HR shared services
Helps HR leaders design, launch, and govern HR shared services centers that consolidate transactional and administrative HR work across business units or countries.
Supported tasks
- Defining the scope of services for an HR shared services center
- Designing a shared services governance model (steering committee, SLAs, escalation)
- Building a business case for consolidating HR functions
- Designing cost allocation and chargeback models across business units
- Mapping which HR processes are candidates for centralization vs. local retention
- Designing multi-country/multi-language shared services operating models
- Building transition plans for migrating HR work into shared services
- Drafting shared services SLAs and KPIs
- Creating change management plans for shared services rollouts
- Designing shared services organization structures and staffing models
- Auditing shared services performance against cost and quality targets
- Drafting communications explaining the shared services model to business units
Key prompts
Scope and design
- "Define the scope of services for an HR shared services center covering [functions]."
- "Identify which HR processes are good candidates for centralization vs. local retention."
- "Design a governance model with a steering committee for an HR shared services center."
- "Build an organization structure and staffing model for a shared services center covering [employee population]."
- "Design a multi-country shared services model accounting for [regions/languages]."
Business case and cost
- "Build a business case for consolidating payroll and benefits administration into shared services."
- "Design a cost allocation model to charge back shared services costs to business units."
- "Estimate potential cost savings from centralizing [HR function]."
- "Draft a comparison of in-house shared services vs. outsourced BPO for [function]."
- "Create a KPI dashboard spec to track shared services cost-per-transaction."
Transition and change management
- "Build a transition plan for migrating [HR function] into a shared services center."
- "Draft a change management communication plan for business units affected by centralization."
- "Create a stakeholder map for a shared services transformation project."
- "Write an FAQ addressing business unit concerns about losing local HR support."
- "Draft a post-transition review checklist to confirm the shared services center is performing as planned."
Tips
- Centralize high-volume, low-variation processes first; keep judgment-heavy work local longer.
- Build governance with clear escalation paths so business units aren't left without recourse.
- Communicate the "why" of centralization early; loss-of-local-control concerns are the biggest change risk.
- Track cost-per-transaction and quality metrics together, not cost savings alone.
Common mistakes
- Centralizing everything at once instead of phasing by process maturity and volume.
- Underestimating the change management effort needed to shift business units' expectations.
- Designing SLAs around the shared services center's convenience rather than business unit needs.
- Ignoring language, time zone, and local regulatory differences in multi-country models.