Globally, the Business Process Outsourcing market has grown deep and wide. There is a lengthy repertoire of services and tasks offered by outsourcing agencies now. HR and IT services form a large part of the business offered. The article looks at various issues involved in outsourcing HR functions.
If some of the corporates radiate a healthy glow through their equally bright financials, the reason behind such lustrous performances is not a mystery. For, behind that glow is the lifeblood of organizations, called the `people' who can make or mar the business. People are key business drivers and they constitute the intellectual and strategic battery that propels the enterprise on the highway of business success.
This community, which runs the business, may comprise of skillful engineers, practiced technicians, able administrators, knowledgeable accountants. They function in the inspiring company of people who are gifted with savoire faire, like marketing experts and business strategists. People, or more precisely, the `human resources', do not come without cost. Yes, it does involve a handsome cost to select, acquire, train and develop a team to run the show with the finesse required to fulfill the customer-centric orientation of business enterprises.
For the corporate, a team of permanent employees would mean a recurring cost, regardless of the unpredictable ebbs and flows in the business. This being such a perennial obligation, the fixed cost makes the top corporate echelon turn, from the idea of carrying a team on its payroll, to the concept of hiring the required strength and skills, if need be, only for the lifetime of the project on hand. How true appears the great saying of Confucius, the famous Chinese philosopher of the 6th Century, "He who will not economize will have to agonize!"
Indisputably, the corporates hiring only the required HR strength, that too only for the required tenure, will certainly be able to rid themselves of the recurring and invariable burden of the fixed cost of the HR. On the other hand, corporates with dedicated teams are under compulsion to incur the fixed cost that may cause gaping hole in its revenue strip. This is irrespective of whether they are facing a `lean' business season, or whether they have hit the bottom of a business trough. |
