Executive Housekeeping Today - February 2008 - (Page 6) frugal housekeeper The Frugal Housekeeper is a.m. challenged. He stumbles out of bed, throws on a bathrobe, and waddles downstairs to the kitchen. Then, he makes Mrs. Frugal and himself a cup of tea and breakfast, and brings it up to the bedroom. Yes, in this day and age, the Frugals have breakfast in bed five days a week. However, that act is not exactly one of great charity; it is for survival as he needs an extra forty winks before finally waking up. He then trudges to the bathroom and looks in the mirror. “Yikes! Is that antiquated dude really me?” he thinks. Maybe he is younger or even better looking; however, a mirror only reflects back what one sees. Or does it? Have you ever bought some clothing, looked in the store mirror and it looks great, only to get home and after further observation and consideration, you find it makes you look like a blimp? One of the challenges with a mirror is that it reflects back the truth, in reverse. Write the letters in a word in the correct order, such as “FRUGAL,” hold it up, and look at the reflection in the mirror. It will be “LAGURF”—the exact opposite or backwards. Hold up the word “LAGURF” and it will come out the right way, “FRUGAL.” The mirror can either distort reality or cause one to see things differently. Likewise, when we make decisions, we may find out upon further reflection, observation, or time that the decision may have been the wrong decision. Over the years, many organizations have decided to outsource one or more t Looking in a Mirror: Reversing the Outsourcing Option by Alan S. Bigger and Linda B. Bigger operations, such as food services, landscaping, window cleaning, pest control, etc., and after further reflection on the services that have been outsourced, have determined to reverse that decision, much like the reverse reflection in the mirror. It may have looked great at the time the decision was made; however, either it didn’t pan out or it was the wrong decision. The Frugal Housekeeper has written innumerable articles about outsourcing. The most extensive article was published in Executive Housekeeping Today in three parts entitled, “The Dragon at Our Gate” in the June, July, and August 2005 issues. That was followed up with a reprise article, “Two Sides of a Coin: Outsourcing Revisited,” in July 2007. The articles endeavored to outline why service functions in an organization tend to get outsourced and what actions to take in order not to become outsourced. However, many organizations outsource one or more operations and later on regret that decision. Recently, we were asked to revisit outsourcing and discuss the concept of in-sourcing, in other words, reversing the pervasive trend to outsource services. Ironically, even though there is much information available about outsourcing a function, there is a veritable dearth of information about bringing services back in-house. Thus, in late 2007, we conducted an Internet survey attempting to answer some questions about in-sourcing. The response was not tremendous in quantity; however, the quality was good and informative. It was interesting to note that even though initial reasons to outsource seemed to be purely business (in other words, it seemed to cost less to outsource than to conduct the activity inhouse), the reasons to bring the services back in-house were quite diverse. Why did organizations bring services back in-house? Prior to discussing the responses, it is interesting to note that it seemed that none of the organizations responded lightly; all seemed to have had outsourced services for many years, and obviously took time to reverse that decision. • Price: It was noted that pricing of the contract tended to either escalate from year to year (paying more for the same service) or as one respondent indicated, their organization was “nickled and dimed for everything.” The general sense was that in the long run, at least for the organizations that responded, it was either cheaper or cost the equivalent to conduct the work in-house. • Quality: There seemed to be a general perception that the quality of service provided by contractors was less than satisfactory, and the following comment seems to be reflective of that sentiment, “We brought the work back in-house because standards were not being 6 Executive Housekeeping Today/February 2008
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