What’s the Scoop at Sainsbury’s?

SSON interview with Nick Speight, Head of HR Shared Services, Sainsbury’s SSON: Why have you decided to participate in the European HR Directors’ Summit 2011? NS: As a fairly new member of SSON, I was really pleased to hear that SSON run a regular event that focuses in on HR Shared Services. I was particularly keen to be involved in the streamed interactive sessions. I have lots of experience gained over the years as an operator, a senior HR professional, a buyer, and seller of outsourced services, and as a HR Shared Service Leader, but I don’t profess to have all of the answers. I’m really looking forward to facilitating some great discussions and hearing from the real experts – the delegates from HR Shared Services in many different organisations… SSON: What challenges are you currently facing in your role as Head of HR Shared Services at Sainsbury’s? NS: There are always challenges at any time and in any industry and I don’t think the particular challenges we are facing are exclusive to HR Shared Services nor to Sainsbury’s. The current difficult economic climate means that most retail businesses are striving to keep costs under tighter control than ever before. This cost-conscious environment plays really well to the strengths of a good HR Shared Service organisation and really supports our whole reason for existence. Yet, however solid a business case may be, there can, in the current climate, be a reluctance to make the necessary upfront investment (for example in IT changes) that are required to implement new services. SSON: Do you have plans to expand your HR operation? And if so how do you envisage this will look like? NS: We are constantly looking for ways to expand the service offered by our HRSS operation. However, every potential new service transfer needs to be backed up by a really solid business case and it needs to have the support of the key business stakeholders. We are not going to increase the size of our shared service operation for the sake of it. We are always looking for efficiencies in our existing operation and I’d rather be able to take on more without increasing the operation. The first phase of our growth plan is about "mopping up" – ensuring that in the future we can truly say that ALL transactional HR administrative tasks in our rather large and complex business really are managed through Shared Services. Once this has been done, then we will move onto the next stage, which is to move HRSS up the value-chain, by introducing more value-adding services. We don’t fully know what this will look like yet, however, it is likely to include new services such as Policy Advice. SSON: What requirements did you have when it comes to standardising processes? NS: The introduction of HR Shared services into an organisation that employs 150,000 colleagues across 960 sites requires an enormous amount of process standardisation. Process review, measurement, and improvement is fundamental to everything that we do. SSON: How are customer needs changing today, and what requirements do you have of your team members as a result? How is the services delivery environment evolving? NS: Customers want more for less. This means we have to be more and more demanding of our team. We also rely increasingly on our colleagues to be actively involved in process improvement and to suggest better, faster, and simpler ways of working. SSON: What has been your biggest achievement in HR services? NS: As a member of the Senior HR Team at Somerfield Stores, I was involved in the successful outsource of the Payroll and HR Admin team to Ceridian. Over the two years I was involved, the service Somerfield colleagues received was improved beyond recognition and we introduced a new HR and Payroll System, which moved colleagues from negative to positive pay. SSON: What challenges do you envisage facing in the future and how do you think SSON can assist in tackling them? NS: Once we have completed our current journey of introducing new services into our HRSS operation, the challenge will be to keep our team motivated. How to keep things fresh and to identify any remaining opportunities to do things more efficiently? SSON will provide me with access to resources, best practice from industry experts and a network of other HR Leaders, which will help me to keep abreast of further opportunities to enhance and improve our service and best practice in keeping the operation fresh and the team motivated.

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