SYNAPSE 2014
SYNAPSE -- 2014
of HR. Consultants can bring a much-needed business perspective to HR problems. But outsourcing
isn’t always the right decision for every situation.
HR professionals
thinking too much
about HR strategy are
too internally focused.
Outsourcing talent acquisition may be a big mistake
and it is better to keep that function in-house. The
core principles of HR are “timeless” and will not
change much in the future due to outsourcing. The
debate on human resource outsourcing is polarized.
HR outsourcing is seen as an opportunity for the HR
function by some and as a threat by others. A study
by Jeroen Delmotte and Luc Sels, HR experts from
Belgium, examined whether HR outsourcing is a
its ‘products’ rather than on a people strategy that
involves building the organization’s capability for
growth and organizational structure. A common
fault is thinking about an HR department as a
'function' and a 'set of activities'. HR professionals
thinking too much about HR strategy are too internally focused. They are looking in a mirror, instead
of looking through a window into their business.
The idea of partnering is perfect, where the partnership involves sharing risks and benefits, challenging and supporting to drive the performance to
the next level.
For empirically driven people, big data seems to be
perfect. They’ve got all the data in one system.
They can scour it for interesting relationships, or
even better, discover some very new ones. First of
all there’s the statistical phenomenon known as
‘capitalizing on chance’. This means that by hav-
Because of the size of
the data each small
difference will appear
to be significant.
manifestation of a strategic HR focus, a cost-cutting
HR focus or both. Results indicate that organizations
with a strong focus on HR cost-cutting do not outsource more than organizations with a weaker focus
on HR cost-cutting.
HR departments concerned about transforming
themselves are missing the point of focusing on people strategy. Where HR departments get it wrong is
thinking about transforming their function. This is
driven by the need of the HR department rather than
the need of the organization in which it is operating.
HR departments see themselves as partnering the
business rather than part of the business and they
focus on an HR strategy to change the function and
ing a lot of data (Big Data) and performing a constant stream of analyses on it, you will find per
definition some significant relationships. ‘People
who joined the company in August tend to stay 0.4
months longer than the average employee’ etc.
Statisticians are great at creating a correction for-