TUPE is a UK legal framework governing what happens when an organisation transfers some of its employees into the employ of another. This kind of thing happens a lot when, for example, a big bank decides to concentrate on its ‘core values’ and outsource part or all of its IT function. Often, as part of the deal, the outsourcer will pick up, or ‘TUPE’ the bank’s IT staff. Where TUPE comes in is that it offers transferred staff some protected employment rights – their new employer cannot offer them poorer terms and conditions than those provided by their original employer. The devil is in the detail, of course, and the new employer has many techniques available to degrade its new employees’ terms and conditions over time – to make them cheaper, which of course is what all this is about
But actually, TUPE is not what this article is about – not directly. In their ever-increasing search for reduced costs, many, many large businesses are handing over supposedly ‘non core’ business functions to third-party suppliers, who also frequently pick up some ‘non core’ staff via TUPE. But think, for a moment, how this is leaving the businesses themselves. Leaner and meaner, no doubt – but also more homogeneous – stuffed to the gills now with just ‘core’ people. Underneath all this short-term money-juggling, there lurks a tragedy
Every company needs its core people, but it also benefits from its mavericks, the people without MBAs who are possibly specialists in support services or have other competencies – like IT, or cleaning. By stripping out such folks via TUPE, an organisation sterilises its gene pool, increasing the probability that ‘rising through the ranks’ simply means replacing one faceless bureaucrat with his or her genetic twin. When times are changing, adding a little spice to the organisational mix – maybe by promoting a capable specialist manager into a more senior general management role – can revitalise a tired and failing organisation. But the outsourced organisation has already eliminated many of these potential outliers – the outsourced organisation has killed too many of its babies.