Shared services are about recognising best practice

Your feature on South Cambridgeshire painted an unnecessarily gloomy picture of shared services in HR (Personnel Today, 23 May).

While it’s true that certain initiatives can face organisational and technical challenges, the benefits of sharing services far outweigh the pain of going it alone. HR, by its very nature, affects all people within an organisation and, as such, will always be a complicated function to run as a shared service.

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The key to success, however, lies in finding innovative ways around the challenges for a solution that works best for the organisations involved. Shared service is not about reducing service delivery to the lowest common denominator. It’s about recognising best practice and tapping into it efficiently.

Carol Hammond
HR transformation manager,
Xansa