Shared Services and Work Force Issues

With the increasing popularity of shared services in government, more public-sector employees are affected by the changes that shared services can bring.

Managing work force issues is very important. Even the best shared services process won't work if the right employees aren't there, doing the job well. It helps if those employees want to be there. Employees must be considered from the outset, and it often works best if their input is actively sought during the planning process.

Putting in shared services can mean processes are re-engineered and people are shifted to new jobs or different agencies. Yet workers are often affected in a positive way. Many times, using shared services for transactional functions and other routine tasks frees employees to do more strategic and customer-facing work.

Employees often learn new skills and have a better-defined career path thanks to shared services. Although some workers will be unhappy with their new situations, the vast majority of them will be happier, say those who've worked in shared services.

When a new shared services project is being considered, one of the first things to come up is the impact on employees, according to Mark Howard, who leads the shared services efforts for the U.S. public sector at Accenture, a company with global experience in helping clients set up shared services. "When I first start talking with executives about shared services, it takes approximately 30 seconds for them to ask me, 'How do we deal with the work force issues?'" said Howard. "It tends to be the very first thing that they zero in on, and the very first thing that they are concerned about."

Striving for Balance
Howard says it's important to strike the proper balance between improving services for citizens and being fair to the workers who provide those services. Organizations move to shared services to improve processes. So it usually starts with the way things are done, not who does them. That's one reason government was slower than the private sector to adopt shared services. In the private sector, it's more about the bottom line; in the public sector, job security is a bigger issue.

The shared services business model brings cultural change, and there is often fear of that change. Government agencies fear they will lose employees. Employees fear they'll lose their jobs. For a long time, government didn't want to get into that situation, but with today's economic pressures, government must provide more services with less funding. Shared services is now embraced more often because it's perfectly suited to help with that problem.

Workers can benefit from the change. The shared services environment often relieves people of the repetitive tasks that are better left to automation. That lets employees focus on other important work, making them more valuable to the organization.

Howard points out that the shared services model is always striving for improved processes and service. "That's a career," he said, "because you are constantly finding new ways to do things in processes, with improved technology and better training of people. The move to a shared services center, if done well, creates true career opportunities, rather than treating the back office as a necessary evil."

Managers often say they end up with better-trained, more productive employees once shared services are put in. That's part of improving the entire process, whether for HR, billing, IT or other services.