Through a great many years, my career path has taken many twists and turns and I have seen this outsourcing debacle happen time and time again. I have never worked for Unum but I have worked in many similar companies who have made this same choice. Without fail, each of these corporations, and those like them, inevitably realize the choice to outsource was a poor one due to several varieties of circumstances. These include; poor contingency planning leading to staggering cost over-runs, nickel and dime contract charges from the 'external partner', vendor employees who do not have a vested interest in the contracted employer and abuse the privileges granted to them, as well as numerous other reasons I simply do not have time to address. Once the unavoidable threshold of cost and careless blunders is crossed, a decision is then made to bring everything back in house. Now the cost of outsourcing has doubled and customer service, on the broadest scale possible (internal as well as external), is rendered worthless, resulting in the equivalent of a bad credit report, reputation-wise, that takes years to recover from. A few years later, when a new leadership administration comes along, this ridiculous and vicious cycle begins all over again.
I remain baffled at America's current business 'executives' who lack basic common sense. I can only speculate that they are unable to see past their personal, at any cost, ambition in the pursuit of...? It is astonishing that board after board of directors continues to either be duped, or simply so greedy as to buy into this operating model countless times over despite the wisdom provided us by George Santayana who said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Unfortunately, dedicated American workers are taken down along with this poor decision making.
I would also like to add that those Americans that have made their occupation that of selling the outsourcing model to American businesses are treasonous and should be exiled to the country they are actively working to give our jobs away to.
Board members of Unum: Believe and invest in your American and local employees. Search your hearts and look past your personal ambition towards a nobler goal. Your decisions not only affect the employee, but that of their families and entire communities.