Tips to prevent an outsourcing disaster.
- Do you know what the outsourcing strategy is and how it fits into the big picture for human resources?
- Do you know what the desired outcomes are?
- Do you know how to measure the success of outsourcing the function or project?
- Given the current staff and workload, can the outsource supplier do a better job than could be done in house?
- Does the outsource supplier have better resources (technology, knowledge, expertise and so on) than your company has internally?
- Can the outsource supplier do this activity faster, saving the organization time? Does it free the HR staff to work on more important activities?
- Is it a cost-effective decision? (For example: Are you reducing the time-to-fill on open jobs, reducing turnover or saving on recruiting costs?)
- Can you integrate the services provided by the outsourcing provider with our current services?
- Will your internal staff receive a higher level of service as a result of the outsourcing decision?
- Does the outsourcing decision conflict in any way with your efforts to provide high-performance HR systems?
Workforce, January 1998, Vol. 77, No. 1, p. 42.