HR Service Delivery

HRO has seemed dead for at least a couple of years now.  A couple years ago it was almost all I was writing about, and there were mega deals to be had every other month.  All consultants were talking about to their clients was deciding if they should outsource or not.  At the time,...
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I must say that sometimes M&A transitions are a pain in the *** for HR and HRIT practitioners.  It’s quite rare in my experience that a merger will be a pure 50/50%, more often than not one of the merger partners is getting a tiny fraction more than 50% and so can govern the...
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I’ve been through a lot of process mapping sessions in my life.  I’ve had the good opportunity to lead many, and also the opportunity to sit in and observe.  It always surprises me how often the current state processes are mapped, and then people go straight into the future state process mapping without real...
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I often get the question about how to deploy HR technology services.  People still seem to be in love with discovering the “best practices” in the industry, not realizing that they are general guidelines of what seems to be working for a decent population of companies in the current historical moment.  In fact, the...
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Tri-athletes spend a lot of time working on their transitions.  How many seconds does it take to get out of the water and into cycling shoes, and then onto the bike.  How many seconds does it take to get off the bike and into running shoes.  What can you prepare ahead of time so...
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It is not real secret that cyclists the world over hold tri-athletes in general contempt.  The general consensus is that when a tri-athlete is on the bike, their bike skills are so poor, they are a general menace to other cyclists and to themselves.  I’ll give you an example from my own experience this...
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As long as I’m writing about the Hadron Collider, I might as well write about string theory.  I’m not sure how to simplify this for non-scientists (I’m not one either obviously) but here goes:  String theory basically states that within the molecule, there are atoms, within the atoms, electrons, protons, and within each of...
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In our traditional 3-circle HR service delivery models (Ulrich model really), one of the major components is the center of excellence or center of expertise (COE).  The COE has never really evolved over time, but perhaps it’s ripe to do so now.  Traditional COE’s have always been benefits, compensation, recruiting, etc…  However, this may...
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The history of HR technologies has for many years been about functionality.  We have been increasing functionality levels for a couple of decades now.  Even the recent robust growth of talent management applications has been about functionality.  Vendors are fighting in a competition to have a “complete talent management suite” and adding functional components...
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Bill Kutik’s excellent interview of HP had quite a few excellent insights.  (sorry Bill, I’m a bit behind on listening to my iPod)  One of the insights that I picked up on was the integration and matrixing of the HR organization to better provide a unified face to the HR customer and create programs...
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Simon Baker wrote a piece that was not as inflammatory as the well known “Why We Hate HR” article a couple years ago.  I found it quite entertaining and thought it deserved a response.  Simon has a couple of good points, but also it’s discouraging to see his opinions from both a management and...
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In the team time trial, a group of cyclists (usually 4) will ride as a single unit using the technology of their bikes and ever possible advantage of drafting they can get.  Like a well oiled machine, a single rider will be at the front of the group, taking the majority of wind slowing...
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Anu posted this image of simplicity for user interface designs.  While it’s a bit of a caricature on how Apple and Google have designed their UI’s, it’s really quite accurate at a basic level.  Everything you need to do is in one single step. I’ve spent quite a bit of time sitting around on systematicHR...
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What follows is literally 3 weeks of questions around HR service delivery. These are questions that we can ask ourselves that can help diagnose porblems, solutions and opportunities. Hope you enjoy. ho uses our services and technology in ways we didn’t expect? In the most obvious case, this may be managers who have found...
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