HR Operational Excellence Within Shared Services
As you grow your business, the value of a well-functioning human resources team is clearer. HR is more than just a division of your company telling you what you can and can't do. HR is central to the growth of your organization. As you grow, you're likely realizing that your HR team isn't big enough to handle all the tasks that get thrown their way. HR is in charge of everything from recruiting to off-boarding, and this can cause issues within your company. What happens when HR is stretched too thin, and they can't do their job correctly?
Finding the perfect HR solution is challenging
There are many solutions out there to your HR problems. Each solution that your company adapts can feel like a piece of patchwork. You are slowly adding another band-aid to fix a small problem in your business structure. HR is coming to you with software to test, and it works, but the software bill is slowly piling up. You might even notice redundancies with the software that your company utilizes. Both of these tools offer on-boarding services, so why do we use this tool and not the other one?
HR solutions aren't cheap, either. Many HR solutions charge by the seat, so as you grow, so does your bill. Before you know it, each employee could cost your company hundreds or thousands per month along with their salary.
Time is valuable
When you think about time, you can approach it from a few different perspectives. Overall, we understand that time spent doing a task pulls us away from the time we could be spending doing something else. Let's take a look at a few different time scenarios.
HR time is valuable
HR isn't just about fielding questions on where to turn in employee W2s. Your HR department is answering a ton of useful questions, but these questions eat away at their efficiency and make it challenging to get any real work done. When your HR team can focus on business-specific tasks, you can create true operational excellence within your human resources department.
General employee time is valuable
Alternatively, we understand that general employee time is valuable. When our employees are stuck trying to find where to submit a form or how to handle an HR process, they are wasting time that could be spent on their job. When you use shared services, your employees go to one central location for most of your HR processes. Instead of using one tool to submit a leave request and another tool to submit a work request, your employees can go to one centralized location.
Centralized and organized systems can save your company hours across the board. These systems also make it easier for your employees to finish tasks and removes many excuses your employees may have about why they didn't turn something in.
Understanding what needs to be outsourced
When looking for the perfect shared services partner, you need to understand the kinds of services that you want your HR department to outsource. What is causing a drain on your HR department? Your shared services team can field questions about things like benefits, forms, where to send in leave requests, etc. Many shared services teams can also handle all of these low-level tasks for you.
Outsourcing tasks to shared services is fantastic because shared services partners specialize in the kind of things you want to outsource. You can rest assured that the work will be done just as great, if not better, than it would be in-house. Now that your team is free from these repetitive tasks, your team can focus on the business-specific duties that will move your company forward.
What does your HR team do now?
Now that your team isn't working on low-level HR tasks, you might wonder what they'll be doing instead. When you move to a shared services approach, some employees may need to be let go. Depending on how large your HR team is, you may be able to find other HR tasks for people who are no longer required. Alternatively, you may move those redundant employees to another department entirely. Here are some jobs that your HR team can do now that they aren't focusing on low-level tasks anymore:
- Learning and organizational development
- Talent acquisition
- Employee relations
- Rewards and benefits
Overall, your HR team’s goal should pivot to a more strategic approach. How can they make the most impact and drive your business forward with more strategic and complex activities?
Conclusion: Plan your HR transformation
Transforming your HR department won't be easy. You'll need to focus on getting everyone on the same page. You need to be clear about who is in charge of the various parts of this transition. Create a transition plan for all of your HR staff. What do they need to focus on now that they aren't fielding low-level questions anymore? How do they create boundaries with employees that they may have helped for years? Using a shared services model can feel scary, but it is a gigantic step in the right direction for the growth of your company.