The three-week strike by IT staff at Swansea Council in
protest at possible outsourcing raises serious issues with
ramifications far beyond the boundaries of a Welsh local
authority.
Although outsourcing can offer dramatic business benefits,
successfully handing over your technology assets and many of your
staff is a vastly complex process in which people management is
central to success. You cannot outsource IT effectively unless the
people who are affected think it is a good deal for them. There is
too much scope for problems.
The evidence from a decade of outsourcing is that skilled staff who
transfer from the public to the private sector or from a private
sector firm to an IT services company have nothing to fear.
Staff turnover rates at outsourcers are often lower than those in
the IT departments of government departments, local authorities or
businesses where IT is an enabler, not the core of the
business.
Outsourcers can offer new opportunities and skills to the staff who
transfer to them, but many IT staff are concerned at the prospect
of switching their employer. That is why alternatives such as
secondment are increasingly being embraced.
Whether Swansea Council outsources its IT staff, keeps them
in-house or offers a secondment, the lesson for all IT managers is
to tackle staff concerns in an open, timely manner or face the
consequences.
Outsourcing challenges do not end with the signing of the contract,
as our articles on page 30 make plain. The cost of managing
contracts can be considerable and questions of control have led to
pioneers such as Barclays to buy shareholdings in some of their key
outsourcing service providers.
IT managers must learn from the Swansea outsourcing strike and
tackle people issues>>