Banks to send IT roles offshore
posted in Outsourcing News and Top Outsourcing deals |Source: http://www.contractoruk.com/news/003795.html
Lloyds TSB has announced plans to offshore 200 IT contractor jobs from the UK to India.
The bank’s exporting of tech freelance jobs is part of its wider aim to transfer 655 IT roles from its UK division to the sub-continent over the next nine months.
In the six IT divisions affected by this phase of the bank’s outsourcing plan, only 30% of all jobs will remain in the UK, while 70% will be based in India, unions say.
Two-hundred contractor roles will be exported overseas from August, alongside 250 permanent roles, with all the transfers due to be made by early 2009.
The bank’s IT workers in London and Wythenshawe, where Lloyds has a total of 1,760 staff, are likeliest to be hit hardest, although as many as 11 UK-wide offices could be affected.
Officials at the LTU union said they fear Lloyds’ plan to export 450 jobs, announced internally last week, sets a precedent for more of its 2,400-strong IT workforce to be based offshore.
Earlier this year, Barclays also announced that some of its UK IT jobs will be offshored to support the worldwide growth of its financial services hubs.
As a result, staff in Poole fear their division will close by the end of the year, resulting in the expected loss of a few hundred IT jobs, sources said.
A Barclays spokesman refused to be drawn on whether its transfer of UK tech jobs, some of which may be destined for Africa, would result in a dramatic cut to its domestic IT workforce.
“As each part of the business grows there will be changes and within those changes there may be [an] impact on the IT function and then [there] may be some element of offshoring to meet the needs of business,” he said.
“Our business in Africa is growing, therefore we have [service] hubs that we need to develop to meet the [region’s] growing needs;…[these] may require the offshoring of some jobs from the UK to Africa.”
The spokesman admitted that during 2007, a number of Barclays domestic IT staff “may have been impacted” by the changes the bank has made to its business.
When Barclays makes a decision to offshore any jobs from the UK, the bank stressed that those affected are promptly informed and made aware of the remuneration package.
Barclays said it is “very sensitive” to the impact of offshore outsourcing upon its UK workforce, and said that any concerned IT staff should speak to their HR partner.
