Meaning & use
insourcing
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Meanings
noununcountablebusiness
the practice of keeping work within a company, or giving it back to the company's own staff, rather than paying an outside supplier to do it.
Grammar: Uncountable: talk about "insourcing" in general, never "an insourcing" or "insourcings".
Patterns
- insourcing of something
- bring something back through insourcing
After years of using outside call centers, the bank chose insourcing and reopened its own phone team.
Insourcing the IT support saved money in the long run, though it meant hiring twenty new staff.
The report compares insourcing with outsourcing and lists the risks of each.
noununcountablebusiness
the practice of a company using workers or services from inside its own country instead of from abroad.
Grammar: Uncountable and often used when talking about jobs returning to a home country.
Patterns
- insourcing of jobs
- a shift toward insourcing
The new tariff made insourcing of factory work more attractive to manufacturers.
Voters welcomed the insourcing of jobs that had once been moved overseas.
Common combinations
- insourcing of jobs
- The insourcing of jobs became a campaign issue in the election.
- insourcing versus outsourcing
- Her essay compares insourcing versus outsourcing in the car industry.
- a move toward insourcing
- The firm announced a move toward insourcing its customer service.
- insourcing strategy
- Their insourcing strategy relies on training existing employees.
- insourcing saves money
- Managers claim insourcing saves money, but they must pay wages and benefits.
Synonyms and how they differ
- in-house production
- Use this when you mean the actual work done inside the company rather than the policy of keeping it there.
- reshoring
- This fits when the point is bringing work back to the home country from abroad, while insourcing can also mean keeping work inside one company.
- in-house sourcing
- A more general phrase for getting goods or services from your own organization rather than an outside seller.
Opposites
Word family
- insource verb
- to do work inside the company instead of paying an outside supplier.
- insourced adjective
- describing work or a service that has been brought back inside the company.
- insourcer noun
- a company or department that carries out insourced work.
Commonly confused: insourcing or outsourcing? insourcing or offshoring?
insourcing vs outsourcing
Outsourcing means giving work to an outside supplier, the exact opposite of insourcing; mixing them up reverses the meaning of a sentence.
insourcing vs offshoring
Offshoring means moving work to another country, which may be done by an outside firm or by your own foreign branch, so it is not the same as insourcing.
Practice
The company decided to stop using an outside agency and handle all its advertising ______.
Choose one answer.
Insourcing means doing the work inside the company, which matches "stop using an outside agency". Outsourcing and offshoring both mean giving the work away, and downsizing means cutting staff.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “insourcing”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.