
HR Out Sourcing
(June 05, 2003) - HRO
Today, in spite of its weak traffic figures, represents a trend that you will ignore at your
own peril. Focused on the HR Outsourcing (hence, HRO) industry, the dense
website offers a solid view of the inner workings of the outsourcing aspect of
our industry.
With a board of advisors that spans everything
from Job Boards to Baird's luminary analysts, the terrain marked by HRO Today
includes 21 identifiable sub-functions of HR. According to Dataquest, "The
U.S. Human Resource Outsourcing Market is expected to grow from a $21.7 billion
industry in 2000 to a $58.5 billion industry in 2005."
Admittedly, the sweet spot in outsourcing is transactional and thus somewhat
distant from Recruiting, but the clear trend to solve the mind-numbing "HR
Problem" is to ship it to a third party.
No company really needs to
develop expertise in the various subsets of benefits, payroll, timekeeping and
so on. These tasks (which are remnants of HR's origins as the scutwork the
accountant refused to do) are more easily and productively executed by a
seasoned third party. Even the management of a contingent workforce makes sense
as a total subcontract. Increasingly, we expect to see an alignment of
traditional staffing firms around the large customers who provide outsourced
services.
Strategic services are a
different matter, though they may well end up as additional workload on the
operational manager's desk. While sourcing, as a reactive sport, should be
outsourced (and if you use job boards, you are already outsourcing the
function), the development of talent pools under an Employment Branding strategy
is not likely to be an intelligent function to shift out of the organization.
The actual determination of fit in the courtship process (a decision shared by
HR and the hiring manager) might not be shipped offsite, but there is no reason
that the ATS system shouldn't be provided and maintained by a third party. (Many
of those relationships are so bad that concentrating buying power in the hands
of intermediaries would greatly benefit the industry).
At any rate, HROToday
is a remarkable addition to the world of web resources and deserves a place on
your book mark list.
- John
Sumser