Shared Services – Part of a Healthy (and prosperous) Workforce

We all have daily routines – things we do on a regular basis to maintain our health and happiness; diet, exercise, rest and relaxation are just some of these habitual regimens. Using your organizations Shared Services can be very beneficial to the mental and financial health of your workplace – for employees with HR Shared Services – and for customers, vendors and company professionals using Financial Shared Service Solutions…

There are two schools of thought in the consolidation and collaboration of Shared Services according to Wikipedia; reducing costs by allocating and optimizing fewer resources to achieve goals, and leveraging ‘efficiency through industrialization’ which “assumes that efficiencies follow from specialization and standardization – resulting in the creation of ‘front' and ‘back' offices. The typical method is to simplify, standardize and then centralize, using an IT 'solution' as the means.”

John McKinlay writes in a column on ComputerWeekly.com titled 'Why Shared Services will Benefit Everyone,' "IT collaboration frees up public staff to add value. Maintaining first-class public services at a time when budgets are being frozen or cut is a challenge; doing so while simultaneously increasing motivation and job satisfaction for staff sounds impossible. However, there is a solution, to be found in the new way of organizing public services, called shared services.

The shared service model is straightforward and based on a simple fact: the reason for the existence of your local council, health board or police authority is to enable the effective local delivery of front-line services."

There are many advantages to implementing the delivery of shared services. Staff can be freed up to focus more directly on what adds the most value and benefit to the company. Many have the idea that firms will see shared services as a way of cutting costs through reducing employees; but as Mr. Mckinley points out, “Sharing services does not necessarily mean that fewer staff are required overall - simply that these staff can be freed up to do other things, of greater benefit to the public.”

In fact, there are many benefits to the staff as best practices may be shared leading to a better trained and therefore more skilled workforce. “Greater job satisfaction can also arise from the opportunities to work within a dedicated team, with more frequent career advancement prospects, and to be closer to the "internal customer".”