Is India the New America?

 The salary of an Indian is far less than an American. Their hourly wage would equate to five American dollars per hour compared to a salary rate of $13-$15 per hour here in the US.  This move by many corporations has helped to reduce one of their highest operating expenses line items – Salary and benefits.

When you analyze the entire concept, the benefit of outsourcing is probably not as justified as the corporations would like us to believe. The irony of it is that the savings that is supposed to be realized is reduced dramatically after you factor in several key expenses. Some of these expenses result at the initial launch but the majority occurs over the course of time that puts a serious question on what the actual cost savings are?

Off shoring has become a huge drain on our economy. Not only is this shift of work force effecting the current generation of workers, future generations are going to suffer as well. As the workforce continues to shift, our young American graduates will find it very difficult to secure jobs.

 The saying “You get what you pay for” is putting it mildly in these circumstances. I can attest from firsthand experience, having worked side by side with this new rash of workers.

Since training is conducted on site at most US corporations, the travel expenses to bring a staff of new hires to the US is exorbitant.  The journey is across the world is a 30 hour trip, with many layovers along the way. We will bring to the United States over 15-20 people at a clip. They are given temporary housing in apartments and extended stay hotels for up to two months for this “on the job” training period. Once a six to eight week training class is complete, they travel back to India accompanied by at least 2-3 US workers from each department.

Once they begin working in production, many “operator” errors surface which represents a lack of comprehension of the function they are tasked to perform. Since they want to make a good impression, and want to give us the sense that “all is well”, they will try to convince us that they understand what they have learned, when in fact they do not.

Assessment testing is conducted at every stage of training which helps us to uncover these incompetencies that seem to result from the language barriers. Their work habits seem to be very laid back compared to the US worker. It’s difficult to determine if it is a culture issue or simply the non understanding of the function they are trying to perform. They attempt to be extremely cautious trying not to raise any red flags that could place their positions in jeopardy.

Fixing errors or picking up the slack seems to fall back on the shoulders of their American counterparts. Overtime is necessary to properly address the back log of work resulting from slow production or chronic errors. What have we accomplished if we are paying the American worker one and a half times their salary to clear out the back log of work?

Customer retention has become a major issue as well. Have you ever attempted to contact a customer service department when the person at the other end has a deep accent and a lack of understanding of the questions being asked of them? Many consumers will close their accounts because they are angered and frustrated of having to speak and deal with individuals that do not understand them and are unable to assist them.

Recently, a large corporation used a marketing ploy to charge customers a yearly “guarantee” fee. The fee would guarantee an American customer service agent any time they called for assistance. Have we gone mad?

Here in the United States, our unemployment rates are soaring. The values of stock shares have plummeted. Corporations want to us to believe that by off shoring jobs, the health of the business will improve, and stock prices will eventually rise again. Did anyone stop to think that maybe a pay cut to the high level managers and CEO’s would be a better idea?

Weeks ago I watched the academy awards with my family. I may just be sensitive to the issue, but I could not believe that we were giving gold statues away like candy to the writers, singers, producers of Slum Dog Millionaire. Could we have kept something sacred to the American tradition?  It seems everyone is mesmerized by the pixie dust that has erupted in a love affair with India. With these thoughts in mind, I just cannot stop asking the question. Is India the new America?