Text · Ma Daming, Zhang Xin
State-owned Assets Report Magazine Issue 3, 2024
Human resources sharing service is to deal with the homogeneous and repetitive business of enterprise human resources through the professional and standardized services provided by the sharing center. Improving the management level has always been the top priority of the central enterprises to build a world-class enterprise, because the human resources sharing service can effectively use a new generation of information technology means, promote the digital and intelligent transformation of human resource management, improve the management mechanism, optimize the management process, and achieve cost reduction and efficiency increase, has become an important support for the reform of the management model of large central enterprise groups in the digital development stage. On the basis of the investigation and interview of the operation of the human resource sharing center of a number of central enterprises, we put forward relevant suggestions for the key and difficult problems of its development.
An overview of the development of shared services for human resources
The concept of shared services was proposed in the 80s of the 20th century by Robert W. Gunn, the founder of the international executive search firm Gunn Partners. Subsequently, world-renowned companies such as Ford, General Electric, and Procter & Gamble established shared centers to take the lead in promoting shared services in the financial field. IBM first carried out the exploration of human resource sharing services in 1992, and on the basis of in-depth practice, proposed the "three-pillar" human resource management model in 2007 to promote the maturity and finalization of human resource sharing services. The so-called "three pillars" are the Human Resources Expert Team (COE), Business Partners (BP) and Shared Service Center (SSC). Among them, the COE mainly focuses on policies and processes, deals with the strategic management of human resources in the process of organizational operation, and provides professional knowledge support and supervision and guidance for BP and SSC; SSC's main responsibility is to deal with transactional work, and focus on improving work efficiency through information technology and the implementation of specific human resources activities in accordance with standard procedures. At present, human resource sharing has become a common management model adopted by large multinational companies. According to Deloitte's 2021 Global Shared Services Survey, the proportion of enterprises that use shared services for human resource management has increased rapidly in recent years, with 57% of more than 600 multinational companies choosing to build their own shared centers. The emergence of human resource sharing services in Chinese enterprises is relatively late. In 2005, Ping An established the first human resources shared service center in China. Until about 2015, with the maturity of the human resource management system and the rapid development of information technology, the construction momentum of the human resource sharing center has risen, and a large number of enterprises have gradually completed the initial construction, mature operation and deepening and upgrading of the human resource sharing center, forming a "human resource sharing tide". Sinopec, PetroChina and AVIC became the first batch of state-owned enterprises to establish human resource sharing centers. According to the human resource sharing survey data conducted by the "Smart Sharing Club" on 248 enterprises in 2022, the proportion of large domestic enterprises building human resource sharing centers has also reached nearly 60%. In recent years, the human resources shared service centers of major enterprises have been moving towards a mature stage. In addition to the centralized and efficient operation of basic businesses such as inbound and outbound transfers, payroll services, and file management, it also further promotes the combination of advanced technology and human resource management to provide better services. On the one hand, through the application of new technologies such as chatbots, RPA (Robotic Process Automation), image recognition and semantic analysis, it further optimizes the process to improve the quality of delivery and greatly reduces costs; on the other hand, based on the advantages of data and information technology, it expands the scope of shared business, expands high value-added services such as talent assessment, management personnel training, and data analysis into important services of the human resource sharing center, and gradually improves its self-management ability in the process.
Construction and operation of the human resources sharing center of central enterprises
Since 2019, with the implementation of the three-year action for the reform of state-owned enterprises, the organizational reform of various central enterprise groups has been carried out in depth, and many central enterprises have successively set up human resource sharing centers. According to public information, 29 central enterprises have set up human resource sharing centers. From the perspective of industries, there are many central enterprises in the fields of energy, transportation, manufacturing, communications, and steel. The construction of early sharing centers such as PetroChina generally adopts the "pilot first" model, that is, several units are selected to pilot shared services, and the scope of services is expanded after maturity, and the group's shared service system is gradually formed. However, due to the experience and mature technology that can be used for reference, the sharing centers built later by Dongfeng Motor generally adopt the "standard first" model, that is, the process of sharing services, the establishment of standards, and the capacity building are unified at the beginning, and the shared services are fully implemented in the group. In terms of functional positioning, in addition to the efficient handling of transactional work, many sharing centers also assume the roles of "human resource information management platform" and "standardization and process risk control" due to their strong technical capabilities. In addition, for example, Sinopec Sharing Center "continues to incubate value-added products and share new businesses", which aims to expand the external market, and the "Human Resource Management Policy Research" of CNNC Sharing Center shows a trend of expertization, providing more possibilities for the development of shared services. In terms of business coverage, in addition to general basic personnel services, many sharing centers also involve more abundant businesses such as recruitment management, salary and benefits, and performance appraisal. On this basis, the sharing center has also gradually shifted from the initial cost center business model to an internal profit center, and even an independent legal person serving both internal and external markets. For example, at the beginning of the establishment of Dongfeng Motor's personnel sharing service center, it insisted on adopting market-oriented means of operation, and made it clear that the value creation ability of the shared service center is the basis for ensuring the market-oriented operation of the center. In order to promote market-oriented operation, Dongfeng Motor Personnel Shared Service Center has put forward the "Three Principles and Three Commitments" to standardize the service standards and price levels of the shared service center, continuously optimize and improve service quality, expand market-oriented sharing and cooperation with units inside and outside the group, and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results with customers. After extensive practice and verification, the human resources sharing service function of central enterprises has achieved remarkable results. The first is to effectively reduce costs and improve business processing efficiency, improve the "human service ratio" through business information processing, reduce human resources employees, save labor costs, and improve the efficiency and accuracy of various business processing. Second, it is conducive to the implementation of group management and control, through the integration of service functions, so that the headquarters can be "separated" from transactional work, to achieve simplification and slimming, and by strengthening the implementation and management of the system, unifying business standards and operating specifications, and improving the level of group management and control. The third is to provide more professional data analysis and decision-making support, and provide solutions to solve key problems in human resource management by carrying out salary benchmarking analysis, talent team structure analysis, brain drain analysis, etc., and further strengthen data value creation. The fourth is to promote the cultivation and development of talents, establish a job value evaluation system based on the competency model through the construction of talent pool and information collection, carry out career development analysis for all kinds of talents, and serve enterprises to accurately cultivate talents. While achieving remarkable results, the human resource sharing services of central enterprises are also facing some obvious challenges. On the one hand, the high-quality development of enterprises requires the human resource sharing center to provide more high-efficiency and high-value-added services, which puts forward clear upgrade requirements for the sharing center that was originally mainly engaged in transactional and standardized process work in terms of technology, process, and customer experience. On the other hand, the rapid development of the human resources sharing center of central enterprises has far exceeded the scope of the original "three pillars" model, which is bound to lead to major changes in the group's human resources organizational structure and working methods. How to reformulate the strategy and planning to adapt to the new situation and better explore the potential huge value of the sharing center has become a practical problem faced by many central enterprises.
Suggestions on the development of human resources sharing services for state-owned central enterprises
The human resource sharing services carried out by central enterprises play an important role in improving operational efficiency and carrying out high-quality strategic human resource management, so it needs to be further promoted at a higher level of state-owned central enterprises. The shared services of some benchmark central enterprises are already in the leading position in the industry in terms of the number of customers, revenue scale, technical capabilities and operational stability, and their experience can also be effectively used by other enterprises. On the basis of extensive research, we put forward the following suggestions for the high-level and high-quality development of human resource sharing services of state-owned central enterprises. First of all, we should further play a supporting role in the reform and development of enterprises. In practice, some central enterprise sharing centers have played a huge role in the reform and development of enterprises, effectively promoting the transformation of human resource management from functional to strategic. It is mainly embodied in three aspects: first, management support, using advanced technology to help enterprises standardize standards, improve management, and integrate resources; second, information support, relying on rich information resources to become the decision-making staff assistant for enterprises to set strategies, make decisions, and prevent risks; third, institutional support, to avoid human factor intervention to the greatest extent, and promote reform more openly, fairly, and justly. It is suggested that the sharing center of mature central enterprises should be transformed into a "technical expert center" to better support the overall reform and development of the group. It is necessary to continuously improve its capabilities and upgrade services, realize market-oriented and independent operation, reduce the burden of the group, put forward optimization plans based on its own advantages and role play, explore and improve the value of data, and promote business process reengineering, strengthen the construction of talent team, do a good job in information security and confidentiality, and cooperate with the international operation of enterprises to build a global business service center (GBS). Second, give full play to the "late-mover advantage" of the chaser. Some central enterprises have a good foundation for human resource sharing, but they have not yet started to do so. At present, these central enterprises have obvious late-mover advantages: they can not only imitate, absorb and adopt the effective practices of first-mover enterprises to accelerate the development of their own shared services, but also directly introduce the mature technology of first-mover enterprises to reduce construction and operating costs. For example, in recent years, Sinopec Sharing Company has successively completed the human resources sharing consulting projects of many central enterprises such as National Energy Group, Nam Kwong Group, State Pipe Network, China Star Network, etc., which has effectively improved the operation effect of the human resources system of these enterprises. It is suggested that the central enterprises preparing to carry out human resources sharing services should make internal preparations on the one hand, systematically analyze and optimize the existing human resources work process, prepare for the overall handover, and communicate with employees and relevant departments to reach a consensus on reform; Thirdly, build a new pattern of collaboration and sharing of state-owned central enterprises. Due to the large investment in the early stage and the batch processing of informatization, the scale effect of human resource sharing is significant, and the more people covered by the sharing center, the lower the unit cost. In addition, shared services have a strong network externality, and the more people they cover, the greater the value, for example, in the business related to personnel selection and appointment, the more potential candidates there are, the greater the possibility of selecting more suitable and better people. It can be seen that human resource sharing services have natural expansiveness and are suitable for collaboration on a larger scale. It is suggested that central enterprises should jointly establish a human resources sharing service alliance to carry out in-depth cooperation and achieve effective communication of business and information. The complexity of human resource management of central enterprises is relatively consistent, and the information risk is significantly lower than that of external enterprises, and cross-business entrustment can effectively improve efficiency. For example, the geographical distribution of many central enterprises is uneven, and it is difficult for shared services to cover areas with scattered personnel, but it will be easy to solve the problem by entrusting a local advantage sharing center. It is also necessary to promote the sharing of human resources to play a greater role at the level of state-owned central enterprises, promote the interconnection of alliance information and the online supervision system of state-owned assets and state-owned enterprises, strengthen the exchanges between the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council and the external directors, leading cadres and professionals of central enterprises, and promote the joint improvement of the level of human resource management and state-owned assets supervision capabilities of enterprises. Finally, strengthen the overall planning to solve the common problems in the industry. The development of the entire human resources sharing industry is still in an emerging stage, especially the central enterprises only began to build a large-scale sharing center after 2015, which requires major central enterprises to integrate their forces and jointly build an "infrastructure" to support the high-quality development of the industry. It is suggested that the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council should lead the central enterprises to establish human resources sharing service associations to plan the development of the industry as a whole and better serve the overall interests of state-owned central enterprises. The first is to formulate the development plan of human resources sharing services of central enterprises, strengthen research on the development laws and development trends of the industry, and clarify the development goals, key tasks and implementation paths of the industry through planning. The second is to organize the formulation of industry standards, formulate industry standards for the planning and construction of shared centers, information technology, business specifications, operation management, talent training and evaluation, and promote the standardization, specialization and standardization of shared services. The third is to promote the construction of the system based on domestic software, unite the sharing centers and ERP system developers to strengthen cooperation, develop and optimize human resources sharing software products, and try to use them first, and strive to achieve complete independent and controllable platform software. Fourth, build information exchange channels and communication platforms, carry out extensive exchange and cooperation activities, compile industry business reports and development annual reports, and put forward relevant policy suggestions to relevant government departments. In the future, with the deepening and upgrading of state-owned enterprises and the wide application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, the development prospects of human resource sharing services of central enterprises will be broader. Central enterprises need to actively explore and practice, promote human resource sharing services to a new stage of development, and provide more powerful support for the high-quality development of central enterprises in the new era and new journey. (Author's Affiliation: Dalian Senior Management College, China)
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