* The challenge of managing workers educated and trained outside of the U.S.
Despite the proposed cost savings, IT managers that outsource work overseas could face challenges trying to manage workers educated and trained outside of the U.S.
The controversy around U.S. companies sending IT jobs overseas continues to grow, but industry watchers don’t expect to see the trend to send work to another country to lessen soon. Companies looking to outsource non-core functions will continue to look for cost-effective employment alternatives in other countries such as India as the IT talent pool in America appears to be drying up with baby boomers retiring and fewer MIS, IT and computer science graduates entering the workforce.
“In many cases when North American-based companies offshore work, its service provider often handles the challenges,” says Mindy Blodgett, a research analyst with Yankee Group. “But even when you outsource something, it is rare to life and shift everything. There will be teams formed between American and Indian-based workers and that introduces some challenges. U.S. managers need to know how to approach their coworkers and colleagues in other countries.”
Those challenges mean that U.S.-based IT managers — whether they made the decision to offshore or not — must learn how to approach staff from other cultures in order to achieve the benefits outsourcing promises. At the root of management and communications challenges among multicultural American and Indian teams are cultural differences that need to be approach practically and without judgment, experts say.
“American managers need to avoid judgment and approach managing staff from other cultures with an attitude that they as managers need to change how they work and that the employees will also need to make adjustments to working for a U.S.-based company,” says Amy Tolbert, principal of Concord Multicultural Services, an IT staffing and consultancy firm that specializes in building global teams. “There has to be a mutual understanding of the differences and mutual attempts to find better ways to communicate and foster a productive working relationship.”
