Here at Little Angels we value our employees and as such place a deep focus on our shared services system
A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF OUR SHARED SERVICES SYSTEM
Hello Interns! This page will hopefully provide information and an insight into what our HR Shared Services is at Little Angels. Our ‘Shared Services’ model was constructed with Routine ‘Transactional’ HR functions and processes in mind such as absence monitoring and employee issues such as employee assistance.
Our HR Shared Services model offers the ability to organise various activities such as payroll changes, recruitment and benefits administration in addition to the processes mentioned above, within our broader HR operating model whilst also reducing costs, improving quality, and offering a greater focus on HR strategy!
How does Little Angels utilise the HR Shared Services Approach?
As you know, Little Angels is a eco-friendly and sustainable children’s clothing company, and at Little Angels we implement a mixture of both HRM strategies and Business driven strategies that form our shared services platform. This means that we are able to enhance our ability to address daily obstacles within our organisation through a rational and strategic scope whilst also integrating plans to enhance human capital aspects such as training and development as to productivity, job satisfaction and further our employees career development. Through this approach, our organisation is able to make positive quality of life implementations to make navigation through our internal system as painless as possible for our employees. [1]
How did Little Angels structure our HR Services?
At Little Angels, we modeled our HR Services around Ulrichs Three-Legged Stool. This is the idea that within our HR Services we have 3 main pillars which are ‘Shared Services’ , ‘Centres of Excellence’ and ‘Strategic Business partners’ that we structure our HR service.
Want to find out more about our ‘Centres of Excellence’ system?
At Little Angels, we believe that our HR System cannot solely be structured around one singular aspect. Similarly, Dave Ulrich believed that HR should be viewed and separated into three segments. Ulrich viewed a succsessful HR system as the ‘sum’ of these three segments: shared services, centres of excellence, and business partners. Dave Ulrich believed that any HR professional should have the ability to undertake one or multiple roles at the same time within these three aspects of his model.[3] [4]
The table below demonstrates what each Shared Services Function is responsible for.
Ulrich’s Three Legged model is essential to our HR functions and services and as such for our HR Shared Services system aims to provide a centralised, technologically up to date service delivery for our employees. At Little Angels, our goal is to process employee requests rapdily whilst offering and providing insight to the core functionalities of HR and its different areas through our Employee Intranet site. In return, our valued employees are then able to provide better service to our valued customers as a result of our centralised resource centre.
According to ‘Aspirehrbp.org.co.uk’ nearly 40% of survey participants in 2016 from large organisations would also describe their HR core functions structure as being based around the Three Legged Model.
Positives to our HR Shared Services Model
In this section, we will highlight the positives within the shared services model. We want you as an intern to have the capability to recognise what is working well within our company so that we can replicate these positives features in other aspects of our organisation’s strategic modelling and structuring.
•The Shared Services Model reduces Costs and avoids the duplication of efforts on the same task, this is valuable time which can be spent on other tasks to provide the greatest experience for our customers and also re-investing the money back into other services such as training and development.
•With our Shared Services Model at Little Angels, we are able to spend more time focusing on HR strategies related to talent management, recruitment, and employee retention.
•The employee experience is positively impacted; through our Shared Services model, we are able to provide a faster service as a result of our valued employees requests being filled swiftly and their questions being answered correctly. [2]
Negatives to our HR Shared Services Model
In this section, we will highlight the negatives within the shared services model. Our organisation is constantly evolving and changing in order to match competitors whilst still remaining true to our values, and as an intern we want you to have the ability of analysing what is not working in order to implement change.
•The reduced costs and spending may not always materialise. An example of this is through the recruitment scheme. If a company decides to go through one specific recruitment agency this scheme may work for some parts of the company, not all. This is problematic if our team at Little Angels wants to hire a new prospect for a specialised role and the specific agency is unable to reach applicants suited to this job role. This leads to an increase in time searching for new applicants, possibly leading to higher costs.
•The technology may not be able to support the Shared Services approach. What we mean by this is that not all technology services function and operate in a way that supports a centralised criteria which is essentially the Shared Services approach. If the technology is unable to support the employee requests, then the service can become inefficient and slow, which can slow down the companies growth and progression. [2]
Want to find out more? click the CIPD logo to the left, the logo will take you to the CIPD page on our Little Angels website or click this link https://www.cipd.co.uk/ to go to the page directly!
Have any enquiries? Click the email below and send us an email at LittleAngelsHREnquiries@gmail.com
Reference list
[1]CIPD The Professional Body for Human Resources and People Development (2018). CIPD The Professional Body for Human Resources and People Development. [online] CIPD. Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk.
[2]Stevenson, M. (2019). Pros and Cons of Human Resources Shared Services. [online] HR Exchange Network. Available at: https://www.hrexchangenetwork.com/shared-services/articles/pros-and-cons-of-hr-shared-services.
[3]Session W6. (n.d.). [online] Available at: https://events.cipd.co.uk/events/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/W6-Developing-HR-Business-Partners-as-Change-Activists-1.pdf.
[4]HR business partnering Related resources. (2014). [online] Available at: http://aspirehrbp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/51/2016/11/HR-business-partnering-Factsheets-CIPD.pdf.
[5]William Chin (n.d.). Overview of HR Shared Services. [online] Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/WilliamChin/overview-of-hr-shared-services.
[6]Stave (2016). Stave – YouTube. [online] http://www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDU2VJZhAu0GP8T4BfvDlVw.
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