Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Will outsourcing bring the end of generalists?

by Personnel Today 3 Oct 2000
by Personnel Today 3 Oct 2000

Good personal career planning is all about good trend spotting and
developing your CV to remain as marketable as possible, writes Paul Kearns.

Have you spotted any recent trends in the way HR roles are changing?

Many years ago, just after I started my first job in industrial relations,
Maggie Thatcher came along and made it quite obvious that this was not a good,
long-term career choice. It prompted my move into training and development and,
ultimately, generalist HR work.

A natural career progression, you might think, but if I were counselling
young, ambitious HR professionals today I would strongly suggest they consider
avoiding the "generalist" tag. My guess is the future lies in
specialisation and there will be fewer HR generalists around.

One development that is causing this trend and fundamentally changing the
nature of HR is outsourcing. This is de-skilling a great deal of transactional,
personnel administration. Inevitably, this will lead to more specialists
dealing with higher volumes of work in narrowing areas of expertise.
Generalists will never be able to compete with such an efficient service.

Back at the ranch, those who want to remain part of the core HR team will be
left with a new range of roles to choose from. However, these will only suit
those who want to get much more involved in running the business. Even existing
specialists, such as compensation and benefits, will be expected to demonstrate
a much clearer connection to operating performance and shareholder value.

New roles in performance measurement and HR/business information are
evolving to become an integral part of operational management. Even though such
job titles already exist, the full extent of these roles will only be fleshed
out when the jobholders have developed a whole new range of skills and
knowledge.

At the highest, added-value end of the HR spectrum will be the organisation
designers and HR strategists of the future. They will design high-performing
teams, departments and functions. They will have in-depth knowledge of
processes and organisation structures and the interrelationship between the
two. They will know the pros and cons of hierarchies and matrix organisations
and will have found answers to the conundrum of how to balance the need for
managerial control with the new imperative of giving employees greater freedom
to act.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

If these predictions prove to be well-founded then we may well see a
reflection of what is happening in society at large – the gap between the
"rich" and "poor" in HR will grow. The expert organisation
designers will be worth their weight in gold and HR specialists will attract a
premium. At the transactional end, however, the HR service centre operators
will always be viewed as an overhead and find their costs constantly squeezed.

If you’re an HR generalist, maybe it’s time to take stock of your career.

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

previous post
Standards come under scrutiny
next post
Testing H2 and H3 with hyperlinks

You may also like

Forward features list 2025 – submitting content to...

23 Nov 2024

Features list 2021 – submitting content to Personnel...

1 Sep 2020

Large firms have no plans to bring all...

26 Aug 2020

A typical work-from-home lunch: crisps

24 Aug 2020

Occupational health on the coronavirus frontline – ‘I...

21 Aug 2020

Occupational Health & Wellbeing research round-up: August 2020

7 Aug 2020

Acas: Redundancy related enquiries surge 160%

5 Aug 2020

Coronavirus: lockdown ‘phase two’ may bring added headaches...

17 Jul 2020

Unemployment to top 4 million as workers come...

15 Jul 2020

Over 1,000 UK redundancies expected at G4S Cash...

14 Jul 2020

  • 2025 Employee Communications Report PROMOTED | HR and leadership...Read more
  • The Majority of Employees Have Their Eyes on Their Next Move PROMOTED | A staggering 65%...Read more
  • Prioritising performance management: Strategies for success (webinar) WEBINAR | In today’s fast-paced...Read more
  • Self-Leadership: The Key to Successful Organisations PROMOTED | Eletive is helping businesses...Read more
  • Retaining Female Talent: Four Ways to Reduce Workplace Drop Out PROMOTED | International Women’s Day...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+