My virtual people Blog
10 Jan 2017
Is Outsourcing Work Good For Western Countries?
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In the past, sometimes I got people saying nasty things to me like:
“Stop taking our jobs you piece of s**** ! ”
What was once a great idea, Outsourcing work has now become
a controversial topic. Whether it is about outsourcing manufacturing to China,
outsourcing garments to Bangladesh or outsourcing IT work to India, the world
has come to realise outsourcing does have its side effects, whilst offering the
immense benefits.
I run a small outsourcing operation out of Bangladesh (by
sitting at my desk in London). My focus is mainly on Admin and IT work, and I
firmly believe I am helping my clients grow their businesses whilst keeping their
overheads as reasonably low as possible.
You do see a lot of negative news surrounding outsourcing, and
virtual staffing on the internet, and it does seem like most of the western
world feel bitter about outsourcing. However, most of the time when I am
speaking to companies, people are very keen on outsourcing work and I am drawn
to the conclusion that most do still favour outsourcing.
I appreciate why many are bitter about the idea of
outsourcing. The typical scenario that comes to mind is the dreaded call center
guy answering your call from India and driving you mad. This was demonstrated
wonderfully in one of the Transformer Movies – where a soldier tries to call
his headquarters whilst on the battle field fighting alien robots – only to
have his call intercepted by an indian guy asking irrelevant questions and
trying to upsell!
But let’s take a look at the world of freelancing for
instance. Big giants like freelancer.com and upwork.com are making history with
millions of companies outsourcing work to freelancers – who primary tend to be
from Asia and the Far East. Is this very different to outsourcing your work to
a dedicated outsourcing company like MyVirtualPeople.com? Or is it just the
same thing, done with a different name ‘hiring freelancers’? You are in fact
outsourcing the work, and hiring what you can call a ‘temporary virtual staff’.
I think people against outsourcing work have missed
something. Outsourcing is not about
taking away jobs. Outsourcing is a mutual benefit to both parties.
Companies outsource work to remain competitive and maintain
strong margins. Would you rather a
company struggles to cut its costs and survive and eventually shut down the
entire company? Or would you rather they find ways to keep business going by
outsourcing the work, and save hundreds and thousands of jobs that would
otherwise be lost?
Indeed some jobs will be lost – this is where the offshore virtual
staff benefits, they get jobs that would probably have never existed for them. But
the troubled company has also benefited, and so have most employees of the
troubled company who have been fortunate to keep their jobs.
Outsourcing is never really permanent. When the economic
climate is better for the company, they are free to bring all the jobs back
home (should they choose to do so).
Consider the 2008 – 2011 recession. How many large companies
went bust due to poor financials? We hear about the big guys in the media, what
about the thousands of small and medium sized companies that went bust that we
never hear of? Would it not have been better to find a way for most of these
companies to survive by outsourcing? Could the companies not have brought the
jobs back home when the economic climate improved? I shall let you be the judge
of this.
I am sure we all have our opinions on outsourcing, so I’d
like to invite you to share your comments and thoughts on outsourcing. Share
your experiences if you have outsourced! The good and the bad.
If you are thinking about outsourcing, feel free to email me on rob@myvirtualpeeople.com for friendly, honest advice.
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