There are a number of major news stories about offshoring jobs to India in todays news and magazines. The example given is that a US corporation can hire an IT professional in India for as little as $500 per month to start vs. $5,000 - $8,000 per month in the US. This gives a major advantage to the company assuming the quality of work is at least as good. But what really happens to the employee in the US who loses their job? The economist tells us that they will get another job that is better than their current job and the overall impact to both the US and India is positive. What I would like us to really understand is what is the actual impact and what are the assumptions. No doubt India has a very good educational system, good people, and can produce high quality work. So for purposes of our discussion let's assume that the worker quality in the US and India are the same and it really gets down to doing the work offshore vs in the US with the costs indicated above. What we need to understand is what does this really mean and how can we as HR professionals help our management to make good decisions when we are faced with such questions and decisions. So, I've placed a guest book on this page and would appreciate you taking some time and giving us your thoughts. Questions to think about and answer are:
Questions:
1. How much money does a corporation in the above example save? Are there hidden costs people don't talk about?
2. How effective is the work being produced remotely? Not quality of people but logisitics.
3. How can this help the US increase our exports?
4. Other thoughts
Here's the bottom line. What can the US really do to provide a strong job environment and good pay in the US and at the same time take advantage of lower costs as in the example above. Economics will drive to the lowest cost solution in many cases and so why not be pro-active in trying to figure out solutions and understandings. I hear a lot of discussions on both sides of the argument and really just want all of us to really understand what this means.
