At a time when the majority of companies are under increasing pressure to reduce costs due to the weakened economy, HR departments expect to maintain their current strategies toward outsourcing HR services, according to Hewitt's HR Outsourcing Trends and Insights 2009 survey.

Hewitt recently surveyed 104 companies on how they are using outsourcing to improve the delivery of their benefit and HR programs and also how their strategies might be affected by the current economic environment.

From the survey results, it's clear that outsourcing does play an integral role in HR's ability to deliver programs to employees. Overall, 82 percent of companies that have measured their outsourcing programs said they realized the benefits they had hoped to gain by outsourcing.

There are a number of reasons why companies choose to outsource HR services, including:

Reducing costs: Sixty-five percent of organizations that indicate cost savings is a primary outsourcing objective reported they achieved their expected cost-reduction targets through their outsourcing programs.
Gaining access to outside expertise: In addition to needing specific domain expertise, companies also want to be relieved of the burden of making large investments in technology to maintain in-house systems and dedicating resources to meet challenging regulatory guidelines.
Improving service quality: Considered the most common measure of success for outsourcing, 81 percent of respondents indicated that they met or exceeded their service quality targets.
Realigning/focusing on strategic HR priorities: Outsourcing helps remove the day-to-day administrivia of managing HR programs so HR can focus on supporting on their most important business challenges.
The survey report provides insight into what HR services are outsourced most frequently, the effectiveness of each of the programs, and how companies measure the success of their outsourced HR services.

If you would like more information about the survey results and what they mean for your organization, please contact us at peoplesolutions@hewitt.com.

Download the HR Outsourcing Trends and Insights 2009 survey findings:

http://www.hewittassociates.com/Intl/NA/en-US/KnowledgeCenter/SurveyResults/ArticleDetail.aspx?cid=6931&tid=51&stid=6614