Niyamath Parveez

To many normal workers and employees in the major countries, outsourcing is an extremely bad word and one that only brings pain and misery. To the bosses it can be seen as a good thing because of the benefits it brings with respect to labor costs and maintaining quality but to the average Joe, well it is just a bad thing. Even President Obama was quick to say that outsourcing is bad and if you look around the rising unemployment, you would be forgiven for thinking that it is an evil that must be stopped before it goes too far and ruins Western civilization. As with all things in life, the hype and the hyperbole has probably overtaken the actual real life situation and now is maybe a good time for people to take a step back and re-evaluate outsourcing and determine if there can be any benefit for them with it.

It may shock you to realize you that outsourcing is one of the fastest growing industries in America and is providing a solution to many firms and employees all across America. The benefits of fast and reliable network connections and the ability to share workloads online has made it much easier to be located one place but work elsewhere and this is allowing the outsource benefits to happen internally in a country too. The main gripe about the outsourcing jobs that have went to India or Malaysia has been with people moaning about the fact that the jobs have only went there because they managed to undercut on price. It is fair to say that these emerging economies have been able to grab an advantage by having a lower wage structure than the West but there are other benefits to working with them too.

For many people, outsourcing still has to offer a quality of service or it will never be of benefit, regardless of how cheap the wage is. If the finished product or service is of a low quality, no end user is going to want to sign up or buy the product and the company will be left with a gaping deficit where sales used to be. This means that maintaining a good level of outsourcing is necessary and this is turning many people back towards the home market in order to find the right supplier.

More and more people are able to provide a service from home or from a location with a much lower cost which is allowing cost savings to be made. As financial savings are a major component of an outsourcing contract, this is giving US based citizens or small firms a fighting chance of winning a big contract which may mean that outsourcing is the answer to all of their problems.

It is very easy to demonize outsourcing as the big bad threat to local businesses and jobs but by looking at the possibilities that open up when outsourcing takes place, people may just find the answer to their own financial problems are within their grasp.

Life must be tough when you are angry or stupid and unfortunately, it is even harder when you are both. The dumbing down of Western civilization has been happening at a great rate in recent years but in the United Kingdom, it has been extremely noticeable as what was once the loud minority is now giving way to the vocal majority. If it’s not crying over reality TV shows or losing sleep over celebrities, there has been a creeping tendency for the right wing element to rise again and this is shown nowhere better than the Daily Mail newspaper. Quite frankly, the paper is an abomination and nothing more than a shell for racist articles and hatred of all things non-British. With the current economic crisis, any business or organization that didn’t look to protect itself and ensure it has a future would not be doing its job but it seems that even this is not good enough.

The latest issue that has the Daily Mail readers and writers up in arms, clearly the BBC hasn’t put a foot wrong this week, revolves around the British Council and their plans to outsource over 100 jobs to India in order to reduce their costs and help them operate more effectively. The posts are in the finance and IT sectors and are being carried out as part of the larger cost-cutting exercise that the British Council is undertaking. On one level, it can be seen that these jobs are being lost to the British economy and it will be a terrible time for the people directly concerned in losing their jobs. However, this is on a purely personal level, overall, the benefit for the British tax-payer is one of greater benefit by the fact that these services will be run as efficiently for a much lower cost. There obviously has to be a cut off at some point and if all the jobs went this way, there would be a justifiable outrage but for a situation such as this, it would be hailed as a positive move in any company or organization.

Given that the department is concerned with the interaction abroad with other nations, there may well be ancillary benefits to be gained from outsourcing these posts to India which otherwise would not have been available to the British Council in their previous working style. Striking the balance between getting the best working relationships and opportunities to grow needs to be struck with looking after number one but this is something that is not taken on board by a number of people, particularly those who want to rail and rally against anything which may benefit foreigners.

With the perilous state of the economy, anything which shifts the job market is going to grab attention and make people notice it but there are always two sides to every story. It is unlikely you will see any stories or articles praising the British Council for their brave move in outsourcing a number of jobs but these are the moves that will allow them to continue providing a valuable service for many years to come. When it comes to outsourcing, there is always a need to look at the bigger picture and if you have a narrow outlook on life, this is something that you just won’t see.