Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/86587
Regional Report Social media is being leveraged for sourcing, enabling companies to find skilled talent on a global basis for low cost. "[You can] use social media platforms to find talent yourself rather than relying on expensive head-hunters or job-postings," Accenture's Cullen notes. "Social media sites such as Linked-in can allow employers to approach people with listed skill sets directly with customised job-offers." RPO providers are also getting in the game of social media—with great results to boot. "The progress in the usage of social media in recruiting can be harnessed to help companies create candidate communities, reach passive candidates, and reduce overall marketing spend. Outsourcing providers with specific expertise in this area can help companies maximise the opportunities which social media can bring," says Kenexa's Krigstein. Gradual Acceptance During the past decade, the business community of Ireland slowly came to understand and accept the benefits that outsourcing can offer. IT, customer service, non-core business processes, and accounting are most frequently outsourced, with HR operations specifically seeing growth in the last few years. "After a long period of limited growth, the market in Ireland is picking up," reports Krigstein. "As companies start to grow again, many will want to seize the opportunity to ensure they manage this growth in the most cost effective, efficient way to achieve competitive advantage." Outsourcing occurs on both a local and global level, notes Campbell. The marketplace has a handful of local providers that have traditionally been dominate, yet larger multinationals are beginning to partner with global providers more and more frequently. "The local providers need to be able to demonstrate more global reach, and the global providers need to be able to show more local knowledge and experience," he says. "I expect that there will be some convergence in this space in the next 24 months as Ireland is often a gateway to the entire EMEA business for many multinationals, and signing a HRO deal in Dublin can have very wide repercussions." Claire Reid, head of managed services for the Grafton Employment Group, reports that HRO is still immature in Ireland, and cost realisation will be needed to accelerate its acceptance. "To enable HRO to grow, there needs to be a cost-efficient option available to clients," she remarks. "However, this is often dependent on scale, and there do not appear to be any major providers in Ireland as yet." Some experts argue that the benefits of HRO need to move past cost reduction in order to gain more speed. Savvy buyers are focussed on [12] HRO TODAY GLOBAL | SUMMER 2012 increasing workforce operations by placing top performers, retaining them, and achieving accelerated time to competency. "They want partners who can help create competitive advantage by forecasting and fulfilling talent requirements and aligning talent plans, workforce capabilities, and employee performance with business strategy," says Cullen. Specialised non-core services and areas where HRO providers have a deep understanding and expertise—like business process improvements—will also attract buyers. "Some will want to invest in their internal capability, but many will want to work with subject-matter experts to manage non-core business processes like HR," says Krigstein. Nugent says that outsourcing needs to "assist companies to make meaningful and quantitative assessments of their likely return on human capital and thereby demonstrating their value for money. This will help companies create competitive advantage through forecasting, agile decision making and aligning people, skills, and competencies with strategy." Learning Opportunity? Learning, which has remained pretty quiet across the board during the last few years, might see a resurgence, especially in labour-intensive industries such as banking, manufacturing, and telecommunications. Investing in the current workforce enables greater productivity and lays the foundation for retaining skilled employees. "Development and learning have often been seen by executives as costly processes with long lead times between identifying the skills required and implementing those skills in the workforce. No longer. Recent innovations have made it easier for employees to continuously learn needed skills in the context of their everyday jobs and allow organisations to quickly address capability gaps," explains Cullen. He says clients are looking beyond simple classroom interactions and into activities that occur before and after formal learning events. For example, virtual introductions via webinars can lay the foundation of the learning track and social learning technologies can keep the discussion going. He remarks that the creation of centralised learning functions have seen a greater and quicker return on investment. Milligan of Hays thinks that previous success will breed continued investment in outsourcings. "In multinationals, outsourcing is normally implemented as part of a global or regional strategy," he explains. "If there has been a successful solution implemented in the U.S. and/or U.K., then Ireland will normally follow. In addition, staff that has been involved in successful HRO implementations who move within the market will take best practices with them to new organisations, which will encourage the proliferation of HRO."