Meaning & use
outsourcing
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
The practice of paying another company or people outside your organization to do work you would otherwise do yourself.
Grammar: Usually no article: outsourcing saves money.
Patterns
- outsourcing of something
- outsourcing to someone
The firm saved money through the outsourcing of its customer service.
Outsourcing to overseas call centres became common in the 1990s.
Unions have criticised outsourcing because it can reduce local jobs.
Common combinations
- outsourcing of jobs
- The outsourcing of jobs worried the factory workers.
- IT outsourcing
- The bank relies on IT outsourcing for its help desk.
- rely on outsourcing
- Small firms often rely on outsourcing for payroll.
- cost savings from outsourcing
- Cost savings from outsourcing were lower than expected.
- outsourcing contract
- They signed a five-year outsourcing contract.
Synonyms and how they differ
- subcontracting
- Subcontracting means passing part of a specific job to another firm, and is common in construction, whereas outsourcing covers whole functions such as payroll.
- contracting out
- Contracting out is more common in the public sector and is a plainer way of saying much the same thing.
- offshoring
- Offshoring means moving work to another country, while outsourcing can happen within the same country.
Opposites
Word family
- outsource verb
- to give work to an outside company
- outsourced adjective
- done by an outside company
- outsourcer noun
- a company that does outsourced work
Commonly confused: outsourcing or offshoring?
outsourcing vs offshoring
Offshoring always means moving work abroad. Outsourcing only means giving work to an outside party, wherever it is.
Practice
Which situation is an example of outsourcing?
Choose one answer.
Outsourcing means paying an outside organization to do work. Giving a task to a colleague is just delegation within the team.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “outsourcing”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.