Outsourcing [split]

[Millennie Al]

Outsourcing is not a medieval village having a baker. Outsourcing is a company continuing to have staff perform the jobs as before but instead of employing them it hires an outside company to employ them.

That's not a useful definition. It means that you could have two companies which are identical but you consider that one is outsourcing and the other isn't because of how they used to operate.

How they used to operate is a fundamental part of what forms the work culture of the two companies so unless their employees are indeed good little robots who embrace change and forget all previous working relationships then the fact that one company just outsourced part of its workforce to match the other company will make them different places to work.

In that case a general criticism of outsourcing is just a highly conservative position that nothing should change. That means that instead of adapting, companies should go out of business in favour of competitors who do things differently.

[Millennie Al]

A UK based customer is not being racist to think that the customer service person they speak to should be able to speak English in a manner comprehensible to a native English speaker.

There's a huge difference betwen being comprehensible to a native speaker and every native speaker. It's quite possible for one native speaker to be incomprehensible to another: MP has difficulty being understood in the Commons - with some amusing comments.

[Martin Y]

That's not a useful definition. It means that you could have two companies which are identical but you consider that one is outsourcing and the other isn't because of how they used to operate.

How they used to operate is a fundamental part of what forms the work culture of the two companies so unless their employees are indeed good little robots who embrace change and forget all previous working relationships then the fact that one company just outsourced part of its workforce to match the other company will make them different places to work.

In that case a general criticism of outsourcing is just a highly conservative position that nothing should change. That means that instead of adapting, companies should go out of business in favour of competitors who do things differently.

Only if you're assuming I take an absolutist position that all outsourcing is so damaging that it presents an insurmountable problem and can never be attempted, rather than a warning that it is not cost-free and the damage to company morale must be taken into account.

A company which outsourced a chunk of its work *is* functionally the same as another which never did that work in-house, but only in the same way that a divorced couple are functionally the same as two single adults.

[tom p]

How they used to operate is a fundamental part of what forms the work culture of the two companies so unless their employees are indeed good little robots who embrace change and forget all previous working relationships then the fact that one company just outsourced part of its workforce to match the other company will make them different places to work.

In that case a general criticism of outsourcing is just a highly conservative position that nothing should change. That means that instead of adapting, companies should go out of business in favour of competitors who do things differently.

Only if you're assuming I take an absolutist position that all outsourcing is so damaging that it presents an insurmountable problem and can never be attempted, rather than a warning that it is not cost-free and the damage to company morale must be taken into account.

A company which outsourced a chunk of its work *is* functionally the same as another which never did that work in-house, but only in the same way that a divorced couple are functionally the same as two single adults.

This is clearly true.
In my experience the best form of outsourcing is when an organisation is either expanding something they already did (and putting (some of) the people who already did the job in charge of QA of the outsourced work which will now be at increased volumes) or is starting something entirely new. That way there's no loss of morale or in-house skills, and yet you get more work done than was being done before (and usually at a lower unit-cost).
That does, however, have wider societal disadvantages for the country where the work was originally being performed, as either money flows out of the country (e.g. outsourcing services from UK to India), or average wages are depressed in the country as (if it's services, rather than manufacturing) you can only really get a lower unit cost by paying people in the subcontractors' less for the work which requires a particular level of skill..

One other point on outsourcing which often gets overlooked is that the person/committee approving the invoice needs to be the person/committee responsible for approving the levels of service. Otherwise the incentive to do a good job disappears or just becomes a paper exercise that is easily gamed and the end-users get forgotten about and get a sh.tty service.

[Millennie Al]

In that case a general criticism of outsourcing is just a highly conservative position that nothing should change. That means that instead of adapting, companies should go out of business in favour of competitors who do things differently.

Only if you're assuming I take an absolutist position that all outsourcing is so damaging that it presents an insurmountable problem and can never be attempted, rather than a warning that it is not cost-free and the damage to company morale must be taken into account.

I am making no assumption about your position. That's why I said "a general criticism is...". If you look up to the start of this thread you'll find what I believe to be a general criticism.