The Jag “Dish”: When Long Offshoring Hours Are a Drag

Each month, outsourcing expert Jagdish Dalal tackles tough questions submitted by our readers.  This month’s question is from a manager of IT at an optical equipment maker in Silicon Valley, CA.  Have a question for Jag’s bag? Submit it to info@meltingspot.com.   

Q. “Jag, in last month’s column, you wrote about the benefits of a 24 x 7 operation that “follows the sun.”  Our virtual teams are based in Santa Clara, CA and Pune, India.  The time difference is 12 hours, so there’s virtually no overlap in our working hours.  As a manager, I often end up working around the clock to make this arrangement succeed.  Can I have the benefits of the time difference without the insane hours?”

A. Dear Reader, you ask a great question about a very common problem.  You’re not the first person to become somewhat disenchanted with offshore outsourcing (offshoring), after one too many midnight phone calls with teams overseas.  I know your situation well - it’s the arrangement “of your dreams,” only in the sense that you end up working all night!  If this trend continues, it’s time for you to make some changes.  I have some recommendations to help you get time back on your side.

First consider the type of work you are sourcing offshore.  Is it well suited to offshoring?  Projects that easily lend themselves to a 24-hour workday can be divided up so team members who are not in the same place geographically can work on different parts of the project independently, without needing much formal interaction with each other.  Software maintenance and customer support are classic examples of these.  Just as a car can be assembled from parts manufactured at opposite corners of the globe, certain types of projects, with proper planning, can come together from parts made separately on different continents.

Of course, there will be times when the nature of the work does require teams to interact more closely.  When schedules do not overlap, the most effective way I have seen to make the work hours equitable is to establish a “rotating” or alternating early start time for the work day. For example, at your firm, the Pune, India team could be asked to arrive two hours early every Tuesday.  Then, on Wednesday, it would be Santa Clara’s turn.  And so forth.  I know of companies that have had considerable success with this approach.  Maybe you won’t make everyone completely happy all the time, but you can fine-tune the schedules over time to accommodate individuals’ needs. 

When I referred in last month’s column to the 24 x 7 operation (see: MeltingSpot: The Jag “Dish” August issue), I was talking about three different locations that can cover the entire day and yet still have a reasonable day shift (the example I gave was American Express, with their centers in Arizona, England and India). More and more, Indian service providers are opening operations centers in places such as South America to take advantage of an additional time zone and labor pool.   You may wish to speak to your service provider about their plans in this regard; perhaps they are already working on finding more resources in other time zones nearer to you.

Jagdish Dalal is a regular columnist for MeltingSpot.  He is the Managing Director of Thought Leadership for IAOP (International Association of Outsourcing Professionals) as well as Founder and President of JDalal Associates, a consulting firm.  As a thought leader in the field of outsourcing, Jagdish has more than three decades of experience in outsourcing (as a CIO of large multinationals such as Xerox, Carrier, Unisys as well as a Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers).  He came to United States from India more than four decades ago and is proud to be an American-East Indian (as Jane, his wife, says, he has a Western mind and an Eastern soul).   He is passionate about outsourcing, offshoring and how it can and has changed the world.  As an evangelist for outsourcing, he is proud to be an active leader through IAOP - a true global organization promoting outsourcing as a profession.