Half
of the average HR professional’s week is spent keeping up-to-date with
administration and legislation, research reveals.
A
report by Metrica Research finds that HR staff in small to medium-sized
companies (between 400 and 1,200 employees) spend 40 per cent of their time administering
and managing day-to-day HR tasks.
HR
staff in larger companies spend slightly less time on administration tasks which
nevertheless take up 35 per cent of their working week.
The
study, on behalf of Northgate Information Solutions, also shows that HR
departments of all sizes spend one-tenth of their time on training to keep
up-to-date with statutory regulations.
The
report estimates that outsourcing basic HR functions would save small to
medium-sized business on £94,000 a year on average. It claims the figure would
rise to £658,000 a year for large firms.
Malcolm
Aldis, managing director of the HR division at Northgate, said: "HR is
more and more recognised as being a strategic function within a company. But
despite this, valuable HR time is being taken up with very basic HR functions
that could so easily be handed over to an outside company.
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"And
it is set to get worse as even more red tape, directives and legislation is
expected. So any measure a company can take to free its staff from mundane and
time-consuming tasks would really affect the bottom-line."
