India outsourcing back to USA
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The reason why Aegis has opted to hire locals within US is for their native American accent. The cost of vocal training of an average Indian employee is quite high. Given the attrition rate and gap in quality of delivered service, it makes sense for these companies to find out ways to sustain and meet standards. That's why cheap hire of people who "lack high school diplomas" makes sense in the US.
This does not in anyway suggest that India is now 'outsourcing' back to United States. That is likely to happen only after huge and reverse tilting between the two economies [Assuming China does not exist!]. IMO, this move on part of the company indicates only their incapacity to serve from India. In other words the article is just an ego-massage fluff piece.
[Language fixes]
Only now people have realized that English is different from Hinglish, Chinglish, Finglish, Singlish and cost-wise it is okay (economical and easier) to hire "barely educated" within the States than to train someone in Asia who would jerk the consumer experience quite often. I think both situations are completely different.
For example, Taglish is Tagalog with English mixed in (or vice versa) and you'd be hard-pressed to find any call center in the Philippines that relies on Taglish.
So you are saying cost is the reason to outsource and because of cost that Aegis is hiring US workers to avoid paying for English training, which means Aegis is outsourcing English speakers to the U.S.
The U.S. outsourced call centers and India is outsourcing English speakers. Same thing. Indian companies (Aegis) are hiring Americans = outsourcing = American companies hiring Indians.
I'm not sure why you think it's different.
Hinglish may not be English, but C++ is C++, algorithms are algorithms, intelligence is intelligence, but INR is not USD. Outsourcing is (quasi-)arbitrage!
The accent is only an issue if the job involves trying to please the http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/photos/top-rated/.
Can anyone explain to me why a call centre worker needs to be dressed 'up' most days?
The employer may feel that the caliber of people they are hiring requires a very strict, by-the-books mode of operation, and forcing uniforms of people goes a long way towards showing who's in charge, and enforcing discipline.
It's actually a little creepy how that one little difference of putting on a tie changes other people's behaviors in so many tiny daily interactions. Things like: when you approach a door, escalator, getting in and out of elevators, people let me go first. People are definitely nicer to me, cashiers smile more, etc. It's noticeable, and a little weird.
We're conditioned from a young age to respect the tie. So, it's not crazy to think that forcing everyone to wear ties in an office will make them a little nicer to each other. I do think it affects people at a subconscious level.
I am betting that the reason you doubt it is that it doesn't work for you, because you don't have the right associations with business attire. The effect is psychological, so it only works if you have the right prejudices. Personally, I associate suits and such with superficiality, paralysis, and unproductive rule-following. I associate relaxation with high performance and dishevelledness with focus. That reflects my background, though: I grew up in an academic household, idolizing rumpled intellectuals like Einstein and Turing. Apparently, it's more common to associate business attire with hard work, focus, and diligence and to associate relaxation and informality with goofing off. It might be strange to others, but wearing shorts automatically puts a lot of people in a mindset to slack off, and a tie does the opposite. I know one guy who puts on a tie every day for the same reason a programmer might dim the lights and put on headphones: to get focused and keep his head where it belongs. Taking the tie off is like the buzzer at the end of a game. He pushes hard and maintains focus until the tie comes off, and then poof, his mind is gone, moved on to family, dinner, and whatever games will be on TV that night. Even if I don't share that mentality, it sounds like it's useful to him.
Also, keep in mind that while some highly motivated people resent business wear because we dislike the conflation of social presentation and performance, many people hate business wear because they do conflate social presentation and performance, and business attire makes them feel obligated to focus and perform, which they do not enjoy doing. Even if we make common cause with such slackers, we should keep the difference in mind ;-)
I would be really interested to see some research about it.
There are a bunch of hints, tips, or suggestions for using the telephone at work, but a lot of them seem to be "good ideas" rather than researched.
Other examples I've heard are "stand up if you want to sound confident" or "smile to sound happier".
It's a bit odd because there's lots of money and reputation going into telephone support, and a small edge would mean big savings.
There's probably specific industrial/organisational psych research on the topic, but more broadly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
People want to match their behaviour with their attitude. Usually we think behaviour follows attitude, but if behaviour is constrained in some way, people tend to warp their attitude to fit the behaviour. That's one of the arguments for dress codes in the workplace, it puts you in the role, and also explains why you feel happier when you smile, etc.
Also, we sound subtly different when smiling, it's a bio-physical thing too, not just a manifestation of psychological state. I believe most people can actually detect if the person on the phone is smiling or not.
He's since moved on to becoming a personal trainer, another profession where understanding human motivators really helps him out.
As a global citizen, I'm not concerned about the latter.
This goes for many jobs in South Korea -- they simply don't want foreigners to do it, because foreigners aren't Korean. The exception is teaching English Conversation, because the Korean teachers very obviously can't do it well enough themselves. The government is trying to limit South Korea's reliance on foreign ESL teachers though.
This goes for outsourcing too -- the UK government is happy to consider having foreign companies build nuclear power plants or railway lines in the UK, but the South Korean government would rather have everything in South Korea done by South Korean companies, even setting up a company to do it if necessary.
When Westerners open their labour markets to foreigners and foreign companies, what can they do if the foreigners do not reciprocate?
Americans get more goods and services, and have to work less to get them? How is this not a net benefit to the US?
Now the same person ends up hiring more designers and marketing folks in US. That person has more discretionary income that is spent locally. The technology companies like Apple, Google and a lot of smaller ones end up hiring more people.
We have had a lot of clients who have done well and had the same path. I was deeply moved when one of our US clients told me that the app we had developed helped him pay the bills during the darkest days of the 2008 recession.
People need to understand this debate better
1. The app economy has democratised the idea to customer strategy. Outsourcing here provides a huge leverage. This is not like some IT department cutting down jobs and moving them to lower cost places.
2. The world is flat now, in terms of skills and not costs.
3. More non US companies are hiring in America and setting up offices there. We are doing the same.
Just my thoughts.
Buzzword bingo.
However, it's impossible to get h1b visas for call center workers.
The companies using H1 already pay a high penalty in terms of the very high fees, which is non refundable even if the visa is rejected. It is a source of revenue to the US govt