Have you ever been in a relationship where both parties have such different viewpoints on how to get to their goals yet they have the same goals and can´t come to consensus? This often happens when expectations are not met and trust becomes a major factor in deliverables.
When we talk to the SVP of HR of large HRO deals, many are suffering from what Ed Newman (The Newman Group) commonly refers to as Mass Axe Murders Children´s Symptom. This symptom occurs when you as a spokesperson for a vendor (insert name here) go on the "speaker´s tour" representing vendor (insert name here) telling the world how wonderful they are, what a great company they are to work for, and how perfect their solution is for your needs. Yet when you get the SVP one on one behind closed doors the real truth comes out, and the vendor is actually an axe murderer. What is really happening is that they are your children. You are stuck with them so even if they are a mass murderer you are going to help them and protect them because they are yours and you are hoping that by doing this they will get better!
Unfortunately in the HRO world there are too many axe murderers out there. The market in its early adoption has a lot of clients are not really ecstatic with their vendor relationships and a significant investment in time, effort and money is still required to make the relationships work.
Freddye Silverman from Cendant provided this slide in a webcast she conducted that truly demonstrated the time to productivity it takes to make these relationships work. In fact many of your staff may never get out of the Why Me? Stage and will leave the organization.
The total cost of outsourcing never takes into account the change in culture, retention of key staff and loss of control. There is a real opportunity for some type of service provider to come in between the HRO players and the SVP and help them work through the contentious issues as well as provide third party research and best practices to both parties that can help improve the innovation, service level as well as cost reduction the client was expecting to realize with their original investment in outsourcing.
SVP of HR Available: Phil Wilson has been a friend of HR.com for many years. As a SVP of HR for CIBC, Phil was one of the pioneers who outsourced the transactional part of HR to EDS and was the main person responsible for managing that relationship over the past several years. Phil lives in Toronto, is bilingual and willing to relocate. Phil could work on both the vendor side in terms of business development or managing large HRO clients, or he could be a SVP of HR for a G2000 type of firm. His past experience includes experience in Hi Technology at Nortel. If you know of any opportunities send them to Phil at wilsonph@sympatico.ca.
