Via the Outsourcing Blog I’m learning about the total volume of outsourcing deals currently in place, adding to $118bn per year. Any fears about jobs being shifted to cheaper countries like India and China are well founded. But building on the arguments of my previous post, I would like to make an observation that is often missed when talking about outsourcing and may have a powerful impact on how our work culture evolves in light of this trend.
Outsourcing is based on the premise that certain aspects of a job can be done by companies that specialize in these verticals and as a result of this specialization are able to optimize the processes involved. I’m not an expert, but a quick glance at the timeline of outsourcing adoption leads me to believe that it was in part an effect of the Reengineering craze in the early 90’s.
A recent discussion with a consultant in one of the big outsourcing firms led me to realize that part of their success lies in the realization that effective outsourcing is based not on transfering the same jobs from one company to another, or in the case of global outsourcing (driven by cheaper labour), from one geography to another, but on placing those jobs that are suitable to the work culture of the particular region. Using India as an example during our conversation, it became a recurring point how in most cases, the young labour force available there is mostly concerned with “survival” (referring to Linus’ Law from my previous post) which means that regardless of how pointless a particular job seems to be, many workers will be content making a minimum salary and will gladly jump at the first opportunity they have to improve their situation. I realize generalization is an easy trap and would like to make the observation that this is the case of a large number of young adults in India joining the work force, but I can’t comment on how widespread the problem is.
In North America, a work force that is content to make a living with an average job that represents no challenge will certainly face the threat of outsourcing eventually. But when a job is elevated to the realm of Entertainment it will very difficult to transfer the aspects that make such job important to a particular person to anyone else, anywhere else in the world.
This is the key to a new work culture: every community developing citizens commited to the jobs that give meaning to their lifes, not the ones that feed their families. These jobs will be protected from globalization because their significance is only relevant within their original cultural context. We are at the very early stages of such a trend, mostly because the vast majority of people still have to do whatever job will secure their day, but we’re witnessing the first generations of people emancipating from the “rat race”, shifting not out of the work pool, but into jobs that empower and enrich them as individuals.
[...] My position in the matter of outsourcing was established in the post the outsourcing culture, and while it may be assumed antagonistic to the views of a company like Infosys, I found some support to the ideas presented earlier in their own blog: Business communities in any country (at least at the mid to senior management levels) tend to be small. Even India with its billion people, relies on a much much smaller business community and business graduates to run its companies. It seems that young workers in India have not yet developed the maturity to realize this fact. With the over-abundance of opportunities this behavior appears to be the right choice (or even the logical one by some calculations). But this will prove to be a short-sighted approach when the economy turns as it eventually must. [...]