HR has been battling it out between taking up responsibility towards organizational improvement and completing day to day work deliverables. The need to secure a safe spot in the strategy plan has always been the thrust needed to analyzing and leveraging the capability HR holds. To simplify the process of evaluating talent and deploying them in a beneficial way, business managers and CHROs opened up to partners in business outsourcing. The emergence of the BPO market has been on a rise from the mid-2000s. With the upsurge in technology and digitization taking over, innovative methodologies have strengthened service offerings among BPO partners to help keep up with the evolving and competitive marketplace.
One such break out in development was the transformation in offering standalone process outsourcing to providing Business Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS). BPaaS is a form of delivering comprehensive solutions to business processes through cloud-based service models. The urge to catch up to the changing trend led HRO partners quickly adapted to this custom and provided HR-as-a-service.
What exactly is HR-as-a-service (HRaaS)
HR-as-a-service is a holistic approach towards providing end-to-end service solutions to all Human Resource and Payroll needs through self-serving cloud-based systems. It has infrastructure, platform and process outsourcing unified under a single contract. HRaaS models are customized based on client requirements and provide the ability to deliver flexible options to materialize business design and strategy proposals. The entire HR functionalities are outsourced to a common service provider who maintains the master database and manages all Human Resource activities including recruitment, payroll, talent management, leave and absence records, training, administrative benefits and compensations.
Benefits of employing HRaaS
The key benefits of comprehensive HRO is the ability to significantly cut down costs and save up on time. HRaaS provides integrated user interfaces that have in-built programs and functions which can automate processes once done manually by HR partitions, like calculating payrolls or entering travel expenses and leave records. This enables HT to shift focus on core business activities and free themselves from tedious work. Unlike on-premise Human Resource applications, HRaaS does not need much investment in deploying or maintaining IT and infrastructure and can considerably reduce costs and human interference.
The productivity of the workforce can increases tremendously when HR starts emphasizing more towards strategic business planning. Unified business platforms give easy access to master data through common user portals that can be remotely accessed by both employees and managers. A single point for all human resource needs increases the capability to quickly adapt to innovations in technology and upscale itself. HR outsourcing partners are extending their expertise to provide added features like HR analytics and reporting that can be very helpful to gain competitive advantage and stay a step ahead.
Integrated cloud-based services ensure consistency through all processes, enabling greater agility towards external changes in business functions.
What to expect from a service partner
From the initial stages of considering the implementation of HRaaS, businesses must be mindful that the process of outsourcing is an integration of both the buyer and seller and that they must function and strategize operations at the same level. Both entities must have an equal contribution and should not get flustered with the transformations and innovations happening around the world of HR, as it is very easy to lose focus and deviate from the crux of the partnership.
The impact of globalization is such that even small businesses and start-ups are setting foot in different geographies to get a command over the market. It is thus very important to ensure the service provider must be confident in delivering global HR service models and standardized solutions for all requirements. Business partners must be flexible to scale-up and reassure the buyer with customer-centric solutions that can be customized based on industry types and individual needs while maintaining a great level of transparency.