Personnel Today have an interesting opinion piece in which they call for greater sophistication in demonstrating the value added by HR and HR Outsourcing in general;
HR outsourcing's tools and techniques need to move up to a new level of sophistication. Such a level would enable vendors (and their clients) to have an exchange amounting more to 'if we put in x we get y back'. Of course, how x might influence y is enormously complex and requires a deeper level of understanding.
Am I preaching to the converted? Why, then, does the performance of a multi-billion dollar industry continue to be evaluated in such a superficial way? I'll bet that HR outsourcing's failure to adequately understand its performance - and how this drives the performance of its clients - is the primary reason why the HR outsourcing industry isn't twice its current size.
This made me think of some of our own ideas on linking relationships and behaviour to the bottom line...