There have always been threats of someone taking your job and doing it for less and there have always been threats your job could be outsourced overseas. These threats come from bad managers, inept companies, economic circumstances and a commoditisation of tasks. So you knuckle down, work hard, please the boss, don't take lunches and constantly look over your shoulder, in case it comes true. You wish you worked for one of those companies constantly on the best employer list, you day dream about winning the lottery and sometimes you turn the system on its head, using the threat as an opportunity.
Such is the case for a software developer working at Verizon, who we'll call Neville, as no doubt Verizon would want to keep his name out of any more media stories. Not one to be anxious about the Chinese threat to the developer world, Neville who was earning several hundred thousand dollars, decided to use some of his income to secure his employment record built on flawless performance reviews. He outsourced his job to a developer in Shenyang for $50,000 a year, giving Neville ample free time at work and still enough cash for a lucrative lifestyle.
Seems Neville enjoyed web highlights of cat videos, shopping on eBay, longer than usual lunches, connecting with his friends on Facebook and supporting the new capitalistic approach of a developing China. At the end of each day, having sat at his desk and given the impression the sweat off his brow belonged to the company, Neville would dutifully send through immaculate reports on what he had accomplished that day without his superiors knowing it was coming all the way from China. If this all sounds like a movie plot, that's just the way Verizon Risk Team member Andrew Valentine felt when he discovered irregularities on Neville's computer containing hundreds of invoices to a third party contractor in Shenyang. Seems Neville was clever enough to set up this system across several companies at the same time, allowing him to garner flawless feedback on work accomplished by his Chinese alter ego.
Unfortunately Neville is no longer employed at the telecom company but his legend lives on and he is likely missed, for his scintillating lunch time stories accumulated from hundreds of hours on the net, his ability to find time to help out others in the office, all the while maintaining work of the highest calibre. About now, many are looking around at others in the office, wondering at their capacity to produce vast amounts of work without raising a sweat or complaining about the work load. Is Joe in the corner all on his own or does he have accomplices in computer sweatshops?
Instead of thinking the worst and bringing out the worst in employees like Neville, companies need to foster office collaboration along the lines of Tony Hsieh and Zappos, who work hard on making everyone in the organisation responsible for working with everyone else. One of Hsieh's mantras is collisions, community, and co-learning, bringing his staff as close together as possible, even making things a little cramped and not hiding them behind partitions. He thinks this will ultimately make them smarter, happier and more productive and never ever have anyone considering their job is at risk of outsourcing or that they need to do a Neville.
As Seth Godin notes in his blog today, make your job individual so the thought of outsourcing never occurs to management, "the only alternative is to humanise our work. To create something that only you could have made, or said, or conceived of. When it looks and feels like you, when you are the trusted source, then you are on the spot, under pressure and deservedly valued".
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