Leadership hinted that team has no long term future

Question

I work for a multinational corporation. My teams senior leaders have indicated that my subteam in a high cost location would no longer be hiring and any attrition would be backfilled in lower cost offices.

I've taken that as a hint that eventually my team will cease to exist in this location.

I want to move to another team with a future in this location so that I have the motivation to learn and progress.

Am I right to move team? How do I explain this to my leadership when/if they ask why I'm moving?

Answer 1

I've taken that as a hint that eventually my team will cease to exist in this location.

That seems pretty clear.

I want to move to another team with a future in this location so that I have the motivation to learn and progress.

Am I right to move team?

Maybe.

Since the corporation feels comfortable replacing the high cost folks in your subteam with workers from a lower labor cost region, how confident can you feel that exactly the same fate doesn't await all other high cost folks in other subteams at your location?

If it were me, I'd be looking for a job at a different corporation. (In fact I have done that exact thing a few times over the course of my career, for exactly these reasons.)

How do I explain this to my leadership when/if they ask why I'm moving?

You could "fudge" your answer by indicating how much you always wanted to join the new team.

Or you could be honest and convey your concerns about your existing team.

Make your decision based on your knowledge about how your particular leadership would react to your decision.

Answer 2

You are right to want to move, as you've sensed correctly ("any attrition would be backfilled in lower cost offices") that the work is being outsourced/offshored -- probably at first through a process of 'passive' attrition like this, but sorry to say I've no doubt that eventually this whole subteam will eventually get 'backfilled' to the other location.

Do you think the team you want to move to has any real future in your location? If so, you could state that explicitly if asked why you want to move: you see the writing on the wall for the original team, etc. Present it in terms of "business awareness" etc if needed.

Personally I'd be looking outside of this company for opportunities at this point, if possible, though.

Answer 3

I do not know where in the world you are based but I was in a fairly similar position.

The company that I worked for was profitable without selling any more physical product and was bought out by a large US multinational company. They hade bases in low wage economies for manufacturing and lower tech development work. We were told in no uncertain terms that there would be no more recruitment in the UK with future staffing making use of the low cost labour available in India and China. An additional consideration was that the external infrastructure that we used was due to disappear at a given date in the future and we needed to produce a replacement product to allow us to continue the business.

Given all of these problems that we could all see you would expect everyone to be leaving as fast as posible but this did not happen. We could see that the company was heading for closure but many had worked there for a long time and had built up an entitlement to sizeable redundancy payments so everyone sat tight, continued to go to work until the day that we were all let go and were compensated appropriately.

If you can see that you will be made redundant but are entitled to a large payout when that happens it may be worth your while hanging on until the company decides to let you go. Giving up a payout equivalent to a year's salary may not be the right option.