Shared services implementation

[pinkytoe]

Our university is having all departments complete a spreadsheet showing each individual's work efforts by percentage. We are being told this is a move towards more efficiency in back office procedures like IT, Accounting, etc. After studying their FAQ, I noticed the term shared services implementation might be an outcome of said study, ie outsourcing of services. This is making me somewhat nervous as I can just imagine all the people who would be laid off. People like myself just shy or retirement. Should I be concerned? I just don't know a lot about this kind of thing.

[Lainey]

I would definitely say it's a precursor to some consolidation or out-sourcing of some kind. These things take a while to phase in so if you're close to retirement I wouldn't think it would affect you, or anyone, right away.

[catccc]

They may just be trying to track performance by department. Lots of companies have "shared services" in which different areas of the biz are allocated a portion of the back-office overhead. If department A and department B both use HR and accounting, but department A takes up way more of their time, than it should be considered that they bear a larger burden of the cost in assessing financial performance of the department. They may just be trying to get an accurate model to allocate expenses. Because if they were going to outsource it all, they already have their total cost, can't they compare that to what it would cost to outsource? Maybe. Just some thoughts...

[SteveinMN]

It also may be that they want to consolidate some functions. If six people in seven departments each spend 20% of their time on computer support, it might be more worthwhile to have one person in a consolidated back-office department spend 100% of their time on that and the six others can go back to what they were hired to do. Though pretty much every worker in America who does not have to be in a specific place (under a sink, on an airplane) to do their job should consider outsourcing, this may not be as sinister as it looks.