THE IMPACT OF MULTI-SKILLING ON AN OUTSOURCED ENVIRONMENT

One of the biggest changes of recent years has come from the growth of groups of people using online technologies to use outsourcing as a way to build a viable service delivery business that can be run from virtually anywhere in the world at lower costs and better efficiency. Few challenges faced by the Outsourcer like sudden attrition, penalty costs, decreased productivity of employees and reduced employee morale makes it difficult for them to retain the businesses. The Strategy of Multi-Skilling has been successfully used across countries in Manufacturing, Construction, Hotel and other Service based industries. Multi-Skilling plays a very important role in an Outsourced Environment since such businesses struggle at times for maintaining business continuity under adverse situations such as sudden unexpected attrition. The objectives of this research were to get answers to the following questions. 1. To what extent are the Outsourcer companies using the Multi-skilling Strategy? 2. What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of using Multi-skilling from the worker as well as management’s perspective? The methodology comprised of desk research using published articles, reports and statistics as well as interviews conducted with the workers and the Shop Floor Managers