By Craig Haydamack, SPHR
Intel is breaking new ground with leading-edge technology for human
resources and employee engagement.
I
f you want to systematically deliver
innovations that culminate in an inflection point,
you cannot ignore your foundation. Without a
proper base, your highest hopes, years of work and
millions of dollars can be reduced to a cloud of dirt
and debris so fast you won’t know what happened.
Like many HR organizations, Intel’s HR team
faces the challenge of driving innovation and service
improvements while simultaneously controlling
operating expenses.
Intel’s HR team supports more than 100,000
employees across 67 countries, as well as retirees and
incoming job candidates. In addition to its strategic
role in planning and supporting Intel’s business
needs, Intel human resources delivers more than 5.5
million “customer experiences” per year, ranging from
payroll, business travel and relocation to training,
staffing, new-employee integration, employee
relations support and intern programs.
To address these challenges, Intel human
resources strives for inside innovation in its internal
operations to free resources for outside innovation
in the products and services it provides to Intel’s
employees. Inside innovation feeds outside
innovation.
Inside Innovation
Inside innovation focuses on the sustaining services
and operations that human resources delivers day
in and day out across the company. These functions
include payroll processing, relocation support,
business travel support, immigration, HR data
management, training-course logistics, administrative
support for hiring actions and general employee
support. Our internal goals are to maintain greater
than 99 percent “defect-free rates” for our services,
customer satisfaction rates above 90 percent and
costs at or below industry average benchmarks.
www.HRCI.org
Intel estimates that the average HR organization
achieves approximately 4 percent in efficiencies each
year, so our goal is to reach 8 percent. This allows
us to stay ahead of the industry cost curve and to
free additional resources for reinvestment in new
services each year. This business model has been
so successful over the past five or so years that, in
2012, it led to the Intel Quality Award, which is the
highest corporate award given to top-performing
organizations. The award recognizes Intel teams that
deliver plans effectively, take risks, continuously learn
and consistently deliver extraordinary results.
To create an innovative culture that delivers
results, Intel human resources has integrated a range
of new employees from many different backgrounds:
finance, sales and marketing, IT, information security,
risk management, manufacturing, certified project
management, user experience and Lean Six Sigma
professionals. Blending the diverse skill sets with
our existing HR expertise has helped to create an
innovative, collaborative and effective team that can
work together in tackling our toughest challenges.
Another big source of our inside innovation and
efficiency has been our move to a shared services
model. Since 2009, Intel human resources has
developed shared service centers in Costa Rica,
Malaysia and Poland and has successfully transitioned
the sustaining support for more than 900 complex
processes covering a range of functions, including
payroll, relocation, staffing, training delivery, HR data
maintenance, travel support, benefits and employee
support. The shared services teams have maintained
the quality and service levels of the functions they
inherited and have strengthened and streamlined
the underlying business processes in each area,
generating an average efficiency savings of 8 percent
per year. Having new groups of employees examine
and assess processes that have been in place for a
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