Capita poises axe over 1,000 staff - jobs headed to India Capita IT Services (CITS) has told 1,000 staff they are at risk of redundancy and plans to offshore roles to India. The cuts were announced to employees this morning on the same day that the Department for Education confirmed that CITS was among 18 companies selected for an £575m IT framework. Company insiders told The Reg …
bit which says UK staff will have to train them,
A bit like asking the condemned man to weave his own noose or the prisoner in front of a firing squad to load the rifles.
It is utterly shameful, it deprives us of jobs, it deprives us of skills, it deprives the country of tax.
Disgusting and should be condemned.
Absolutely right. It makes no sense to give them tax-payer funds which they then feed to a sweatshop in India whilst the tax-payer then has to pay for the people that just lost their jobs.
At this moment in time Cameron or Clegg needs to get a spine and state categorically that any company touting for UK Govt. contracts (in the UK rather than ancillary overseas functions) will have to employ eligible workers within the UK else no deal.
It will cause more irritation with the difficulties of communication.
"yes I live near Liverpool..."
"is that in England sir..."
"Yes it is..."
"near London?"
at this point I lost it, the difficulty was not that he couldn't speak English, he could, it was is heavy accent and the fact that I had real difficulty tuning into in. Also, he struggled when I spoke quickly.
I politely, yes true, said I would call back.
Please tell me how this will enhance the customer experience?
Indeed. You do get the impression that they made a list on a whiteboard in the boardroom that said "Ways to make more profits"...
1. Move staff to India
2. Do fixed price contracts better.
3. Allocate resources better.
After looking at the list the only one they could see themselves succeeding with was the first one. They unanimously voted for it, clinked their corporate champagne glasses together, helped themselves to the executive nibbles and then drove their Ferraris off into the sunset.
I've been on the receiving end of this for 3/4 years now and it is disgraceful what management think they are doing when they move to this model. Productivity sucks, costs sore, quality is a forgotten word ....
Honestly, if you are using Capita now and think they are bad, just wait.
I really, really don't want to live in London now with the fire service call centres being outsourced to them.
Anyone who's ever been involved in offshore work can tell you that quality goes out of the window.
All the stuff I've been involved in has basically been onshore people going to all the meetings, understanding it all and then telling the offshore guys exactly what to do... then it get retranslated through 3 or 4 'coordinators' and the final product doesn't work, but even if it did, it bears no resemblence to what you asked for.
You then get the onshore developers, who still have a sense of pride, going all our to fix the worst of it so that something can be delivered... after all this you get told "what a success offshoring is, we must do more"
The only answer is for the onshore people to have enough courage to take no responsibility, let the projects fail, let the crap that actually gets produced go out. After the business falls through the floor, somebody high up might finally be allowed to be told that offshoring all your staff doesn't actually work!
I've seen an Indian company not only do such a bad job the work had to be dumped, but they also held passwords to randsom to ensure payment! in the end the CEO paid just to get rid of the mess..
I would be very concerned if any gov call centers went overseas, my experience with Indian call centers is dire....
But so far I've only ever had a good experience with government helplines and the emergency services when they have been needed, I dread to think what would happen if they were off shored....
is how companies get away with it? If my company told me they were replacing me tomorrow with someone in the same city who would do my job for less, the local ambulance chasers would be circling before I left the building. How does the fact that the replacement staff are not in the UK change the equation? (This isn't a rant, I'm genuinely hoping someone can enlighten me on the distinction.)
AC as outsourcing is a sensitive topic round here ATM.
Puzzles me too. If your role is made redundant and then they take someone on in that role, game on.
It must be to do with the definition of roles. Your role is redundant and a whole load of new roles are necessary under a new model of operation or some such.
Weasel words anyway.
...keep your job and relocate to India.
I was made redundant once on the basis that the team relocated to another part of the UK. I could have relocated, but took the cash instead and got a new local job before the notice period was even up. I laughed all the way to the bank...
Slip of finger meant this went to the wrong place.
A deal has been signed with an outsourcing supplier to take our IT Support services. About (120 highly skilled, dedicated and very likeable people). To sign this deal has cost our Supplier Company £25m it is also costing the Outsourcing Company £25m.
Our/We will transfer across to Outsourcing Company. Where they will work happily for the rest of their lives in what is effectively the same role but getting our wages from a different company.
In reality what will happen is TUPE (The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations) will kick in. This protects certain work terms/conditions of the employee but only lasts for 2 years. (The ConDem Government would like to remove these so we can have a more dynamic work force)
The TUPE provision allows the Outsourcer to transfer the knowledge holder across from the Supplier Company. This has the effect that the Outsourcer gains all the knowledge from the Supplier Company. It works for the Supplier Company because those employee’s disappear from their books. No pension, NI or other benefits. Once the outsourcing company has all the information/knowledge they require. Then they bin the knowledge holder and move the role to Indian where they pay significantly less than they do in this country.
The Supplier Company has no liability because the employee willingly left the Supplier Company to take up a new job. The Outsourcer has no loyalty to the new employee and will bin them as soon as they have the knowledge they need. Often they do it long before they do which is why you always hear horror stories about out sourcing.
Of course 'We' can refuse to leave out company but we are lucky the IT Director never go his way, but many TUPE'd people may not be offered this.
I think but we have to accept whatever role we are offered and we have been warned that our pensions will not be protected. If we chose to leave the company. I predict the take up will be 0%
I suspect that's the sole reason Nokia 'outsourced' all Symbian employees to Accenture.
If Nokia'd made them redundant, massive payouts. Ship 'em to Accenture, with a lot of mealy-mouthed words as to job-security, then let Accenture kick 'em out after a few months. No doubt, Nokia would slide a back-hander to Accenture for the compensation, having saved a few million euro's.
Someone tell me it's not true??
Devious millionaire bastards.
Hmm.
"willingly left the Supplier Company" - not so sure about that. Its more a case of "feck off, we don't want you, if you refuse to go then you are effectively resigning". Either way the fat cats get their payout, the brain-drain continues, and we (the people actually doing the work and for the most part who actually give a crap about what we're doing) get shafted.
Its just a reflection on the fecked up state this country is in when all the fat cats care about is saving money rather than value for money (there is a distinct difference between the two).
According to Patricia Spewitt in the letter she Xeroxed to me 9 years ago Onshoring & offshoring is just competition. I should suck it up & vote labour. That was New Lie, that cost them tens of thousands of UK tax I and others didn't have to pay any more.
Unfortunately 'Old Unfaithful' aren't interested in UK tax receipts going out the window either. At least foreign companies can afford to buy what is left of our industry and offshore it.
Agree we should insist all UK government work is done onshore by vetted UK nationals due to 'security reasons'.
Wasn't it the Lefties who let the financial sector screw up public finances and the economy ? Tony Blair and Gordon brown are the major sources of this mess. it seems to me.
What you are doing is like the Republican knee-jerks blaming the sad economy on Obama, when he inherited it from Bush.
Its about money. Its always about money. Doesn't matter that the quality will be crap as long as there is still a perceived profit (and even if it turns out to be a loss, the person resposible would have had his golden cockshake and left long before the shit hits the fan).
In a similar situation right now - but I am damned if I am going to teach someone else how to do my job. After all, when it all falls over in a heap and the losses start mounting up (which they will), it won't be my money going down the drain....
Well it will be goodbye to their customer service , software quality and reputation. Also
" UK staff will be asked to help train those workers in India." why would you do this !????
I'd like to see government contracts going to Uk companies with the proviso that use UK workers. Data protection law should be tightened to stop foreign nationals having access to UK data and that would go some way to stop this kind of thing from happening .
" UK staff will be asked to help train those workers in India."
Yeah, we had that where I work, a load of people made redundant were asked to train their Indian replacements before they left... You'd be amazed at the high quality of the training, and the immense amount of useful information that was handed over :)
Do I detect some sarcasm in there? ! Seriously companies are short sighted when it comes to this kind of thing, it might improve the profits in the short term but in the long soon as someone realises the real cost of employing these idiots - such as poor customer service , poor software quality and when they need to hire someone to fix it - there won't be anyone! .
CITS? Gits more like.
It's annoying. I have no problems paying a little extra to get my veggies from a local provider. I'll pay a resonable price in a bricks and mortar shop to buy DVDs/ books rather than use online. I wouldn't mind higher taxes to keep jobs onshore. Of course I'd prefer that they use the money they have wisely, but that'd never happen...
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...is how many people here are simultaneously whining about jobs being moved to India and Capita being crap at doing stuff. I can vouch for Capita being crap after getting the run around by TV licensing. I have a question which some may feel is excessively cynical, but I believe is pertinent: maybe the UK staff were totally shite?
The staff I have worked with are certainly not "shite". In fact we are very under resourced and under recognised by Capita.
In fact - the india outsourcing currently in place is "shite" and has been "shite" for ages. It'll take a "shite" amount of time to train the India guys to a standard of which these apparently "shite" employees at Crapita are doing their incredible hard effort and tasked work at.
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