Re: Professionalism
Originally Posted by
spitfire
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Has professionalism been eroded in your work experience due to unrealistic targets and expectations, have you had to join a shoddy workforce, just to get the job done, an a competitive basis?
It certainly had been eroded when I was still working. The IT dept I worked for was outsourced From that very moment everything changed. Instead of working diligently for Company A, dedicated to its smooth running, being pro-active, streamlining its processes etc, we were all suddenly treating Company A as just one of a myriad of service customers of the new Company B. As such we were instructed to do nothing but the job as defined in the Service Level Agreement, we were not to be pro-active anymore we were to be totally reactive. When there was a problem, we react, not before. We do nothing except what the company has agreed to do in the contract.
Helpdesks switched to India, support switched to India, where a myriad of largely untrained ill-equipped staff would attempt to mange things. They couldn't of course and had to be constantly trained and taught by the rest of us in Blighty.
The whole thing was a nonsense. It ruined the IT services of my original Company A. They were on a minimal service agreement and they suffered for it.
ALL of this, the entire strategy of outsourcing was to reduce costs by putting the IT services into the hands of a large IT service provider with standard models used for lots of companies.
It didn't work. The costs of training and dealing with India were double the original costs. Instead of India being able to replace and eliminate UK jobs they were instead an additional liability. They ended up with the UK jobs still there and the India jobs on top, with the UK staff constantly having to advise India staff.
We went from being high level professionals making a real difference to Company A to being unprofessional reactive service providers. We didn't like it, it went against the grain of who and what we were, but that was the job.
About 10 years later, Company A realising the entire thing had been a disastrous mistake, began recruiting its own IT staff again.
I believe this same flawed outsourcing model has been used by numerous companies across the nation with similar results.
Everything now is about money, minimal service. Professionalism has taken a back seat.