Fairfield-based General Electric Co., once vilified in the U.S. for leadership in outsourcing jobs, is pulling more information-technology positions back in-house, Bloomberg News reports.
Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt has said GE will add more than 15,000 jobs in the three years through December. About 1,100 will be just outside Detroit in a center for information technology, a field emblematic of outsourcing. So far, GE has hired about 660 people in Michigan, a state that led the nation in jobless rates, making it a symbol of U.S. industrial decline.
“About 50 percent of the IT work was being done by non-GE employees,” Charlene Begley, chief information technology officer, said in an interview at the center. “That strategy may have had its time, but there was a lot of downside. We lost a lot of the technical capabilities that we have to own.”
Bringing more information-technology work back to GE lets the company move quickly to develop programs that respond to technology demands cropping up faster than ever.
“With iPads and whatever mobile devices people want to use, the need for better user experiences is essential to competitiveness,” Begley said. “So we’ve got a team that’s really good at writing user applications that are sexy, impressive and quick.”
Companies such as GE and General Motors Co. that once led in out-sourcing are in the forefront of a move in the opposite direction: adding workers back to their own businesses in mature markets like the U.K. and the U.S., said John Keppel, president for outsourcing consulting firm TPI International Inc.
