ABSTRACT
The human resource (HR) function has had a turbulent time over the last few years. In many organizations the pendulum has swung between downsizing and redundancy programmes and recruitment and retention difficulties. HR has spent considerable time examining itself, its role and its value in the light of the perceptions of it within the organization. The HR function has tried to become more customer friendly, more sensitive to quality and customer satisfaction. Like so many ideas, the shared services concept came out of the USA. It has not been seen as something peculiar to HR, but applicable to any form of service delivery. Some organizations may use the concept of shared services deliberately to centralize for reasons of cost cutting without having much regard to the customer. This chapter provides some examples from organizations operating the shared services concept. Strategic work generally includes setting the broad HR policy direction, aligning HR activities with business strategy and performing a governance function.
