HBOS could shift 2,000 IT jobs to India
Hyderabad Bangalore or Sangli
Posted in Management, 2nd October 2008 12:49 GMT
Free whitepaper – Hands on with Hyper-V 3.0 and virtual machine movement
Halifax Bank of Scotland is considering moving as many as 2,000 backoffice and IT jobs to India.
Executives flew out to Bangalore this week to meet possible offshoring partners.
According to papers seen by the Mirror, offshore delivery of IT functions is a central part of its cost-cutting plans. The trip by 11 execs cost £45,000.
The bank is still hoping a proposed takeover by Lloyds TSB will go ahead - HBOS shares rose more than 14 per cent today on rumours that the US government's Wall St bailout deal is now back on.
The bank's shares are still down some 80 per cent on the year - the bank got hammered in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And the takeover is by no means a done deal - Lothian and Borders Police are investigating allegations that talks started before the Stock Exchange was informed.
HBOS sent us the following statement:
On a preliminary basis, we have been exploring for some time whether we should extend our use of overseas contracts in the area of software development and applications. Any extension to our current offshoring arrangements will only take place after full consultation with our union partners, Accord and Unite.No decisions have been taken. Separately, all HBOS customer service centres are based here in the UK and we have no plans to change that at all. Our work in this area is completely unconnected to the proposed acquisition by Lloyds TSB Group.
Should the merger go through then even more jobs are likely to be lost. ®
Free whitepaper – Hands on with Hyper-V 3.0 and virtual machine movement
COMMENTS
I see it now
Hapless client, desperate to complete a task before the Christmas Break, struggles with failing system and calls up support to be redirected to an exceptionally polite but unintelligible version of the English language help desk where, after much wrangling and gnashing of teeth, it becomes obvious that a technician will need to attend the site to correct the problem.
"Wee shill bee dare on May".
@Dave
My comments were all sarcastic. If I try to write (or speak) seriously about outsourcing or offshoring I tend to descend into incoherent angry rage rather quickly. On an individual business level I think it sucks, on a broader social/political level I think it really, really sucks. A lot.
Must stop typing now, blood beginning to boil......
Didn't work well in 2000, it certainly won't work know
I worked for Transco at the turn of the century when they were moving a lot of their IT offshore. It is sort of like outsourcing to EDS or some such - you lose all the highly skilled technical staff, who often have a lot of knowledge of the workings of your business and a vested interested in the success of the business and you replace them staff who may be skilled (but you have no control over that), have no idea of what your business does or how it works and couldn't care less if you go bust. The only difference is that they are (or were) cheaper, they are in a different timezone (about 5 hours ahead - e.g. they are starting work when you finish), and their English is generally pretty poor (even if they may be technically very good on the IT side).
BTW, anyone who has ever spoken to a call centre in India may have that the staff speak reasonable English (at least when they follow the script) - however the staff in the call centre probably have a Masters in English - most the staff at Wipro/TCS/wherever have never really studied English and IMO have a very poor grasp (though they may well have CS PhDs).
The only person who gained at Transco was the execs who got a Jolly, followed by a bonus before the effects were noticed and then left before the shit hit the fan. If HBOS weren't going bust before, they are now.
Anything can be offshored
Why not the entire management.
IT is in a very strong position, unlike any other group if you want to get a message out there, then you can.
HBOS is an Indian bank now, so if people want to Bank with an Indian bank that is up to them.
If I find a company off shoring I tend to avoid doing business with them, it is just prudence, they are going to have a lot of problems, and if it is IT then you cannot be sure where your data is being held and what laws apply to it.
Off shoring also means that you are not supporting your own economy, it is like scoring an own goal, it is not clever in the slightest.
@Ian
"All these nay sayers are just scared of change."
I'm sure I speak for many when I say you are wrong, we are not scared of change, but the sheer number of UK jobs being lost to overseas workers. Why are we not looking after our own?
The new Office Garage series:
