Outsourcing Is When a Company

¶ … Outsourcing is when a company uses third party services to do the work that could normally be done in-house. Companies in the technology field have been using outsourcing for several years now. Many of these firms have their technical support call centers located in countries other than the United States. Many companies use outsourcing because of the cost saving benefits. When third parties are used, only salaries need to be paid and not a full benefits package that most American companies provide to their employees. The downside of outsourcing is that many times there is a language barrier between the customer and the customer service agent which sometimes causes frustration on the part of the caller. Companies should always consider the benefits and risks to outsourcing in order to make an informed decision.

Outsourcing is a decision that must involve the human resources department because it must be involved every step of the way. Outsourcing is nothing new, but as the workplace is ever evolving, more research needs to be done on this topic to not only keep up with this growing trend, but to also discover human resource's ever changing role regarding their involvement in the outsourcing process. Research is needed in order to find out the solutions to these issues.

In order to do this, the research should select a few companies that are currently outsourcing some aspect of their business and have been doing so for a while. The researcher can develop survey questions to find out what the companies consider the pros and cons of outsourcing as well as the overall process in general. The survey results can be coded and entered into a statistical software package such as SPSS to report the results. The researchers can also use the information gathered on the overall processes that the companies used from start to finish as a guideline for other companies wishing to outsource. All of the findings from the survey and the written processes can be compiled and written into research paper form.

There are several situations going on with this job analysis. Mary Watson has worked for the retail clothing chain for several years and has held several different positions. As a result, she feels that she knows best how the stores should be run. Since she was not satisfied with her former position as an assistant store manager because she felt that the position was not clearly defined or managed properly by the store manager, she is set on redefining this position. There may be problems with how Mary is going about redefining the position of the assistant store manager.

One key factor with this case is that Mary is basing her decision to redefine the job description off of her personal experience and that of a few other people. While her story is relevant, it is unsafe to assume that all of the associate store managers in her region feel or has experienced what she did while she held the position. The rewritten job analysis is more of an impulse or knee jerk reaction to a bad experience she had and as a result, the new job description for the assistant store manager position may not be thought out properly. Another key factor in this case is that Mary has given no indication that she consulted with anyone from her Human Resources department regarding this issue. Since they are trained in this area, they would be able to tell guide her on what she needs to do or let her know if a new job analysis is really necessary.

Although Mary did not do a poor job or rewriting the job description, it is, for the most part based solely on what her perception of the position should be. She only consulted with a few other assistant store managers who may have felt obligated to side with her on any issues that she brought up regarding the position. An issue that stands out with her job description is in the 'Experience' section of the analysis. It states that the preferred person hired will have worked for the retail clothing store for at least one to three years. This makes it seem as though only applicants who already work for the company will be given serious consideration and may discourage any outside interest in the position. This statement probably should be left off of the new job description in order to make it more flexible.

One thing Mary has not considered is job rotation within the stores. Since there is an assistant manager for each department of the stores, the individual departments are what each store manager will have knowledge about. This approach will not be very customer friendly since customers have a tendency to ask anyone that appears to work for the store in general questions pertaining to their particular issue. They may ask an assistant store manager working in the shoe department a question about cosmetics. It is unacceptable to a customer when an employee of the store cannot answer a question, no matter what department it pertains to. Janis says this is the reason why it is important to build teams that are cross trained in order to provide the customer the best service possible (48).

In order that the new job description is not based on the opinion of a few workers, Mary should work with an HR consultant to write up a survey to be taken by the associate store managers in her region. The survey should be anonymous and place in a locked drop box after completed by the employees. It should contain multiple choice questions as well as open ended questions for the associate managers to respond to. Based on the feedback from the surveys, a new job description should be prepared which includes any pertinent suggestions received from the surveys.

It is important that Mary has some input, but that her input is limited so that the newly written job description is not biased. She will need the help of a Human Resource consultant so that she does not run into any issues with the new job description that could place the company at risk for a lawsuit. Grensing-Pophal says that while a job description is not legally required of a company, having one is a smart move because it provides a written source stating why the employee is requiring certain qualifications of the applicant and why they will be required to perform certain duties. Without a job description, she says it is difficult for a company to defend itself against any allegations of discrimination (32).