Outsourcing Toolkit

What to do when your job is outsourced

Judith N. Mottl Tech Republic

Published: 05 May 2004 15:00 BST

Maybe you had a nagging suspicion that there was a move to push IT tasks to an outsourcer. Or maybe it came as a big surprise when the CIO made the announcement. In either scenario you probably weren't totally prepared for the news, and now find yourself panicking over future employment.

Your first instinct is to dust off and shore up the resume, and start calling recruiters. And while both tasks are natural responses, you also need to take a breath and examine the potential new IT roles that could be created within the company's structure, or even with the outsourcer, as well as recognise that the job change provides a real opportunity to map out your next career step.

The first steps
When Steve Kaluzny, a senior infrastructure support analyst for nine years at the Gillette Company, learned that the company was considering outsourcing the help centre and his department, it didn't come as a surprise: company leaders had alerted staff early on. The 30-year-old was one of two team leaders in the department that handled support, upgrades and projects for desktop computers at the corporate headquarters.

"IT managers let the staff know early on they were considering outsourcing and they bid the services to several companies. The internal support group also participated as a bidder to keep the support staff in house," he related.

The outsourcing bidding and project planning took a year during which Kaluzny and his team kept working at their jobs. When the planning and bid awards were completed, GE won a three-year contract for the computer help desk, as well as on-site infrastructure support for Gillette's Boston offices.

"They didn't hide the fact they were considering outsourcing. I feel that our group was overly optimistic that cutting costs [and] not filling vacancies in our group, plus the intangible benefits of having an in-house support staff would prove the winning decision," he said. In the end, the decision on to whom to award the outsourcing contract came down to costs -- there was no way that the internal group could compete on price because GE uses a help centre based in India.