workforce now WFH. Do they advertise your old job at the London wage they paid you, or at the much lower national average for that job? They can hire someone with the skills and experience they need who lives in Newcastle, will work for twenty grand less than you, AND save on office rental costs.

Outsourcing isn't just about India.

I am currently using property lawyers in a cheaper part of England and have used online firms very successfully before. There is a generation who would prefer to go in person and see someone in their local town, but not as many in the younger generations. I also buy pretty much everything online, groceries, toiletries, presents, everything, as I hate shopping, again these products can be delivered nationwide or from abroad.

My individual choice not to go into the local town has an impact- and lots of firms have already gone down the road of outsourcing either within the UK or abroad. Not all successfully. Some don't care that it's not successful though, look at Virgin Media, their call centres (not sure where they are based, the staff speak with an Indian/American accent) are immensely frustrating, their IT shit, and they weren't open during the pandemic and still aren't for ordinary queries, but they actually don't seem to care at all and are still asking for bailouts and trying to find the next tax haven!

I don't think my job could be done as well by someone not based where I live, but it could be done (I'm a lecturer), I just hope the university see that students themselves don't want a generic far away bod who is a lot cheaper but they can't have any personal contact with them. Remote teaching is a thing, but it's not massively popular.

It's about time people went back to the office in my opinion. If the job can be done away from the office, why not outsource to a cheaper country? I have some admiration for the boss of Pimlico Plumbers who apparently offered to sack people who refused to get back to work....

I am tired of people working from home. When I ring my car insurance people, I do not want to hear their children playing in the background, it's unprofessional. Get back in the office. I do not want to "meet" someone on zoom, and I don't want to see their living room/bookcase/kitchen in the background. I am tired of ringing a company only to find they are at home and can't put me through to the next department without cutting me off and arranging a call back while they sort out who is where because they aren't in the office.

As for the Civil Servants, they can't work as efficiently at home. There are huge backlogs with driving licenses, tax office, DVLC and so on. Email anywhere and they can't deal with it for months, they can't trace my new TV licence since February, despite my proof of having paid for it from my bank. Hopeless...….

@PurplePansy05 I totally agree. A lot of people look at office roles and see them as just keying stuff into spreadsheets/computer screens. There are very few roles left which are purely re-keying data.

Most office roles are now far more nuanced. Many people do more than one thing. Yes, there may be a data entry element which could be automated but there will be other elements where automation could be a disaster.

Some jobs cannot be outsourced, even if those who do them have been wfh, due to the nature of the skills, experience and security clearance needed to do them, and the fact they have to be done by UK nationals only. That won't change.

As for the Civil Servants, they can't work as efficiently at home. There are huge backlogs with driving licenses, tax office, DVLC and so on. Email anywhere and they can't deal with it for months, they can't trace my new TV licence since February, despite my proof of having paid for it from my bank. Hopeless...….

You can hardly presume this is because of homeworking in itself though, rather than the factors surrounding it. All of a sudden, in a very short period, millions of people started exclusively wfh who'd never done it before. They didn't have the equipment or systems in place so everything was thrown together quickly, and they had to learn an entirely new way of working overnight (because wfh efficiently is a skill, one that needs to be learned). A good chunk of them were also having to provide childcare simultaneously, and then some of them did actually get the virus which interfered with their ability to work. Of course those things have an effect on productivity and efficiency.

@WanderingMilly - we don’t have enough office space for everyone to return to the office and maintain social distancing. A large proportion of our time is normally spent travelling internationally to visit clients. We are now doing one day a week in the office on rotation and the rest of the time from home. It is the same for many professional services firms.

SirSamuel, I do not live in London and indeed I find opening of the London cluster of jobs to regions a very positive move. London subsidies will of course go (why should they stay outside London and with remote working?) and the wages may drop too, but the disparity between London and the regions is so huge at the moment that this will still be a welcome increase to regional professionals.

I think we are need to wake up as it's a global village we now increasingly habituate.

Look at international manufacturing industry and food production. Look at the historic and growing geographic treads.

Now replace the word manufacturing (industry) with service (industry) and smell the Jamaican Blue Mountain Jamaican Arabica coffee using an Italian designed machine made in Vietnam.

Basically do we Brits, Londoners etc today ever do everything locally ie. buy and consume locally grown foods, use only locally designed and manufactured products and services. No much of it originates from nations far and wide. I type this online forum message out (to a UK and international readership) on a device with core parts designed and engineered globally, marketed and overall design packaging by an American global giant and made by a Taiwanese based OEM manufactured using off shore mainland Chinese manufacturing logistics and soon Vietnamese as mainland Chinese manufacturing labour is economically less competitive. Can the same global geographically diverse model not eventually work with most lower to mid office (or working from home) based service sector roles? Consumers and corporate clients have bottom line cost pressures too and will trade money/costs with a slight lowering of initial service standards (which will improve with experience).

Yes of course higher skilled professional specialist roles subject to localised highly nuanced laws and professional standards will still be geographically specific. But otherwise the world is your oyster and certain geographies will as with international energy production, food agribusiness, consumer product design and manufacturing be championed by certain expertise and competitive advantage geographies to a global marketplace. Oh and finally smarter next level(s) artificial blended intelligence technology and robotics automation will increase too so possibly favour cheap energy and raw materials locations. The next service industry revolution has already begun.

@Jason118

It already happened with overseas call centres, I see a distinct possibility of other office roles going the same way, and you can bet your bottom dollar big corps will be looking at this and rubbing their hands.

The big corps already do it, & have for years. They know the limitations though.

I work for a high street bank. Some of our IT support functions are outsourced. I’m an IT project manager. They know outsourcing those won’t work. One of our partners has already done it, & it doesn’t work.

As a PP said, you can instantly tell when the PM is on or off-shore purely based on their questions/behaviour.

Yes there will be more outsourcing of remote working. Many call centres already are.
The idea people from other countries can’t possibly have the same skill set or experience in the UK is laughably naive - or a bit racist, possibly.

Online medical consultations could be outsourced to doctors internationally.
Lecturing could be outsourced.
999/111 could be sent overseas with a remote call centre
Conveyancing and other legal work could be outsourced
Accountancy and bookkeeping could be outsourced,
Tutoring, IT, HR, OD, Risk management, Head hunting and a thousand other sorts of jobs could all be offered to the international market.

Brexit makes that much more likely.

@Alongcameacat

But how would people abroad have my skills, judgement, experience and authority to replace me

What will happen when you change roles or retire? The company will find a replacement. People are highly educated abroad.

I don't disagree that people are highly educated abroad. I also know that in many non-english speaking countries they are much better at speaking different languages than us. What I don't believe is that there are enough people there with the equivalent qualifictions and the ability to speak English fluently (not just 'well enough' to replace a significant amount of the current workforce.

You've used the example of benefits adviser but you would need someone in, say, Pakistan to
a) have the necessary qualifications to be a benefits advisor (fairly achievable)
b) have a very good level of spoken and written english (harder)
c) be able to be trained in the UK benefits system which they will have no experience in, even the 'by osmosis' experience candidates in the UK will have picked up
d) want to be a benefits advisor compared against all the other uk based WFH jobs you seem to think will suddenly appear
e) have the 'soft skills' you need to do the job - it's not just about qualifications and knowledge!

One or two of these things might be achievable but it's fairly unlikely that you will find enough people that meet all five criteria for every single WFH-able job in the UK.

Further to the fact that 'abroad' is not one homogenous place - people in France or Denmark for example probably won't be any cheaper than staff in the UK and would still have the language and cultural barrier. So I assume you are talking about possibly eastern european countries and/or somewhere like India? But even call centres have started backtracking and reverting out-sourced staff back to the UK because feedback was so negative. I've had lots of problems (BT!!!) with various outsourced call centres - initial contact for very simple stuff (changing a name on an account) can be ok-ish (although I've had things like putting my house name as a surname which you probably wouldn't get with english as a first language staff), but anytime you have to get into anything the tiniest bit complicated you are stuck because the number of staff who speak english to a sufficient degree and understand the technicalities behind the issue you are trying to explain are minimal.

Also has everyone else has said - lots of WFH jobs it's only the office based part of the work that can be done at home. In many jobs there are parts (whether they be 5 or 50% of the role) that can't be done over a zoom meeting or whatever - you have to go to a specific site!

@CherryPavlova I hope we don’t start relying on online doctors! Surely mistakes in diagnosis will be made if a doctor cannot examine a patient by touching them physically?

And as for 999, we already know that call centres have problem when the workers have to go off script. Imagine that in an emergency situation?

I agree that outsourcing isn't just about India, but I'm afraid I am wholeheartedly in support of wage redistribution and downscaling wage extremities from the insanity which is London.

I have friends wondering how I can live on my Birmingham salary - the answer is usually "better than you, and I can be in the West End almost as quickly as you can from the Zone 5 house you could barely afford".

Wages equalising towards a lower or more medium cost of living is hardly a bad thing, especially if it comes with a healthier work life balance.

Some will but I doubt it would be suitable for my role, which requires specific qualifications and experience of the UK legal system.

I think that my work pay me for my skills and experience rather than my physical presence and a lot of companies have had poor experiences of outsourcing. Also my role needs organisational knowledge, cultural understanding and specific knowledge of English employment law that overseas may not have.

Longer term maybe other countries will work to develop specific skills for English / french / Italian etc markets but I don’t see it as an immediate threat.

Same with AI. Mid to Longer term I can see if taking over quite a bit of transactional work in my sector but I don’t think it will ever fully replace me due to the need for nuance and judgement and relationships / engagement

My employers could outsource, I suppose. But there’s not really much point worrying about it, as nothing I can do will stop them, if they decide to do it en masse.

SirSamuelVimesBlackboardMonito

This is what I think will happen too.
Except it won’t necessarily be different parts of the UK. It will be Czech Republic, Poland, Spain.

Somebody remarked they can immediately tell from the type of questions whether the person is outsourced or not. But so what?
Genuinely what does it matter? Previously we (including myself) got frustrated when I received a Helpdesk call from India which took twice as long as it should have, but I had no choice but to get used to it. The corporation where I worked took on more and more overseas employees. Highly educated people from Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary. They spoke perfect English. Somebody else mentioned they have a different sense of humour. Again who cares? With the new global workforce, we all get used to one another. There isn’t a ‘them’ and ‘us’ anymore. We are all pretty much the same - sone speak English with a London accent, some speak English with an Irish accent and some speak with a Polish accent. It doesn’t matter.

The idea people from other countries can’t possibly have the same skill set or experience in the UK is laughably naive - or a bit racist, possibly

Absolutely wrong. No one says people living abroad are less qualified or in any way inferior to UK workers. In fact, it is often the opposite. However, they are qualified in their countries and know the realities of life and infrastructure of their countries, not that of the UK. Not all qualifications are mutually recognised either, and some professionals cannot simply practice in a different country for regulatory or jurisdictional reasons. Your comment is at best naive and at worst offensive.

While on paper I have a boring average job which has been outsorced by other companies in my field I think I am in a good position:

Our company never outsorced anything in the past, they have a very location based approach.

Time differences would make work difficult if you can't communicate with the people on location.

Our IT system is virtually self-made and it is hard to train anybody anyway on it, you can't just recruit anyone abroad and let them have a go, you would need a certain amount of staff on location just for training, at least for 2-3 years with a skeleton one permanently which are them paid a lot for this.

You need people speaking English and German to mothertongue standard. Nothing against outsourced call-center etc but we all know how difficult it is often to understand or make them to understand you thanks to strong accents.

My employers outsourced half the jobs to India just before lockdown. I'm under no illusions that the rest of our jobs might go too.

My hope is that the jobs that are left are what they termed the "thinking" jobs, highly skilled professional and regulatory jobs.

The fact is that most office workers will likely be working in a mixed mode, WFH and some office work and this will likely lead to outsourcing within the UK, but not so much outside the UK (over and above the services that are already being outsourced anyway). And that's a positive.

I am flabbergasted so many people think they are irreplaceable and/or in niche roles. Obviously your company has never been bought and you have never been made redundant.

Absolutely no chance whatsoever with what I do but I can see it happening more with the kinds of roles which are already sometimes outsourced to other countries e.g. customer service for large companies.