{"id":546,"date":"2006-10-20T01:00:22","date_gmt":"2006-10-20T09:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=546"},"modified":"2006-08-13T21:10:12","modified_gmt":"2006-08-14T05:10:12","slug":"sleepless-nights-in-hr-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=546","title":{"rendered":"Sleepless Nights in HR Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

2. Lowering the Cost of HR Operations<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I said a couple of says ago, I don\u2019t care about getting HR a \u201cseat at the table.\u201d We should already be there. What I care about is getting HR to stay at the table.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it. I don\u2019t want HR Operations to cost very much. What I want to spend money on is not the call center, data entry, or payroll systems. To the point that I can minimize these expenditures, the better because they don\u2019t add immense value to the HR strategy (the call center being an exception at times). What I do want is to spend lots and lots of money on my talent management programs and on communications. I\u2019d also like to spend lots of money engaging my upper and mid level managers in conversations about business operations.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty serious about this one. We talk about effectiveness versus efficiency. HR strategy is very much about effectiveness. HR Operations is very much about efficiency.<\/p>\n

Part of the rationale for outsourcing is always \u201cwe (vendors) will take on the administrative tasks so you (client) can focus on the strategic stuff.\u201d This is all very nice, but the reality is that we also don\u2019t want to be spending money on HR operations when we could be spending it on HR strategy. And just as in the outsourcing world, our goal as HR people should be to shift the balance of tasks from the administrative to the strategic \u2013 regardless if we\u2019re outsourcing or not.<\/p>\n

One of the things I haven\u2019t talked about much at systematicHR.com are centers of excellence (COE) \u2013 mostly because it\u2019s just not what I do. However, organizations are implementing centralized centers to both leverage better cost models and centralize talent in a way that is most effective for delivery. Think about what the obvious outsourcers have been doing: ADP and Ceridian (in their large employer service models) have both gone to fewer service centers. For one thing, the cost model spreads fixed costs of office space and overhead personnel much better. Secondly having people in places where the right competencies are in higher supply and where you can get a critical mass of people to leverage a broader base of skills is very advantageous.<\/p>\n

I actually believe that part of the outsourcing equation is employee and manager self service \u2013 basically broadening the outsourcing concept to your employees rather than just 3rd<\/sup> party organizations. As such, efficiency also means that you might deploy technologies to get more accuracy and less centralized administrivia.<\/p>\n

While all of this cost cutting is very nice, the key is to not forget the main point \u2013 all if the cost cutting is to save money (and time) for you to spend on strategy work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2. Lowering the Cost of HR Operations As I said a couple of says ago, I don\u2019t care about getting HR a \u201cseat at the table.\u201d We should already be there. What I care about is getting HR to stay…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strategies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}