Merit Coba

How do people feel when they hear they might get outsourced?
They feel betrayed.
Should people feel betrayed?
Of course they should.

It doesn’t even matter if it outsourcing is actually going to happen, just the idea that their management is considering outsourcing as an option will feel like a stab in the back to their employees. This feeling will spread like wildfire and soon motivation will plummet.
Often the outsourcing solution is mentioned after a period in which the IT debt of the company has become a serious issue. IT debt is the name for failing to invest in IT over a prolong period. The IT environment is used up and starts failing.The continuity of the company is at stake.
The internal IT staff is put under increasing pressure to keep things running, sometimes working late into the night to repair the damage that is caused by failing systems or software that has outlived its lifespan and should have been replaced.
To hear that they then will be replaced, after all that effort, makes the betrayal even doubly hurtful.
But managers can make things even worse.
IT management doesn’t see it like their employees see it. To them outsourcing is the answer to the IT debt and the way to deal with reluctance of business to invest in their IT infrastructure. Business that does not feel that IT can be an enabler or an asset, but is just overhead. It is necessary, but we do not want to pay for it more than we absolutely have to because it is not our core business.
And thus outsourcing becomes the light at the end of the tunnel. It is the way out of the dark forest. It is the wizard of Oz.
And outsourcing promises a lot. It promises to reduce costs, to enable flexibility, to allow for innovation, to reduce people, to make things agile, to do things smart and allow management to control IT better.
At the expense of the employees of course.
But it’s these people they want to get rid off anyway.. for these people they do not understand or connect with.
Even triple sad is when that same management plead with those same people they are planning to outsource to put in to keep the flailing IT environment operational until the outsourcing contracts have been signed and the outsourcing providers can step in.
It is like telling your spouse to put in extra effort in running the family smoothly while aiming for a divorce and screwing behind her or his back at the same time.
Management can even go one step further Bby refusing to communicate properly.
But you know.. managers don’t see it that way.
How do they see it?
That is for another post….
So what do you think?
Leave a comment if you disagree or agree.
That is what comments are there for.