This month HfS attended Equifax Workforce Solutions’ customer forum where keynote speaker Paul DePodesta said the idea “never use payroll as an excuse” was the driving factor behind the transformation of Major League Baseball franchise Oakland Athletics (featured in the book and movie Moneyball: The Art of Winning in an Unfair Game).
In his speech, DePodesta hit upon the central issue that has plagued human resources (HR) and human resources outsourcing (HRO) from effectively driving business outcomes to date. Payroll represents all that is difficult yet demanding of HR and supporting the workforce worldwide, yet it is a compliance-riddled constraint that companies must simply move beyond.
The HR analogy to the Moneyball story could not be more apt now, as businesses struggle with new workforce regulatory issues, most notably the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare.) HfS believes outsourcing as much workforce compliance driven tasks as possible – such as government interaction and reporting – is beyond a doubt something to be handed over to specialists.
More importantly, however, the new thresholds being set for compliance and reporting can and should drive foundational data capture and analysis to finally provide HR with the insights to change organizational behavior through innovative new approaches to talent management that really drive strategic business outcomes.
