News You Can Use: Is outsourcing out?

The economy has everyone doing more with less, and as far as HR/benefit pros are concerned, they're doing it in-house.

The HR/benefits outsourcing industry has skidded to a near halt, as Helen Neale, an HR outsourcing research manager at NelsonHall, a business process outsourcing market research firm tells EBN this month: "Organizations are actually pulling back from outsourcing initiatives because they've got other things that they need to be worrying about ... The kinds of deals that we're seeing are much smaller in size. Organizations do not want to deal with the amount of investment both in time and money that those huge deals require."

Hear more from Neale on outsourcing trends in a "Five Minutes With ..." podcast. Click here to download the audio.

Tip of the Day: Do due diligence on outsourcing locations

New research from Black Book Research and Brown-Wilson Group ranked the safest and most dangerous offshore locations, Workforce Management reports. Employers with international operations and looking to outsource jobs or entire business units will want to do their homework to make sure the location they select is safe for their employees and makes the best business sense.

According to the survey, the most dangerous outsourcing locations are Jerusalem, Israel; Mumbai, India; Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paulo, Brazil; Manila/Cebu/Makati, Philippines; and Delhi/Noida/Gurgaon, India. Singapore; Dublin, Ireland; Santiago, Chile; Krakow/Warsaw, Poland; and Toronto were ranked the safest.