Functional
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HRO – Success and Partnership
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The success rate of HRO contracts is bad to dismal. That isn’t to say that companies are not saving money, or that vendors are providing bad service levels. But often, companies are dissatisfied with their overall relationships. The key indicator for satisfaction is not service delivery or cost savings (although those are drivers). The key…
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HRO Market Leaders
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It’s interesting that only several vendors hold a large majority of the market share in the HRO world – almost an 80/20 rule. If you look at the top 3 (Hewitt, Accenture and ADP) you are probably getting close to 70% of the total HRO market share depending on how you measure it. This piece…
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HRO – Innovation or Best Practices?
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There is a lot of debate when companies enter into HRO contracts about how much best practice a HRO vendor can bring to the table. There is also much conversation around how much innovation and thought leadership the same HRO vendor can bring to innovating complex processes to bring savings to the customer. These two…
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How Did They Get Here – Hewitt Associates
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The other day I was trying to remember what happened to a company in the benefits administration space I used to deal with quite regularly. Of course, as been happening with increasing regularity, it had been acquired some years ago by another provider and has been all but lost except in the memories of those…
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HRO – Defined
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I’ve debated HRO definitions here before. Is HRO any type of human resources outsourcing even if it’s just payroll to ADP? Or does HRO mean full BPO for HR functions (HR BPO)? It’s quite arguable that you should define HRO as any type of outsourcing for any HR function. If you took this definition, there…
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How To Annoy Your Peers
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I’ve been in all sorts of situations. From the smelly guy, to the office in front of the kitchen, to sitting behind the cell phone guy. The woman who had extra butter popcorn every day at 3:30 pm was about enough to make me quit. Careerbuilder.com via CNN.com published a list of everything you need…
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Hewitt’s Financial Results – What Do They Mean?
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Hewitt’s very public financial difficulties continue today, days after announcing quarter-end September 30, 2006 financial results. It is not my intention to single out Hewitt by writing about them again. Rather, as the recognized leader in HRO, Hewitt can be viewed as the industry bellwether and can provide insight into the dynamics of the industry.…
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Some Things Should Never Be Outsourced?
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I’m not talking about the highly transactional stuff like payroll, benefits, or technology. In general, there’s a huge return on some of the administrative and transactional processes. What we’re really talking about are the strategic activities, but even that gets a bit gray, as I personally think that just about anything can be outsourced. Take…
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Social Security Reform Revisited
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This past week, President Bush resurrected the issue of Social Security Reform. As part of this political season, it seems he wants to flex some presidential muscle by attempting to re-establish his core initiatives which have stalled in congress over the past 6 years. Clearly, the war on terror has made a robust domestic agenda…
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Hewitt’s Lessons Learned
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From time to time companies exhibit moments of organizational maturity not often enough seen in the market. This week’s moment comes to us courtesy of Hewitt Associates’ Mike Wright, global HRO sales co-leader, during his presentation last month at the Conference Board’s 2006 Human Resource Outsourcing Conference in Chicago. Thank you (again) to Jessica Marquez…
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100% Claims Audits Revisited
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Nearly one year ago, Double Dubs graciously asked me to be a regular contributor on this most amazing blog of his. I think all of us can agree that what he has built here is impressive. He has created a reference tool for HR professionals (both in and out of the technology space) to come…
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Traditional Outsourcers – Vendor Updates
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Outsourcers: This is a rather boring category as there are only 2 traditional outsourcers worth mentioning. However, the last several years have been interesting for both of them, but I’ll back up an entire decade since many people I talk to are pretty far behind on their news (the below in alpha order): ADP Global…
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A Technological Approach to Claims Audit
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The last two weeks I wrote about the ineffectiveness of traditional claims audit and the inherent conflict of interest some companies face when they perform such audits. This week I’d like to introduce a company that brings a different approach to the industry: HR Best Practices. HR Best Practices was founded by Howard Gerver five…
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Independent Consulting: Perception or Reality?
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Last week, Barbara Martinez wrote a very in-depth article which appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal (September 18, 2006; Page A1). A subscription to WSJOnline is necessary to view the article, but I encourage you to read it if at all possible. In the article Ms. Martinez writes about independence in…
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Branding, Communications, Compensation, Engagement, HR Strategy, HR Technology, Talent Mgmt, Vendors, Workforce Planning
We Have Work to Do
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For all our lofty talk about employer branding, employee engagement, communications and change management, and for all the money we’ve been spending on implementing technology, process and workflow, we don’t seem to be tying the two together. I won’t be commenting heavily on this as I really think you should read the whitepaper of the…
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TCO: Measuring Risk
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In a prior post I wrote about the Total Cost of Ownership (“TCO”) in the context of risk. Today I would like to write about techniques to measure the cost of risk, particularly in the case of administering benefit plans. The shortfall of TCO modeling for administrative functions is that typically, quantifying the costs of…
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Change Management, Communications, HR Strategy, HR Technology, Knowledge Mgmt, Learning Mgmt, Portal
HBR – P2P and Web 2.0 Leadership Development
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In 1995, two young U.S. Army officers who had been friends at West Point found themselves living down the street from each other at a base near Honolulu. Nate Allen and Tony Burgess were both in their first stints as company commanders, each responsible for three platoons, or about 120 soldiers. At the end of…
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Leaves Administration Software
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I’ll quietly admit that I don’t know enough about absence management and leaves administration. About all I know is that FMLA, state permutations around FMLA and absence policies are somewhat complex. Reading this article, I’m not sure I’m totally convinced that best of bred solutions are always the best way to go, but as with…
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Total Comp Integration
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One of the beautiful things about integrated total compensation is that it’s easy to get – you can buy if from any one of hundreds of vendors. (there are probably only a few dozen who actually do it well though). I said it’s easy to get, not necessarily easy to do. Total compensation is really…
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Performance Management to Compensation Management Integration
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Unfortunately for most managers, technologists usually see a need to integrate performance scores with the compensation planning tools, but not much more than that. The reality is that if you are a manager, you really need more than just a score. First of all, the score has to be meaningful in some way, and second…