Outsourcing to India is 'short-sighted'

A former IT freelancer who now runs a recruitment agency has argued that outsourcing IT functions to India is 'short-sighted'.

Chris Bartlett, who founded IT recruitment company, GCS, in 1989, asks why would agencies 'bite the hand that feeds them'.

Chris Bartlett writes:

Chris Bartlett Using cheap but highly-qualified technicians and call centre staff in India has been an increasing trend for many UK IT companies and recruitment agencies keen to reduce overheads in areas such as software development and candidate research.

Our company has grown to £18 million turnover, employing 70 staff, largely on the strength of quality of UK IT contractors. Why would we bite the hand that feeds us and outsource our candidate research activity and therefore, the IT work that underpins it, to a low-cost economy?

We are not here to undermine the livelihood of contractors - we are here to ensure they are valued and recompensed appropriately for their expertise. Therefore we will not damage our own sector by outsourcing candidate research to other countries.

My view is that we should invest in the IT specialists and recruitment professionals that we have in the UK and promote this as a centre of excellence. That way we will nurture the best talent and attract top individuals from across the globe.

Short-sighted

Outsourcing is short-sighted and linked to a reluctance to invest. Learning from history, failure to re-invest has been the cause of economic decline in many instances in the UK particularly in our manufacturing sector.

We need to invest to provide a vibrant UK knowledge economy for the next few years and in fact for the next generation.

People are the lifeblood of any organisation and most companies produce recruitment brochures and HR policies littered with references to this, however this is not borne out by their actions which are largely driven by the Chief Executive Officer and Financial Director looking for short term wins on the balance sheet.

Customer satisfaction

Furthermore there is no doubt that customer satisfaction can be put at risk by outsourcing even low-tech operations like call centres. Powergen has announced that it is closing its Indian call centres and expanding several in the UK after consumer body, Energywatch, confirmed that last year it was receiving complaints about Powergen at twice the industry average.

If there can be weaknesses at that level of interaction then what happens when researching relatively sophisticated IT candidates or attempting to source candidates for IT projects?

Commercial considerations apart, my personal feeling is that there is an immoral side to outsourcing to a low cost economy. It is not right to benefit from UK IT skills, whilst at the same time undermine aspects of IT recruitment and the UK IT industry.

A recent report prepared by Nasscom, a lobby firm for Indian software and service companies, and international consulting firm McKinsey and Company stated that business worth $110bn would be outsourced worldwide by 2010 and that India is set to capture more than half of it.

India's IT and outsourcing sector is currently worth about $22bn and expected to grow by 25 per cent until the end of the decade.

Chris Bartlett

GCS Ltd