Award profile: Fujitsu Services and Baxter Neumann work in collaboration on HR shared services and HR outsourcing projects. Fujitsu Services is one of the world’s leading IT services companies focusing on the delivery of IT infrastructure management and outsourcing, together with a full range of related services.
BT
The Team – HR Services Outsourcing Contract team
No. in team: 10
No. in HR function: 630
No. of employees HR is responsible for: 102,000
About the organisation
BT is a leading provider of communications services, with customers in Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. Its principal activities include IT and networking services, telecommunications services, and internet products and services.
The challenge
- BT aimed to simultaneously change its HR organisation while transforming its network for an all-internet 21st century
- To outsource virtually all its administrative HR functions in the UK
- A commitment to establishing the world standard in HR outsourcing.
What the organisation did
- The BT HR team and management and technology consultancy Accenture jointly developed a single HR operating environment across 44 countries
- Developed transactional pricing, so BT now only pays for the services it uses
- Introduced a reward/remedy-based remuneration model. Accenture stands to gain or lose depending on its performance.
Benefits and achievements
- Cut administrative costs by more than 30%
- Standardised global HR services for all BT staff and enabled a 96% reduction in internal HR staff from 14,500 in 1991, to 566 today
- Changed HR “from business partner to business player”
- 58% reduction in days lost through accident-related incidents over the past three years owing to safety education programme
- Absence management programme delivered 27.4% reduction in days off from 2003 to 2005, with cost savings of 17.8%
- 95% of staff using BT’s employee assistance programme said they would be pleased to use it again.
Category judge Paul Pagliari says: “BT has been evolving shared services for a considerable period of time, and now has robust facilities in place. It has enabled shared services to move up the HR value chain, freeing HR business partners to focus better on delivering strategy. BT has continued to invest in improving its shared services to the benefit of the organisation and the effectiveness of HR.”
The AA
The Team – HR Operations Project Team
No. in team: 12
No. in HR function: 80
No. of employees HR is responsible for: 8,000
About the organisation
The AA is a UK motoring organisation that provides breakdown recovery, insurance services, driving schools and travel publishing.
The challenge
- Following the sale of the AA, a number of shared services and corporate functions operated by Centrica had to be disentangled and specific operations established
- This required the setting up of an HR shared service – called AA HR Operations – within six months of the sale.
What the organisation did
- Pulled expertise from the geographically-dispersed Centrica operations
- Introduced innovative recruitment and training strategies
- Introduced a change forum to help to talk through policy changes
- Gave team members as much control as possible over how the new operation would work.
Benefits and achievements
- The new shared service has given the AA HR function a solid foundation on which to build a strategic platform of change
- Higher levels of customer satisfaction at 72% of the previous cost
- Low voluntary employee turnover and high morale through a potentially difficult transition.
Category judge Paul Pagliari says: “As the AA was being divested of its parent, it urgently needed to provide its own HR service centre. This was a considerable leadership challenge and required committed teamwork to deliver during a period of uncertainty. The length of time available was definite and challenging. Despite these challenges, a fit-for-purpose scheme was designed and implemented within the business constraints.”
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS)
The Team – Shared Services
No. in team: 550
No. in HR function: 2,000
No. of employees HR is responsible for: 137,000
About the organisation
The RBS Group is Europe’s second-largest financial services group and the fifth largest bank in the world. It has a market capitalisation of 50bn, and employs 137,000 people worldwide.
The challenge
- To launch self-service and learning services online tools for employees in the UK, opening up a new channel to access HR and people service
- To complete a £12m investment programme in innovation, culminating in a significant step change to the way employees interact with HR.
What the organisation did
- Introduced bespoke telephony operations, self-service tools and online learning, and created central professional and advisory services
- Presented shared services as the face of RBS HR to most of its staff in the UK and Ireland.
- Benefits and achievements
- Shared services has delivered more than 50m in cost savings, including turning off 13 legacy HR systems
- Business HR teams now work on the strategic aims of their individual businesses, such as retention and engagement
- More than half of UK employees have access to people services online
- In its manufacturing business, 75% of all HR transactions are now carried out online.
Category judge Paul Pagliari says: “RBS set out to introduce shared services to enhance the professional capability of strategic HR. HR professionals were able to focus on strategic goals and objectives having been freed from administrative tasks which were devolved to the shared services unit. It has also enabled higher-quality people information to become available.”
Vertex Customer Management
The Team – HRPlus Project Team
No. in team: 6
No. in HR function: 167
No. of employees HR is responsible for: 5,900
About the organisation
Vertex is a technology-based business process outsourcing company. Its core business is to take on and manage large-scale customer service operations from clients’ premises or its own operational centres.
The challenge
- To develop a new approach to the internal delivery of HR services and a core Vertex competency in HR shared services and employee self-service, called HRPlus
- To achieve a major shift in HR away from transactional and operational activities to strategic and added-value operations.
What the organisation did
- Redesigned the ‘traditional’ HR directorate into a series of specialist expert practices from which the business and HR service centre would take expert knowledge
- Designed a dedicated easy-to-use HRPlus sub-site on the intranet to carry policies, procedures, guidelines and forms
- Worked with the communications team to launch an information and education campaign, briefing nearly 6,000 people.
Benefits and achievements
- HRPlus achieved its budget and target savings within the two-year payback timescale
- In the financial year 2003-04, HRPlus generated additional revenues to Vertex of £2.2m for one client alone
- Re-engineering of HR practices has brought improved control, accuracy and consistency across the business.
Category judge Paul Pagliari says: “When considering possible shared service models, Vertex took the bold step of creating a business that was capable of providing HR services to other organisations. This business was successfully launched, and now services several external businesses in addition to Vertex for commercial gain. In so doing, Vertex appears to have successfully married a solution to its own organisational objectives, while benefiting from continuous improvement, driven by external customer demand.”
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Baxter Neumann is a management consultancy, advising clients on organisation effectiveness, HR service delivery and people strategy.
Category judge: Paul Pagliari, senior director, HR, at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate This organisation of 16,000 people represents a sizeable part of the Home Office, and is responsible for immigration, border controls and asylum applications. Pagliari was previously HR director at Scottish Water.
