Telecoms giant Cable & Wireless has signed a £40m outsourcing deal with
e-peopleserve to provide HR services to its 15,000 staff in the US and UK.
C&W hopes to save £5m over the five-year contract through contracting
out its payroll, HR administration, recruitment, e-HR delivery and parts of
training. The company’s share price fell by nearly two-thirds on the FTSE100
last year.
C&W transferred 93 HR staff to e-peopleserve last month, and retained
170 to run the strategic HR function, which includes internal communications,
management and organisational development, and employee relations.
Ian Muir, vice-president of group HR policy at Cable & Wireless Global,
stressed that none of the HR team have been made redundant.
He said, "The outsourcing move makes our HR more strategic and means we
are able to consolidate the transformation of the past year.
"It also makes transitional, backroom HR a variable ‘pay as you go’
cost instead of a fixed one."
The role of HR staff within the company will change significantly, added
Muir.
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"Instead of just being the first port of call for employees’ queries,
the HR role will be moved away from administration to working alongside senior
managers to improve business performance," he said.
E-peopleserve was set up in June 2000 by BT and Accenture to provide
outsourced HR services to BT and other clients.
