Bracing for Backlash

Computerworld - One day, the political windstorm around offshore outsourcing will blow over. One day, the inflated numbers on both sides of the debate will be debunked. One day, the last angry letter from a displaced American IT worker will be published.
Unfortunately for IT managers everywhere, that day is not today.
The emotional backlash against any plans to outsource technology jobs overseas -- regardless of how economically or competitively driven -- is a force to be reckoned with in today's IT workplace. It dampens the morale of even the most valuable, talented employees, as we saw recently in our Best Places to Work in IT survey . One reader sent us a note last week suggesting that we include "foreign outsourcing statistics" in future Best Places reports, thereby revealing how many U.S. citizens are part of the IT head count of the companies on our list.
Negative reactions can blast back from customers as well as from affected employees, as Dell and Lehman Brothers discovered when they had to pull customer service operations out of India. Despite a few other widely publicized retreats, the majority of Fortune 1,000 companies are forging relentlessly ahead with offshoring plans -- albeit with greater stealth, in hopes of avoiding bad publicity.
The bottom line driving what Gartner calls an "irreversible megatrend" is always the same: cost savings too compelling to ignore in an open, interconnected global marketplace. "To outsource offshore is not a political decision on the part of the company. It's an economic decision with political ramifications," says Mike Hoyt, CEO of Paradigm Works. He's one of our sources in "Damage Control" , a story about how IT managers can cope with the offshore backlash.
One impressive example of a company dealing effectively with the backlash problem is Union Bank of California, which created a "sourcing management office" to handle any concerns that might harm its reputation with customers. The office's duties include handling all communications about the bank's offshore plans.
The preventive measures we discuss in our story basically boil down to having honest, frequent, candid communication with everyone involved. CFO magazine gave similar advice last month in its cover story about offshoring, noting that the majority of the 275 financial executives surveyed had no intention of canceling their offshoring plans, despite the backlash. Some 42% of those CFOs said they were realizing net savings of more than 20% from their offshore projects, and 64% were planning to increase offshoring levels.
So where do companies go wrong in communicating their outsourcing plans? Let