Is HR Outsourcing the right solution ?

"Companies today are trying to do more with a limited amount of resources. Outsourcing the recruitment process allows the central HR staff to do more strategic recruiting tasks. HR specialists with a master's degree don't need to spend valuable time populating spreadsheets. Their job is to get the right people before the right managers. Then, they have to retain them. That's HR's core mission," says Rob Brown, Gartner's Research Director for Human Resources Outsourcing Worldwide.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before and you’ll keep hearing more of this in the days to come. The transactional vrs strategic debate continues as HR functions continue to evolve. Ask any HR professional on a random basis and the chances are that 70% of the folks do find that the transactional issues like policy communication, clarification, query resolution ,regular administrative work does not allows them to focus more on strategic functions which will have better impact on organizations health and long term growth.

Does that means all such transactional functions needs to be outsourced? GE feels so .

At GE, the human resources department found transaction work was creeping into the workday. They found themselves bogged down in adding people to Oracle, phoning candidates to schedule appointments, processing candidates' expenses, and updating the company's compliance folder. "We want our HR members to be strategic and work on more high-end projects," says Mary Lou Gibson, a member of GE's Technical Program and Center of Excellence Leader for Interns and Co-ops.

Sounds familiar but let’s look at the other side of the story. Will it really help HR functions in organizations if they simply resort to outsourcing of transactional work?

Does it actually help in improving efficiency of HR operations?

It’s true that most of the transactional work does little to add value to HR’s own functional expertise but the focus should not be on outsourcing but automating the process which will reduce turn around time and also ensure that the HR connect remains in the processes. Any employee will prefer walking over to HR and discuss the matter rather than hoping that some remote operator will help him understand and clarify internal policies.

I guess the key lies in ensuring a balance between transactional routine process based work and also developmental work. One can’t be expected to do developmental and strategic work unless a fair understanding of Hr processes exists.