Cath Janes looks at the influence shared service centres are having on skills development and career opportunities in payroll

Like an emerging butterfly, the payroll and HR profession is increasingly testing its glorious potential. Shedding its previous incarnation as admin-heavy it’s emerging from the shadowy depths of the nation’s offices and placing itself at the heart of policy making and strategic planning. Shared service centres, and their freeing of payroll and HR personnel from the fetters of admin, have played a part in this. There’s one problem though. Word has it that shared service centres are not just hobbling the prospects of payroll professionals but thieving our future leaders too. Could this be true?

Best ask Marshall-James, a consultancy firm that specialises in employee and industrial relations. Its research among 215 HR professionals in October 2008 found that 54% of them believed that shared service centres were failing to produce rounded and experienced HR professionals. Eighty one per cent of respondents also believed that the shared service model offered a less personal service, while 50% of respondents were worried about how future leaders would emerge as a result.

The impact of shared service centres upon the careers and skills of payroll and HR professionals remains a grey area. Those in favour believe that they offer a greater breadth of experience along with more career opportunities and the chance to sample many diverse aspects of payroll and HR. Those who aren’t enamoured, though, believe that they contribute to the de-skilling and pigeon-holing of personnel, all the while being too remote from their ‘customers’ to be of value.

The need for flexibility
Peter Reilly is the director of HR research and consultancy at the Institute of Employment Studies. Here’s what he has to say: ‘Traditionally a model of development is where someone joins a payroll department and works upwards through the available roles to become a manager. But in the shared service model, activities can be more restricted and you can become cut off from what you’d have previously aspired to do. There are now business partners and expert roles instead and it’s a big jump from an admin role to these, which could cause problems.’

Reilly describes the model as a three-legged stool where you have the shared service centre, the business partners and the payroll and HR experts working together. He suggests that if the model doesn’t suit personnel it simply doesn’t work. That means that if shared service centres want to offer employees the career opportunities they depend upon, rotation or flexibility need to be part of the new way of working.

One man who knows a thing or two about it is John Neilson. He is the managing director of NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS), a joint venture between the Department of Health and Steria, which specialises in business transformation. NHS SBS offers NHS trusts a range of services that allow them to hand over the day-to-day payroll details while they focus upon strategy and business improvement instead.

‘We offer payroll, family health and administrative services to 25% of NHS trusts,’ Neilson explains, ‘and the payroll side is the newest and fastest moving, with growth hitting 73% last year. We also had the biggest migration yet in April with several new customers reported.’

From back office to management
The NHS SBS has a total of 200 personnel based at two centres in Southampton and Portsmouth. The service centre set-up includes a section of specialists along with integrated teams, while employees are encouraged to have close relationships with the Trust they look after. In addition personnel are regularly moved about to ensure they have breadth of experience — it also gives them a chance to spend time in areas that appeal to them.

‘More than that,’ says Neilson, ‘personnel can move from a back office activity to a business activity in a way that wouldn’t have been possible when working in small departments. We give them the chance to go from back office to management.’
Marie Farrell understands. She is director of finance for Bromley Primary Care Trust, one of the first trusts to move to the NHS SBS in 2005. The prompt for this was the Gershon Review which levied a top slice of 3% on Primary Care Trusts, forcing them to make £13 million savings. Farrell believes that using the NHS SBS was the only way of meeting this challenge. She also believes that her HR and payroll personnel have a more professional status within the PCT now that they ‘don’t have to worry about the bread and butter of the business’.

She explains: ‘Interface management is dealt with by the financial services team and our reporting timetable has been reduced which has released people for training and allows them to be more proactive. We have also had to invest to create a higher level of qualified staff and had things remained as they did we could never have done this.’

Experience
So does this mean that the fears raised by HR in the Marshall-James survey are unfounded? If shared service centres work flexibly and rotate employees so that they work in all aspects of payroll and HR then the profession will be receiving the breadth of experience after all. Employees won’t find themselves limited to their silos of expertise and the problem is solved.

Surrey County Council is an example of how this works. Its shared service centre houses 238 employees who work in HR operations, procurement or finance. On top of this it has a centralised customer services team and dedicated teams who focus on continual improvement and systems processes. The transaction and support aspects of the shared service centre are run independently.

Sergio Sgambellone is the operations manager for shared services and explains the practicalities. ‘We have generalists who work in customer services and specialists in payroll and HR teams. They are integrated and work in collaboration so that, for example, the recruitment team can input the data of new recruits so that payroll doesn’t have to.
‘We’ve created broader opportunities for people who enter the shared service centre which allows them to move to more corporate elements of HR such as policy making and case work and to move from transactional HR too.’

In addition to this the shared service centre wants to offer personnel even more. At the moment it services 17,000 employees, including those at schools inside and outside the county, yet the plan is to include boroughs, districts and other local authorities too.

New life
And there’s another reason why shared service centres may breathe new life into payroll. They don’t only draw new recruits but they give them the chance to sample several aspects of the profession. After all, in how many professions can you try your hand at a range of disciplines before plumping for the one that suits you?

Mencap, the UK charity for people with learning disabilities, is a prime example of this. Its shared service centre became fully operational in 2007 and in the employee and payroll services department almost every member of staff was a new recruit with no previous knowledge of payrolling.

‘It was steep learning curve for everyone,’ explains Gary Field, the department’s manager. ‘We had a core of people with payroll experience who specialised, but the bulk of inputting was done by administrators. Structure in the core services is based upon work being done in dedicated Mencap regions although staff can work in other areas if they want to. It’s different to how we used to do things when everyone needed to have payroll experience.’
All of which suggests that shared service centres are opportunities waiting to be tapped into rather than problems waiting to happen. If carefully structured with personnel in mind they could breathe new life into the profession.

Kevin Dougall is the managing director of AP HR solutions and has this to say on the subject: ‘I have never seen a shared service centre cause problems and by bringing together knowledge and people you keep people inspired and motivated. Give them opportunities. They may want to specialise or generalise but that is up to them. Knowing that the variety is there helps people find the aspect of the job that they enjoy and that’s what keeps them in the profession. Shared service centres really can play their part in making a career in payroll more attractive then ever before.’