Hibernian Insurance to export 580 Irish jobs to Bangalore, India.

Sunkist

http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/0623/hibernian.html

Hibernian plan to export 580 Irish Jobs.

I plan to canel my Hibernian Policy and give the business to an Irish Company (but not Quinn Direct). I sent a mail to Hibernian. Are there any 100% Irish Insurance Companies?

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direct@hibernian.ie

Dear Hibernian Board of Directors,
I heard of your plans today to cut 500 Irish Jobs and export the work to Bangalore in India. Please be informed that I will be cancelling my Policy as soon as I get coverage with another Company.

I won’t do business with you ever again and I don’t support unethical companies who take advantage of people in the Third World. I wish you luck as I think you are going to need it with this very courageous decision,

Regards,

XXX XXXX

dudara

Hardly a consumer issue - in the definition we employ here.

Moved to Work & Jobs

dudara

Aviva, Hibernian's parent company will be understaking a major restructuring and streamlining in the UK following a lot of recent acquisitions - maybe this is part of it.

anthony4335

Not yet, but I can only imagine the phone call, when you have a problem. I agree with the original poster, if the companys business is Irish, it should employ in Ireland.

axer

Sunkist wrote: »

direct@hibernian.ie

Dear Hibernian Board of Directors,
I heard of your plans today to cut 500 Irish Jobs and export the work to Bangalore in India. Please be informed that I will be cancelling my Policy as soon as I get coverage with another Company.

I won’t do business with you ever again and I don’t support unethical companies who take advantage of people in the Third World. I wish you luck as I think you are going to need it with this very courageous decision,

Regards,

XXX XXXX

Lol, that is *good* for india. It is not exploiting them - it is giving them jobs. The more jobs that are available there the higher the wages will climb.

If you solely argued that Irish jobs are being lost then I would agree but not that they are exploiting people in India and not because it is unethical to pay Indians less in India than an Irish person would get in Ireland. Also, you don't even know how much they will be paying the Indians or how they will treat them.

dudara

Playing Devil's advocate here, but if you take away your custom, then continuing to employ Irish people becomes even more uneconomical.

These decisions are made at a level where a few cancelled policies won't even be noticed.

colly10

dudara wrote: »

Playing Devil's advocate here, but if you take away your custom, then continuing to employ Irish people becomes even more economical.

These decisions are made at a level where a few cancelled policies won't even be noticed.

Exactly, it would take 100's of people to cancel before they would be hit at all. Even at that it would probably make up for itself when it comes to the wage bill

the_syco

If you've had a hard time understanding the jibber-jabber of an Irishman, you won't makes heads nor tails from an Indian. The majority of them speak great english, but they don't quite get the language correct. I expect more people will leave because they can't understand the "advisors" as opposed to because they moved out of here...

BuffyBot

Aviva (Hibernian's parent) is cutting jobs worldwide, and moving a load of their back-office work to their already existing centres there. I can't see any reason that Hibernian would be spared anything that it's corporate siblings are having to deal with.

From what I read, customer facing roles (customer service/call-centres) aren't the question but administration, so for the majority of people I don't see that anything will change signifigantly. As for exploiting? You've got to be kidding - the wages don't come close to Irish standards, but that's the point. They're not working children in mud-huts - the jobs tend to be highly sought after, and paid quite well in comparison to the local market. Companies tend to provide quite good facilities there for their employees also.

TBH I don't see there will be all that many "Disgusted of Ballywherever's" will occur, and certainly nothing that'll make Aviva give two hoots either way.

damnyanks

This is just the way of the world. We live in a globalised workplace. You buy things cheaper in shops because its made in a developing economy. If everything was made in Ireland or even the EU then you'd start to notice cost being a lot higher.

As for India being a third world country thats crazy talk. 30 years from now it will be bigger then Europe!

veryangryman

I still agree with the original poster to cancel his policy as a matter of principle.

Globalisation sucks and just because its happening doesnt mean that you should just let it.

Its sad that the insurance market is also starting to go to India too. It was one of the few places remaining where youd actually understand the person at the other end of the phone.

Raskolnikov

BuffyBot wrote: »

You've got to be kidding - the wages don't come close to Irish standards, but that's the point. They're not working children in mud-huts - the jobs tend to be highly sought after, and paid quite well in comparison to the local market.

You get what you pay for.

You can get a graduate software engineer from a dodgy agency in Bangalore for roughly E4,000 a year. You might as well piss the money away for the garbage code you'll get. If you want want the work done properly, you'll be looking at about E30,000 a year.

My last employer got stung badly from outsourcing. Foolishly, instead of paying for quality, they went with the cheap option. Even worse, after the Indian failure, instead of considering better quality Indian engineers, they simply rehired Irish workers. Cost them a packet.

mrfreddred

Having worked for a major Irish company who outsourced their IT to India 4 years ago let me tell you that it has been a complete disaster for them. Not only are the cultural differences over the phone causing problems but simple things like spelling names, addresses etc are totally frustrating. Now dont get me wrong, I am as open to free trade as the next guy and I wouldnt be able to offer my services in a second language ....but it seems that accountants make decisions like this based soley on cost. Customer services, technical skills and years of practical experience in the irishg market place are invaluable. Hibernian will regret this....and I dont even have a policy with them, so I dont have an axe to grind...I only have first hand experience of dealing with a "helpdesk" in Bangalore.....

dudara

Outsourcing is a valid organisational model for a business to adopt. It is a logical extension to the shared services model and when implemented and entered into correctly, it can bring great benefits to an organisation.

However, as many posters have pointed out, many companies have rushed into outsourcing, without ensuring that solid, efficient processes are in place beforehand along with clear policies and well-defined service level agreements. The result, a lot of ill-will (rightly so in many cases) against outsourcing.

A lot of call centre jobs (Abtran for one) are outsourced within Ireland itself. Some Indian companies have even set up outsourced call centres in Northern Ireland.

J.S. Pill

From what we've been told, the actual front line call centre work will the least likely to be affected. Hibernian direct is based in Galway and the broker call centre is based in Cork and its Dublin thats going to take the biggest hit.

miju

the_syco wrote: »

If you've had a hard time understanding the jibber-jabber of an Irishman, you won't makes heads nor tails from an Indian. The majority of them speak great english, but they don't quite get the language correct. I expect more people will leave because they can't understand the "advisors" as opposed to because they moved out of here...

agreed, there have been a few instances when I've specifically not done business with a company as they are a foreign call center.

Nothing to do with racial attitudes etc, just simply , 100% COMPLETELY hated trying to hold a conversation with someone who's "local twang" I couldnt get the jist of:mad::mad::mad::mad:

Not with Hibernian but TBH it's the nature of a free economy and more power to them if thats what they wish to do. Not being funny but Irish people will do a stint of "mock revulsion" for a while and then continue on as normal.

Anyone remember Irish Ferries ????

BuffyBot

Its sad that the insurance market is also starting to go to India too. It was one of the few places remaining where youd actually understand the person at the other end of the phone.

The call-centres don't appear to be under threat at the moment...

You get what you pay for.

You can get a graduate software engineer from a dodgy agency in Bangalore for roughly E4,000 a year. You might as well piss the money away for the garbage code you'll get. If you want want the work done properly, you'll be looking at about E30,000 a year.

My last employer got stung badly from outsourcing. Foolishly, instead of paying for quality, they went with the cheap option. Even worse, after the Indian failure, instead of considering better quality Indian engineers, they simply rehired Irish workers. Cost them a packet.

You get what you pay for on occasions, that's true - but it doesn't nessecarily mean that you get inferior work. There are lots of horror stoties, but I know of quite a few businesses that have gone down this line and it's worked out just fine for them.

AFAIK this move isn't outsourcing per se. Aviva have their own operation there and have done for a few years - basically they're centralising a lot of back office stuff in the one, cheaper, operational site.

I think it's a bit rich for the Irish to complain anyway - for years we were absorbing very similar moves from countries such as the US and and UK and reaping the benefit..

eth0_

Any Indian company I have ever dealt with i've ended up refusing to do any more business with them. It's not just an accent thing, it's manners and politeness (very different attitude to this in India) on the phone, actually having the SKILLS to do the job, acting like a fscking automaton when you're talking to them (refusing to deviate from a script or use their initiative). I work with (Indian) people who've worked as team leaders in these outsourced places and they openly admit that the way to get promoted in these places is merely to outwardly appear to be a good worker - take as many calls as possible, work overtime every day - they don't give a hoot about whether or not the customer was dealt with properly!

eth0_

BuffyBot wrote: »

I think it's a bit rich for the Irish to complain anyway - for years we were absorbing very similar moves from countries such as the US and and UK and reaping the benefit..

You're missing the point here. Of course out-sourcing will happen, it's a fact of life. However, using the inferior services of Indian companies shows a real contempt for your customers. Do you think hibernian will lower their policies next year because of the savings they're making on outsourcing to India? :rolleyes:

Nody

eth0_ wrote: »

Any Indian company I have ever dealt with i've ended up refusing to do any more business with them. It's not just an accent thing, it's manners and politeness (very different attitude to this in India) on the phone

This one honestly baffles me because I've found Indians to be way more polite then any Western service centre I've dealt with (Americans excluded with their grating fake care which gives me the shivers).

actually having the SKILLS to do the job, acting like a fscking automaton when you're talking to them (refusing to deviate from a script or use their initiative)

Problem with how they are profiling, they look for uneducated people in Ireland and take the same in India which is a mistake. Having said that I've had Western call centres refusing to deviate from the script as well, example calling a major European ISP to their UK Call centre:
Me: Hi, I'm calling from company Y, I've got a couple of 2MB lines down, reference this and that, equipment checked and restarted and it shows no signal from your side.
ISP: Have you checked the cables?
Me: Yes, and restarted the equipment on our side, we're getting no signal from you.
ISP: And all cables are plugged in correctly?
Me: Yes, as I said, we've checked all equipment, rebooted it and it shows us no signal from your side so can you please send it to your network team to let us know why.
ISP: Have you tried to restart the equipment?
Me: Yes...
ISP: And does it work after that?

And so on.

Indian outsourcing is not an automatic win, but if done properly, and if you hire more then the first person walking in from the street, it can be done at a noticeable less cost then in Ireland. This is especially true for anything that don't require physical presence or dealing directly with customers. You can also utilize the time zone difference if you're smart in regards to testing etc. If you don't think a cost saving of 50% (and usually more towards 75%) is interesting for ANY company then are you also willing to pay that difference on the price?

Ask your self when you go buying something, do you buy the cheapest option or the Irish option? If history is anything to go by Walmart shows the true answer to that question, no matter the bravado of the people saying they are going to stand up to commercialism and outsourcing to cheap countries. Oh and before someone thinks the support will come back to Ireland I can say with out a doubt it will not, if it comes back it will go to the likes of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary etc. where they pay about 50% of the salary of Ireland but get fluent English and even then it will most likely only be a temporary basis. The common set up then is first level support is in India (80% of the people), the once who scream enough or can't be understood is sent to the local shore outsourced centre (i.e. Eastern Europe) and now feel that they have dealt a blow against outsourcing.

eth0_

On paper your arguments are sound. However, I have experience of dealing with numerous Indian support centre's and they are far, far worse than anything i've experienced in Ireland/UK/USA.

The fact is, Indian outsourcing does not work in the majority of cases. Unless your idea of 'success' is purely that your wages bill is 75% less every month.

Nody

eth0_ wrote: »

On paper your arguments are sound. However, I have experience of dealing with numerous Indian support centre's and they are far, far worse than anything i've experienced in Ireland/UK/USA.

All depends on what the company pays for though, if the likes of Eircom would outsource to India yea, I expect that to be a bad experience. I would not expect them to have the know how, patience or long term view to make it work.

The fact is, Indian outsourcing does not work in the majority of cases. Unless your idea of 'success' is purely that your wages bill is 75% less every month.

I'm working in a company with major parts of our IT sourced to India (still belonging to us though), it is also rolling out SAP globally (we've got over 100k employees world wide, operate in over 50 countries etc.) and it works fine. Of course the people we have are not non skilled labourers grabbed from the street and they speak fluent English with out a problem. The reason for choosing India is also the cost savings from hiring hundres of SAP experts/consults in Western Europe to develop it compared to India is quite a noticable saving for the company. Is it as quick as having a local SAP expert in every location and a 300 man team on every continent? No. Does the cost savings motivate minor drop in effiency/convience? Hell yes!

The thing is though any outsourcing, irregardless of where it is being placed, has to be done with proper routines in place, documented and with a great deal of support and careful selection of candidates. How ever most outsourcing is done in a sloppy way in the belief if we throw it all at the outsourcer they can fix the problem later and save us money now (and the outsourcer often make such promises as well) and that will always fail miserably. Because most companies also choose the outsourcer from bidding looking at the price tag the companies get what they pay for (i.e. minimal skill, minimum training enviroment and ****ty service to their customers).

There in lies the problem though, most people will compalain, some will leave, but when the savings are bigger then the people leaving (and as usual there is the ever so lovely 3 to 6 month perspective of the higher managers)...

Gone West

eth0_ wrote: »

On paper your arguments are sound. However, I have experience of dealing with numerous Indian support centre's and they are far, far worse than anything i've experienced in Ireland/UK/USA.

Likewise. They are just not of the same calibre.
I won't be using Hibernian anyways, myself.
I realise that it makes economic sense for them to move, but branding themselves "Hibernian" (hibernia was the latin name for Ireland in Roman times) and deliberately laying off a substantial number of Irish people, simply to re-hire cheaper workers in India smacks of hypocrisy.

They should at least have the gonads to change their name to Hindurnian.

chipclub

FuzzyLogic wrote: »

...branding themselves "Hibernian" (hibernia was the latin name for Ireland in Roman times) and deliberately laying off a substantial number of Irish people, simply to re-hire cheaper workers in India smacks of hypocrisy.

They should at least have the gonads to change their name to Hindurnian.

They will not be Hibernian by the time this comes to pass. The company announced recently that they are moving to the global Aviva brand name.

Gone West

ahh there we go.
It would have been cheeky to keep the name alright.

craichoe

Nody wrote: »

All depends on what the company pays for though, if the likes of Eircom would outsource to India yea, I expect that to be a bad experience. I would not expect them to have the know how, patience or long term view to make it work.

I'm working in a company with major parts of our IT sourced to India (still belonging to us though), it is also rolling out SAP globally (we've got over 100k employees world wide, operate in over 50 countries etc.) and it works fine. Of course the people we have are not non skilled labourers grabbed from the street and they speak fluent English with out a problem. The reason for choosing India is also the cost savings from hiring hundres of SAP experts/consults in Western Europe to develop it compared to India is quite a noticable saving for the company. Is it as quick as having a local SAP expert in every location and a 300 man team on every continent? No. Does the cost savings motivate minor drop in effiency/convience? Hell yes!

The thing is though any outsourcing, irregardless of where it is being placed, has to be done with proper routines in place, documented and with a great deal of support and careful selection of candidates. How ever most outsourcing is done in a sloppy way in the belief if we throw it all at the outsourcer they can fix the problem later and save us money now (and the outsourcer often make such promises as well) and that will always fail miserably. Because most companies also choose the outsourcer from bidding looking at the price tag the companies get what they pay for (i.e. minimal skill, minimum training enviroment and ****ty service to their customers).

There in lies the problem though, most people will compalain, some will leave, but when the savings are bigger then the people leaving (and as usual there is the ever so lovely 3 to 6 month perspective of the higher managers)...

Outsourcing saves money short term, but long term it's a disaster. I work for a company with just under 80k employees worldwide. We also use SAP and the Indian Outsourcing company we use just isn't flexible enough. Some of these outsourcing crowds are just too big to manage themselves. They allocate you resources and 20% of them are as useful as a hole in the head.

We only use them now for inventory and admin work as its project based and frees up time for us.

The plan going forward to to dump the Indian crowds and claw everything back to Germany.

Heybabyy

Try customer support of BT, NTL or Eircom and it is no different than Indian call centre. Indian call centres are in general not upto the mark - fully agree but they can offer 24 * 7 support. So companies do look for cheaper alternative when the quality is anyways not going to be significantly different.

The jobs are all back office jobs and not call centre. These jobs can be done anywhere in the world by anyone with average skills.Then why pay more - that's the logic. The salaries paid would be as per the market rate in india but note that the salaries are india are defo going up and up. See naukari.com if you are in impression of hiring
s/f engineer (as per Raskolnikov) @€;4000 per year - those days are gone.

FYI most of the guys at team lead level own a 3-4 bed house, have luxury car with full time driver
and 2 full time maids working at home. These luxury can't be imagined here even at director level.
The Irish media doesn't show the true picture. I saw "Kidnapped Abroad" last evening and the places they show of New delhi are the most filthy ones. They don't want to show the central locations as the skyline may
put people here in depression. Even the local Metro pulls out the most weird news from remote village in India. They never publish the photograph of golf event of top IT company that employs 50000 people.

Speak to someone who has been to Bangalore or Hyderabad.The IT market and general economy in India is much better than here and if employers don't treat people properly - there are 100 options next day.
People do work extra but the career growth is much faster. You might have 800 people reporting to you
within 5 yrs of work ex. Can you do that here ??

mrfreddred - has issues with people pronouncing names/addresses incorrectly. How many people here can
pronounce indian names correctly?

Nobody can predict whether outsourcing can be a profit making or a complete disaster? For success,
you definitely need good few indian managers on the top with overseas experience as "single point of contact".

Also don't forget that Ireland has been pitched as cheaper outsourcing location in Europe to American companies. So why take the piss when India/China pitches as more cheaper alternative. Hate or Love it - Power is going to East.

BuffyBot

It would have been cheeky to keep the name alright.

Ermm...considering they haven't been Irish owned for years, how does that factor in it? (Bearing in mind that some of their operations would have been provided by Norwich Union/Aviva in the UK already...)

dazberry

This is happening a lot more than people realise, its just that none have been as highly publicised (likely none have been to the extent of 580 - but a couple of hundred here and a few hundred there and they add up). Also the timing isn't great - if this had happened a couple of year ago when the economy was running hot - I'd say it would have appeared as a small aside in the business news and have been a lot better received.

D.

J.S. Pill

BuffyBot wrote: »

The call-centres don't appear to be under threat at the moment...

The call centre end of things in staying in Ireland alright but a lot of the workers are still going to be up-rooted as they're moving most of the Cork call centre to Galway. "Consolidation" I think was the word they used.

chipclub wrote:

They will not be Hibernian by the time this comes to pass. The company announced recently that they are moving to the global Aviva brand name.

Hibernian have been under the Aviva umbrella for many years now but it was announced in April that Hibernian will be rebranded and re marketed under the Aviva name. The 3 main insurance companies under Aviva are Hibernian, Norwich Union and Poland's Commercial union. Whats going to happen shortly is that these local brands are going to replaced by the global brand of Aviva. A lot of people were baffled as to why the company would jettison such strongly recognised brands. Maybe they're going to save a lot of money by consolidating office stationary printing, who knows? Point is if this is the sort of decision that a board room can generate I wouldn't be surprised if this out-sourcing venture backfired on them.

DublinWriter

Heybabyy wrote: »

Try customer support of BT, NTL or Eircom and it is no different than Indian call centre.

Eircom's call centre has been based in India for ages and I'm still waiting on the typical Irish five-minute moral-outrage.

J.S. Pill

J.S. Pill wrote: »

The call centre end of things in staying in Ireland alright but a lot of the workers are still going to be up-rooted as they're moving most of the Cork call centre to Galway. "Consolidation" I think was the word they used.

Just to give you all an update: We were initially told that the call centre operation will be staying in Ireland but when management were pressed about the possibility of it moving to India once the first phase of the move had been completed they gave some very ambiguous and worrying answers. I'm not going to go into the details of any internal communications but the workers are being given a lot of contradictory and deliberately vague information about the move. Needless to say there is a lot of discontent about the plans which is being exacerbated by the way in which it is being handled.

IanCurtis

Just wanted to point out this

The CEO holds the nickname "the axe man" and this has been planned since his appointment nearly two years ago.

I would imagine they will move the jobs for a few years, get rid of many of the permanent staff and when they return, rehire Irish residents on contracts.

Three of the executive management left shortly after his arrival.

He is married to an Indian woman and has two adopted Indian children.

This is definitely going ahead, all the Union can hope for is that voluntary redundancy packages will be offered.

Run_to_da_hills

Hibernian Staff have now voted strike action.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0711/breaking45.htm

ScouseMouse

While not intending to wind up anyone, I am glad this is happening. I had dealings with Hibernian and they were complete and utter ejits. They turned down an offer to fix me up for 900 euro and ended up paying me 12 grand.

I refer to a boards thread I opened at the time to back up my comments.

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055093327

The obvious way to cut costs would be to sack the ejits that dealt with me and replace them with people who have some cop on !

eth0_

superscouse wrote: »

The obvious way to cut costs would be to sack the ejits that dealt with me and replace them with people who have some cop on !

Unfortunately, any dealings i've ever had with indian companies (especially in support) has shown they are severely lacking in cop on and will never deviate from their scripts and processes.

BostonB

eth0_ wrote: »

Unfortunately, any dealings i've ever had with indian companies (especially in support) has shown they are severely lacking in cop on and will never deviate from their scripts and processes.

I've had that experience with some, Dell support etc. But I've also dealt with Indian software companies who were excellent. Just depends on the people you get. There's all types of people everywhere.

luckat

They're capitalists. Their function in life is to grind as much profit as possible out of the cheapest workers they can get. Act surprised.

doolox

I have worked with Indians for a number of years in a multinational company.
They are no better or no worse that any other members of our planet.
I have had an instructor in my last assignment who was an inspiration, always cheerful, accurate with information, and how to do the job, good with cautions and what to watch out for in each machine and free with all types of information on getting the job done effectively. He made me look good!
on the other hand I have had one who was an out and out bully and needed to be reported ( an Irishman would rather have his B*****cks cut off than report someone...it's in our history.) He didn't speak to me for a week but
we ended up with a workable working relationship, which is all I wanted.
Others from the subcontinent I have found cheerful, hardworking and good family people and my wife , who has worked with them as nurses in her job, has found much the same.
One has to talk slower than usual when dealing with non-native ( and some non-Irish native ....) english speakers but that is part of the new world we live in.

J.S. Pill

doolox wrote: »

I have worked with Indians for a number of years in a multinational company.
They are no better or no worse that any other members of our planet.
I have had an instructor in my last assignment who was an inspiration, always cheerful, accurate with information, and how to do the job, good with cautions and what to watch out for in each machine and free with all types of information on getting the job done effectively. He made me look good!
on the other hand I have had one who was an out and out bully and needed to be reported ( an Irishman would rather have his B*****cks cut off than report someone...it's in our history.) He didn't speak to me for a week but
we ended up with a workable working relationship, which is all I wanted.
Others from the subcontinent I have found cheerful, hardworking and good family people and my wife , who has worked with them as nurses in her job, has found much the same.
One has to talk slower than usual when dealing with non-native ( and some non-Irish native ....) english speakers but that is part of the new world we live in.

I think you're completely missing the point. You cited your experiences with a foreign colleague in what seems to be a fairly specialised role. What we're talking about here is the issue of offshoring, the particular institution that is the offshored call centre or processing centre and the problems that arise with their use. Businesses utilise them mainly for cost reasons of course but some of the problems that arise include: difficulty understanding the agent, lack of local knowledge, rigid adherence to scripts & the resulting lack of flexibility and, particularly with India, large staff turnover.

Ordering a computer or updating bank details through such a call centre can be difficult enough but for a product like insurance the language barrier will be particularly pronounced. Insurances policies can be complicated and nuanced and mistakes made can be costly for the company and customers so I would hope that Hibernian get some reasonably high calibre workers. Turnover could be a major issue for Hibernian as even the lower lever jobs require a lot of knowledge which takes many months to build up, if turnover is high quality will plummet. And also, lack of local knowledge will make something simple like getting a quote very laborious and frustrating (think having to spell names and addresses using the phonetic alphabet).

Nobody is suggesting that there aren't going to be decent, hardworking people behind the phones but these problems are almost inherent and not totally a reflection on individuals.