Companies may outsource your remote job, experts warn
Pool of offshore-able workers has widened during the pandemic
As companies emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic looking to cut costs, experts are warning workers of an uncomfortable reality ahead: remote employees are more likely to have their jobs outsourced than others.
Since lockdowns shuttered office buildings, white-collar workers have settled into routines that have made the traditional workplace nearly obsolete. Meetings are conducted via Zoom, water-cooler talk is exchanged via Slack, and home offices are arranged with ergonomic chairs and ring lights.
Sensing a new-found freedom, some workers have even purchased property out of town — where housing is spacious and cheaper — to embrace an office-free lifestyle.
“Be careful you don’t remote-work yourself out of a job,” cautioned Howard Levitt, senior partner of LSCS Law, an employment and labour legal firm in Toronto.
“Companies now are probably asking themselves, if our employees don’t have to work in Toronto anymore, why can’t we have people working from Winnipeg, or Texas, or Panama, or Bangladesh?”
Outsourcing — or offshoring, when referring to work being moved overseas — is not a new phenomenon, though research suggests that a surge in remote work during the pandemic may accelerate it.
According to a recent study from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, one in five jobs based in the U.K. could be offshored in the wake of the pandemic, threatening the loss of whitecollar employment on a massive scale.
The study found that the country’s 5.9 million “anywhere” workers — which