Traditionally, HR shared services were for centralising processes, cost and time savings and to bring consistency to HR practices. Once a vehicle for achieving economies of scale, global shared services are now centres of excellence, offering ground-breaking technology solutions and in-demand expertise. Now, the same needs to be said for HR shared services, which must reach beyond process and payroll, where there is scope for strategic data and insight to inform on every area of the global enterprise, operationally and strategically.

Payroll and onboarding were the typical shared services remit, but increasingly, recruitment and talent intelligence are being incorporated into global centres of excellence. But HR shared services has the potential to be much more impactful and strategic, by making inroads into new areas of workforce intelligence such as; skills supply, real estate optimisation and diversity data, especially in the newly global talent market. We are, without question, more global in our outlook and in our working models – as was reflected in the Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON) GBS & Shared Services State of the Industry 2022 report – which found that 53 percent of shared services functions have changed their recruiting strategy as a result of COVID-19. More are recruiting globally (15 percent) and regionally (20 percent) and a greater proportion are tapping into the human cloud and gig economy to a greater extent (six percent). In fact, Only 17 percent continue to recruit within commuting distance, which sets the scene for the role of shared services and the shape of things to come.

CEOs no longer cite cost and efficiencies as their high priority challenges, talent is top of the agenda, according to almost every study. The future workforce is marked out as being more remote and multifarious and business is uncertain and changeable, post-pandemic and in the wake of Brexit. These disruptive forces have combined to create a perfect storm of challenges for business leaders. By 2030, Korn Ferry estimates that the global talent shortage could reach 85.2 million people, resulting in the loss of trillions of dollars in economic opportunity for companies. This skills shortage is compounded by low unemployment which is currently 6.2 percent according to the OECD. Therefore, recruiting costs will continue to be high and hiring will remain difficult. With the fast pace of digital transformation also bringing new challenges to the fore, competition for skills is hot, as companies compete for in-demand and emerging skills. In the short term, the great resignation is also impacting the talent landscape and as yet, the long-term outcomes of this phenomenon are unknown. Initial research in the US shows that 73 percent of workers are considering quitting their jobs next year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the UK, similar surveys also found that three-in-four employees will be looking for a new role in 2022. Globalisation, partly due to the option of more remote and flexible working, is leading to the continued growth of emerging economies and the movement of talent around the globe. Plus, the Brexit effect has worsened the skills shortage and left many companies reconsidering their real estate and skills footprint. We also see environmental, social and governance issues moving up the agenda, giving more visibility and attention to workforce diversity. These forces combined, means that hiring is time consuming, costly and risky – and in this environment, mistakes are inevitably made. The cost of an empty seat on the bottom line is driving a focus on talent attraction, engagement and retention, in a way we have never seen before. Herein lies the opportunity to see talent through a global lens.

This world view of the workforce and workplace that a centralised global and data savvy team can provide, can impact almost all elements of talent strategy, including mobility, talent development, L&D or skills gaps. Supplement this with an external view through talent intelligence that offers insights on skills supply from adjacent industries and competitor talent activity and you have a powerful engine to supply intelligence to all corners of the enterprise. That’s not to infer that shared service centres are not already becoming a more data-led function. HR shared services and broader GBS functions, are already supplying data analytics to some extent. Research from SSON shows that while the biggest provision by shared service centres is still peer-to-peer payments (47 percent) and payroll (46 percent), 44 percent of shared services centres provide data analytics or business analytics, making it the third most common service. But we don’t know to what extent this is people analytics, or talent intelligence, both of which present a real prospect for shared services to offer higher value services. While transactional services will remain in GBS, due to economies of scale, we are already seeing a broadening of less transactional elements to the GBS offering such data services, intelligence automation, supply chain, talent management and employee onboarding. This trend is set to continue and talent intelligence presents a huge opportunity. Bringing in strategic workforce intelligence with a global enterprise lens, will inform almost every area of the organisation’s strategy. Now that there is a truly global talent marketplace, data and intelligence must be centralised to provide the most effective and current view of the global talent landscape.

Answering pressing questions about talent and skills are fundamental to being able to compete in increasingly tough environments and the onus is on HR to deliver and interpret real-time and intelligence-enabled data for decisionmaking, as well as providing support and delivering strategic, analytical value. To demonstrate what this looks like in reallife, take the example of a global energy company that needed external talent data to inform its diversity strategy. In this instance, data collected centrally by a talent intelligence function has been used across the global enterprise to paint a picture of the external skills market from a diversity viewpoint. Data disseminated by the team via a dashboard shows the company’s internal headcount – by grade, job family and location – alongside gender and ethnicity, against the available external population. The data team will be able to model the company’s diversity ambition from 2022 to 2030, based on matching the market through inclusive hiring. This is one example of the power of external analytics, delivered with a global view. Data is more powerful with a wide-angle lens and most impactful when internal and external data combine. HR shared services are in a position to leverage both – to look at the macro level landscape and to evaluate it alongside the micro level – using their own internal global business data. Talent intelligence can inform strategic decision-making at the top of the organisation and across borders, affording new value and direction to the shared services function. This is already in play for some leading-edge centres of excellence.

As organisations, pivot and transform, the services HR provides must be above all confident, cohesive, relatable, readily available, immediate and equitable, bringing visibility and connectivity across the organisation, as well as improving and streamlining end-to-end process. Offering this through a shared services centre makes absolute sense. Combining the efficiency and expertise of shared service provision, with the data and insight capabilities of leading HR functions is a winning formula for strategic talent planning. Thinking global, access to data, looking at the flow of all things people – from workforce planning to competitor intelligence, to talent acquisition, onboarding, engagement, retention, mobility and payment – an all-encompassing approach to talent is the future remit of HR shared services. When the foundations are right, shared service centres can achieve greater strategic value, across essential talent strategies, diversity & inclusion, resourcing efficiencies, the right skills at the right time and the values and culture that will see organisations through the testing times ahead.

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