This Oil and Energy Services company had grown both organically and through acquisition into a global organisation employing 64,000 staffs in 80 countries. To create high levels of customer service it depended on high levels of international team working and knowledge sharing. This reliance on knowledge and technology caused them to describe themselves not only as a leading oilfield services provider but also as information systems specialists, who could support their customers by translating data into useful information, and then transform this information into knowledge for improved decision making around the globe. Given their strategy of creativity, collaboration, and high levels of customer intimacy, the levels of understanding of customers' needs, managing international diversity and knowledge sharing required a great deal of international teamwork.
HR Strategy
The HR function was seen as pivotal to the development of international team-working and knowledge sharing. The HR function had a crucial role in developing culturally sensitive management and in so doing was required to shed its administrative workload to concentrate on culture management and change issues. The HR function was being gradually transformed into a more strategically oriented function, in which HR staff worked more closely with managers in the new operating structure.
To achieve this, the HR function was first divided into the now common shared services and business partner model. Shared services provided administrative and policy support with HR business partners providing direct support to business-facing managers in the field. Second, shared services adopted a global HRIS to allow it to become more efficient and effective in providing globally available data for all service lines and all business groups from the same database. This allowed consistency and integration of performance management and other HR practices and policies throughout the company. Third, Web-based HR was introduced to improve service delivery by opening up the access to the HRIS using manager and employee self-service applications.
HR Service Goals
Thus, the HR service goals were primarily concerned with improving service quality and freeing up time for HR staff to address more strategic issues.
So when we looked at it we realised that in order to do that we had to take off a lot of the administrative load from the HR function in each of the groups and let them focus much more on people and then…work with one another around people issues because that's the cultural driver and let all the support stuff be taken care of somewhere else.
(UK HR Director)
HR Service Architectures
First, these goals were to be achieved through the development of a common HR portal, through which all online services could be accessed. The intention of this portal was also to help HR to create a greater sense of corporate identity among employees in the extended enterprise using an internal employer branding strategy. Second, the company implemented a global HRIS, comprising a set of basic information systems and the first set of Web-based HR tools. These technologies were a combination of out-of-the-box applications, derived from the global HRIS, combined with bespoke tools, many of which were developed in-house'.
The parent company's internal analyses had shown that
There is a cost saving …but that cost saving does not offset the cost of implementation and investment cost. It might do in the long term but if you're looking at sort of two/three year returns it doesn't work. (UK HR Director)
The real benefit being sought was an improvement in HR service quality, providing more accurate and reliable data and enabling more informed management decisions. The company, however, had a longer term transformational goal of introducing ICT to improve human capital management through the development and introduction of a bespoke global 'career centre'.
Service centres were established to handle transactional enquiries from line managers and employees. The emphasis was on the internal sourcing of HR technologies, unless a compelling case could be made for outsourcing of services. As the HR Director explained:
I think outsourcing overall is quite dangerous because outsourcing is … in many cases it's cost driven and if it's cost driven why should another organisation be able to take some cost out which you can't?
HR Service Outcomes
A mix of intended and unintended outcomes emerged. On the positive side, managers were satisfied overall with the level of transactional support provided by the shared service centre and the quality of data available via employee and manager self-service tools. There were issues, however, with some Web-based HR applications, in particular the 'career centre' which was supposed to enhance opportunities for international mobility but failed to live up to its promise. Managers also reported problems with 'service ambiguity', in the sense that they were not always sure what services to reasonably expect from different parts of HR, citing potential conflicts and overlaps between specialists and business partners.
This example, supported by the framework described earlier, points to a number of important points for practitioners to be aware of when considering different HR service delivery approaches:
- Consider carefully the specific HR services goals that define the purpose of the investment in the project(s)
- Design an architecture which is appropriate for the defined goals
- Implement the solution with a determination to achieve positive, intended outcomes which reflect the defined project goals
- Check carefully that a 'line of sight' has been established between HR strategy, goals, architectures and intended outcomes
Some of these architectural design decisions are now examined in some detail, as these are often a source of anxiety and confusion for HR professionals.
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