Offshoring has been a contentious issue for HR for a while now. And a recent article featured on PersonnelToday.com heralded the welcome news that organisations will be more open with staff and unions about their outsourcing and offshoring intentions in 2005.
You’d have thought that staff would be happy with this news. Apparently not.
Take a look at the letter which Personnel Today hack Dan Thomas received from a rather unhappy chappy in the States after writing the aforementioned story…
“Dear Daniel [greeting added by Guru – as you will see, he is not very popular with this reader],
I am reacting against the pro-offshoring bias which I detect in your writing. You are in the UK. However, you managed to write the vile propaganda of Forrester Research, located in distant Cambridge, Massachusetts, US [there was no mention of this company in the article – Guru).
Forrester just happens to be the leader of the 10-headed snake which is out to destroy my country and yours [names of companies withheld due to Guru’s inability to confirm the existence of such a creature. Locals at Loch Ness were most unhelpful].
Instead of interviewing any of the soon to be victims of this crime, you rush to give us the toxic viewpoint of enemy Forrester Research and their sidekick, the National Outsourcing Association. From my perspective, your rush to give us such pig-sty filth would be equivalent to your hypothetical rush to interview Admiral Chuichi Nagumo on December 10, 1941, for his opinion on his recent ‘visit’ to Hawaii. We, the victims, think you and Personnel Today are too quick to promote the viewpoint of the wrong side.
You write: ‘Organisations will be more open with staff and unions about their outsourcing and offshoring intentions and stop treating it as a clandestine business process in 2005… In the past, many have hidden outsourcing intentions from staff, which can result in unrest and even strike action’.
Personnel Today writes as if offshorers believe they are doing something illegal, immoral, unethical, or criminal. Hide it, as if it were an act of arson. You quote them with words such as ‘hidden’ and ‘clandestine’ so nonchalantly and without reaction. Why do you write as if treason against your countrymen is something which should be hidden from readers of your magazine?
I will NOT DO BUSINESS AT ALL with any company which engages in offshoring. The issue is not dollars. The issue is the flag.
I would like to see Personnel Today acting in an honourable fashion. Stop the continual bias in favour of your own country’s destruction. Daniel Thomas, the patriot, should shun the National Outsourcing Association.
I apologise for the length. We, the unemployed, get very angry. You, an author, journalist, editor, will understand that anger very soon. In your writer occupation, you too are about to join us in the ranks of the unemployed. It may be true that low-quality journalism can be done in Calcutta on the cheap. (You will love being retrained to do something productive.)
Walter A Nodelman”
Do you have a story about any particularly unpleasant correspondence between you and your staff? Send them in, and if they are suitable for publishing, you’ll get a mousemat and a priceless sense of righteous well-being.
Distorted view of living in the UK
Since offshoring appears to be such a popular topic, let’s round off this week by annoying Mr Nodelman a bit more with a tale about Lloyds TSB and Prudential call centres in India.
They are being shown UK television, ranging from Hugh Grant flick Notting Hill, to EastEnders and Coronation Street.
It’s all part of a training programme to ensure that staff “can empathise with British customers”.
Ironically for our American complainant, one of the films on show is Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason – a state of mind he might well empathise with.
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