Capita Outsourcing

[saundersmatt]

Wow, and we thought SIMS is pants now. Capita poises axe over 1,000 staff - jobs headed to India ? Channel Register

 

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 that management confirmed to back-office workers and programmers that their roles were in danger and kicked off a 90-day consultation with them as required by law.

 

"There is scope for 1,000 potential redundancies," said a source.

 

Sources say some of the developer roles will be outsourced to Pune, one of seven Capita offices in India.

[creese]

Their website has gone down in sympathy.

[synaesthesia]

Huge surprise there.

 

I have a slew of (what I think are) amusing comments but most of them are in bad taste.

[CAM]

More example of projects made by the gov to boost our flagging economy just for the winner to turn round and disappear to another country.

[GREED]

Any programme of redundancy is very sad, my other half went though this last year (just before our baby was due.. thanks very much!). I do hope none of the staff we have in the past, and do, worked with loose their jobs to this.

[shenley]

It's not a new story. Here is a link from 2008 concerning Capita jobs in Birmingham being outsourced to India. This particular round of job losses were stopped, but I suspect they will return.

 

I think it is very interesting that Birmingham City Council outsourced IT (and other) jobs to Capita to save money, yet Coventry City Council took all it's IT jobs back in-house to save money.

[AngryTechnician]

Perhaps if they stopped outsourcing most of their development to contractors and had some competent management they wouldn't be hard up enough to need this. A friend of mine used to work as a contractor in the UK for Capita (left about a year ago) and he made an absolute killing out of the job. His experience was that there is an almost complete lack of project management, so requirements changed frequently and Capita end up paying through the nose for changes to agreed specifications.

[sparkeh]

requirements changed frequently and Capita we end up paying through the nose for changes to agreed specifications.

Fixed that for you

[localzuk]

CITS isn't the same division as Capita SIMS as far as I know. They seem to keep the business relatively 'insular', so this is unlikely to hit SIMS.net at all.

 

Also, this seems remarkably short sighted of them, as lots of other companies are pulling their work back into the UK from India, as the costs of operating there have increased dramatically over the last decade. There's a long list of companies who have discovered that outsourced IT just makes no sense, as the savings made don't materialise due to increased project management costs, increase communications difficulties and decreased quality of work.

[sparkeh]

CITS isn't the same division as Capita SIMS as far as I know. They seem to keep the business relatively 'insular', so this is unlikely to hit SIMS.net at all.

Sure but I was thinking more generally. Capita has its fingers in so many pies it will probably effect us somehow, eg they run customers services for TV licensing, The Pension Services and the Criminal Records Bureau to name a few.

 

Also, this seems remarkably short sighted of them, as lots of other companies are pulling their work back into the UK from India, as the costs of operating there have increased dramatically over the last decade. There's a long list of companies who have discovered that outsourced IT just makes no sense, as the savings made don't materialise due to increased project management costs, increase communications difficulties and decreased quality of work.

Agreed, this move appears to be bucking the trend by a good few years.

[GrumbleDook]

Part of the problem (considering I have friends working for CITS) is that where other companies have been snapped up by Capita over the years there is duplication of work and also some of the non-profitable work (which was one of the reasons why those companies were ripe for grabbing anyway) needed to be stepped out.

 

They have already done some of this but the folk with the thin watches and the folk who promise the profits to shareholder ... they have to do their bit to keep things in line.

 

It isn't nice and the article does say one clear thing ... they cannot put up the prices and so they have to get efficiency savings instead to hit their targets.

 

So ... what do we want? Would we be happier to see UK folk in jobs but pay a higher price for things or costs stay the same and jobs get put off-shore?

[sparkeh]

So ... what do we want? Would we be happier to see UK folk in jobs but pay a higher price for things or costs stay the same and jobs get put off-shore?

Rather simplistic way of looking at it.

The more jobs that are outsourced the more people are unemployed (and with the current climate more likely to stay unemployed for a while) which puts more strain on our welfare system and less money going into the economy which ends up costing us anyway. And personally I would like to see people staying jobs.

[GREED]

So ... what do we want? Would we be happier to see UK folk in jobs but pay a higher price for things or costs stay the same and jobs get put off-shore?

 

From a purely business perspective yes, from a moral perspective not so sure...

 

Actually if the jobs going are front line staff (helpdesk usually springs to mind!), then I wonder if customers would still be so appreciative of their cost savings (or lack of increase)?

[synaesthesia]

Really will be a shame. It's difficult enough when Northant's schools were told to use Capita's countrywide helpdesk instead of their own, eliminating the local knowledge that plays such a huge part in their success here. It also directly led to a fairly large scale abandonment of some of their services. So they want to ship that side of it to India? They don't have a huge amount to lose, being very honest.

 

Huge shame because many of the people there (whom I remain firm friends with) are some thoroughly knowledgeable and decent people.

[gl2u2]

Unfortunately, despite their pretence Capita really don't care about their employees or their customers. The bottom line is ALWAYS about the money. BSF was the worst thing that ever happended to schools in the UK. Capita know that BSF is dead in the water and now they are just trying to screw as much as they can out of what's left in the pot.

[GREED]

Unfortunately, despite their pretence Capita really don't care about their employees or their customers. The bottom line is ALWAYS about the money. BSF was the worst thing that ever happended to schools in the UK. Capita know that BSF is dead in the water and now they are just trying to screw as much as they can out of what's left in the pot.

 

That's perhaps a little harsh with such a generalistic statement

[glennda]

Rather simplistic way of looking at it.

The more jobs that are outsourced the more people are unemployed (and with the current climate more likely to stay unemployed for a while) which puts more strain on our welfare system and less money going into the economy which ends up costing us anyway. And personally I would like to see people staying jobs.

 

Yes the more things that are outsourced might loose a few jobs but at the end of the day in the UK if somebody outsources to capita it just means that people are employed by capita rather then by the government. Our LEA has outsourced its entire IT dept to capita in recent months, pretty much everybody went with it or took early retirement I believe.

 

Outsourcing to abroad is a whole different kettle of fish though.

[synaesthesia]

This is one of the very reasons why I left a certain company to work directly for a school. Many people thought it was slightly strange to want to move from private sector to public in such a way, however working for a school feels far more rewarding and more importantly for me and my family, far safer too, even with budgetary problems that schools face every day. Business is hard and usually it has to be that way for some businesses to survive. Not saying that's the case here, I don't think any of us will ever know the true reasons, but it's hardly a surprise.