Over the past several weeks we have listened to the rhetoric coming out of Washington, DC about how this action or that would lead to job killing legislation from the people we elected to represent us at the federal level. We further have over the past several years witnessed an ever growing level of unemployment in this country and also in countries around the globe.
The rhetoric bemused the fact that we have a large number of ready willing and able individuals who want to work but corporations are turning their current situation against them causing individuals to look for work even longer. Congress keeps turning around and stating that despite all the viable evidence, that if we continue to lower taxes then the unemployment problem will be solved. It has never worked the way they expect it too. Look at the employment picture globally and we find that there are jobs out there, but they are not in the United States. Every organization looks at their operations from four perspectives which become the basis for their budgetary decisions. First and unfortunately the primary concern is how much return on investment are we returning to our stakeholders. We will talk later about how this may not be the area that should hold the primary focus. The second factor becomes the cost of sale. How much does it cost us an organization to get to the point where the client or customer says yes they want to purchase our product or service.The third factor is that of the margin under which we make our sales. We can sell X for so much and it costs us so much to produce. The difference is critical in our pricing strategies.The fourth and final factor is the profit we earn from our business operations. Based on these four views of the business operations we rush to judgement as to the best way to meet the goals. Major corporations decide that the best way to achieve these goals is to do the majority of their hiring overseas. There is absolutely no incentive to keep the jobs in the US. Lowering the tax rate is not going to change this. It will however change when the corporations understand that there are factors that they do not take into consideration that could meet all their goals. Listen to your customers. You saved money by sending your work overseas but did the customer service level remain at the same level? From personal experience I would say probably not. From Starbucks to AT&T to Radio Shack there corporations who have come to the realization that bringing the work back to the US would resolve several problems. One it lowers the unemployment levels. Two, it brings back a concern for the reason you are in business-to acquire and maintain customers. Three it may in the long run lower your costs because of the shorter problem resolution durations. It is time that this government takes the necessary steps to show our business enterprises that in the long run it makes more sense to keep the jobs stateside rather than sending them overseas. I was at a HR conference last year where one of the presenters stated he was working with an IT company who wanted to open a customer service center in Wisconsin because it was cheaper then running it in India. So if you want to at least attempt to eat your cake and have it too, consider ways to revise your internal processes so that they run faster, better and cheaper and hire or maintain your workforce locally. It is possible if you think out of the box of business think that you have always done. New world, new methods, new focus. Employees are assets and you can utilize them to your advantage.
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