I have been reading the research produced by the outsourcing companies lately, and here I will review the one produced by Hewitt called: Is HR Still Stuck in the Middle?
The methodology comes out of their HR Analyzer, an activity based costing analysis that provides some interesting benchmarks. I think it is worthwhile looking at, as it is their bread and butter and better be accurate.
Stuck in the middle of what? Hewitt has seen that many HR departments started to transform themselves to deliver more value to the business and are stuck. So, HR leaders, listen: why do they think you are stuck?
Unclear vision, poor change management, inefficient HR delivery, right people doing the wrong work and suboptimal use of HR technology are the five reasons identified.
How can you solve your blurred vision? Hewitt says simply create a vision and make sure to sell it to the executives and to managers with numbers. We cant agree more with this last point.
Right people doing the wrong thing is a very simple concept but that can be very powerful indeed. One example is a F500 that saved $13.5 million by assigning the appropriate entry-level individuals to the administrative task skilled specialists typically used to perform.
The wisest advice regarding suboptimal use of technology is probably to make sure you have change management in place as well as process redesign when you put a new system in place. But maybe the simplest and most efficient is: evaluate effectiveness periodically. This is a subject close to our hearts. Leading the way with the On Demand platform, we, for instance, at Taleo enable each customer to have a global view of the world and true consistent real time benchmarks on a periodic basis to evaluate where you stand. For sure, it is a key to world class performance.
Hewitt suggests as well three ways to get unstuck,
1. Move to shared services, where they have seen the cost per FTE goes from $2,403 to $2,017 and the ratio of FTE to HR staff from 104 to 82.
2. Invest in HR technology/self-service.
3. And of course explore the opportunities for outsourcing.
At the end of the day, maybe the question is, are we really stuck? Of course change is a constant. Whats probably the best for organizations that dont want to move to an outsourcing model is that the outsourcers will make you more accountable for your performance, and make your department become better.
