Survey: Most UK-IT Jobs Offshored to India In An Attempt to Slash Costs

According to a recent survey, a large chunk of the IT functions-related jobs have been off-shored to India within the last six months.

The poll was done by an IT recruitment firm based in UK, IT Job Board and it revealed that an astonishing 79 percent of the firms surveyed had their work outsourced to India. The surprisingly large figure is presumably due to an urgency to slash costs during a period of global economic downturn, say analysts.

Teresa Sperti, IT Job Board boss (international marketing) told the Business Standard, "Off-shoring is becoming an increasingly popular phenomenon, particularly as companies look to reduce cost during these difficult economic times."

As far as job positions go, 79% of the respondents said that software developer jobs were off-shored, while 71% indicated that programmer roles were being sent overseas and 67% of the participants advised that IT support jobs were being shifted. Apart from this data, approximately 34% of IT professionals that took part in the survey said that more than 50% of their firm's IT department was already moved to overseas locations.

Clearly, analysts believe that UK is undergoing a skills crisis, exacerbated by the recession. If there is going to be a long term solution with respect to IT skills, they say, businesses need to create an interest in developing and utilizing a local talent base instead of offshoring IT functions, Sperti was reported as saying.

A primary concern amongy many experts is that offshoring firms need to need to assess the trade off in terms of quality in comparison with the cost benefits of outsourcing to India and other overseas destinations. Meanwhile, approximately 40% of the IT professionals who responded said the major issue at hand with respect to offshoring was a deficiency is business knowledge, while a staggering 83 percent reported that it was reflecting a negative impression on their IT work quality.

IT Job Board is a group that collaborates with firms in Europe and UK along with IT recruitment agencies to establish live contrat IT jobs that are permanent.