Your team is being outsourced and you'll be the one to handle it. Here's how to survive this most stressful of jobs.
Caroline Noblet’s assignment last year was a tough one: help a FTSE 100 company deliver the news that 4,000 positions were being outsourced and staff let go.
Managers should expect to be verbally attacked, personally accused and generally unloved.
Was it stressful? “Oh, God, yes,” Noblet said. “But we did what we could to explain things and try to diffuse any of the tension.”
This work isn’t new for Noblet. Her role as co-global head of labour and employment at London law firm Squire Patton Boggs means she has been involved in the outsourcing and off-shoring i.e. sending jobs overseas, process many times before. So as she does with each of her clients, she helped prepare managers to handle upset and irate staff. Often, she said, managers should expect to be verbally attacked, personally accused and generally unloved.
Suddenly, they’ll go from being part of the team, to the reason someone's world is falling apart. Sound overstated? Nope. In fact employees who are asked to manage outsourcing or off-shoring, say they suddenly become the most hated person in the building.
They’ll go from being part of the team, to the reason someone's world is falling apart.
Fortunately, for managers, there are a few strategies to help them survive.
Open-door outsourcing
If you’re responsible for wielding the axe in your department, or division, or maybe your entire company, it’s likely you have no idea how to begin.
That’s because companies rarely provide training on the outsourcing process, which is among a manager’s most difficult responsibilities, said Lisa Forrest, head of global talent acquisition at London-based Alexander Mann Solutions, which specialises in recruitment and outsourcing services.
Instead, it’s up to you to do your own research. Find management books that walk you through the process and seek out fellow bosses who have been through it before. Those mentors will likely be the only ones who can hear about how bad things are for you as you’re the one making the cuts.
You can’t get away from the fact that the company has put you in a very difficult position.
Right from the start, it’s imperative to be open and talk with your staff, Forrest said. If you don’t, they’ll instead feed off the rumours that are likely flying around the office and lose trust in you to deliver them the truth.
“You can’t get away from the fact that the company has put you in a very difficult position,” Forrest said. The key is communication. “The more transparent you can be, the more you’ll get buy-in from the people around you.”
Measuring success
Once you’ve delivered the news, you might think the hard part is done. But often, the manager in charge of sacking people from the company will also have to oversee the outsourcing contract. That can be an even more challenging job than managing employees in house, said Leslie Willcocks, professor of technology, work and globalisation at the London School of Economics.
“You have to accept that it’s a new way of managing,” Willcocks warned. “You can’t just throw it over the wall and expect it’s going to work. It doesn’t.”
Be sure to establish, from the beginning, how you’ll measure success and how you’ll oversee the outsourcing company. Unlike a traditional management relationship, where you might just pop into an office down the hall to check on things, outsourcing may require regular conference or video calls, written updates on progress, and maybe site visits overseas.
You have to accept that it’s a new way of managing.
“As a manager, you’ve just inherited a different set of problems to solve by outsourcing,” Willcocks said. “It’s about determining ways to monitor outcomes to be sure you’re adding value.”
Often, managers who oversee outsourcing or offshoring contracts figure they’re not responsible for what happens next. But those bosses will be held accountable if the outsourcing fails, said Christie Caldwell, Aperian Global’s director of consulting in the Shanghai office and co-author of the book Leading Across New Borders. Sometimes the outsourcing firm simply doesn’t produce the same quality product as when it was done in-house, and it’ll likely be up to you to make sure things improve.
To make sure that doesn’t happen, the trick is to build relationships, Caldwell said. In fact, outsourcing relationships are at least as important as the ones you have with someone at the desk next to you.
Part of the reason for this is that offshoring often means working with different cultures where relationships might be considered more important. In India, for instance, Caldwell said workers often want to have a conversation about their families or an upcoming holiday before launching into project updates.
Focusing on people affected
Noblet’s experience last year with the FTSE 100 firm involved tapping into existing relationships. Things were tricky in the company’s offices in Europe, because Noblet says outsourcing has a poor reputation in places like Spain, the Netherlands, and especially France. There, Noblet,
a lawyer, sat in on meetings of local works councils, or union-like groups that represent workers, where things sometimes got heated.
“We really went beyond the lawyer’s typical function in order to help facilitate this transition,” Noblet said.
In the end, all of the 4,000 affected employees ended up being offered jobs, albeit either in different roles or at the outsourcing partner firm. The difficulty, however, was avoiding a loss in productivity during the transition or a loss of trained workers who found jobs elsewhere.
As a manager overseeing outsourcing, Noblet said that it’s key to focus on the people affected. “There’s loads of different stakeholders and there’s loads of different people affected,” Noblet said. “You can never forget that.”
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