HR OUTSOURCING

What is HR Outsourcing?
Outsourcing is a term that is being used more frequently as increasing numbers of organisations are exploring this as a potential delivery option for some of their activities. It can be defined as ‘the delegation of one or more business processes to an external provider, who then owns, manages and administers the selected processes based on defined and measurable performance metric’.

Keeping you Compliant
Labour law and Case law are constantly changing and keeping abreast of these changes is both difficult as well as time consuming. Aptus has the resources to make sure that clients not only comply with these laws, but to ensure that they are informed about pending changes. We also assist clients in the implementation of labour law changes. Complience differs between small, medium and large organisations, thus we offer our clients tailor-made solutions.

Benefits
When organisations put forward a business case for HR outsourcing there are a number of potential benefits that many cite:

• increased efficiency
• improved people management information (including human capital metrics)
• access to HR expertise not available internally
• increased flexibility and speed of response to HR problems
• part of an overall strategy (for example the organisation is outsourcing a number of its support functions, of which HR is just one part)
• reduced risk
• to free HR resources to operate more strategically.

Our HR Outsourcing Services

1. Attraction and Selection
2. Employee appointment
3. Employee management
4. Employee Disengagement
5. Company related matters
6. Compliance Management

IR OUTSOURCING

IR Services

Aptus is your partner in dealing with Labour law matters. Not only do we offer expert assistance to management but we also “do it all for you”. Our national footprint includes branches all over South Africa. We pride ourselves in only employing the best – ready to assist you with Industrial Relations, Human resources and Management Consulting.

Our services include the following:

• CCMA representation
• Chairing of disciplinary hearings
• On call IR advice
• Training
• Development of policies and procedures
• IR audits
• Preparing parties for disciplinary hearings
• Handling grievances
• Handling non-performance & incapacity issues

Offers:
EMPLOYER ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIP
Membership of registered Employer association, promoting and protecting employer interests.

FREE NEWSLETTER! We keep our clients updated with new developments and educate you on how to deal with specific staff problems.

IR Services Structure NO REGISTATION FEE!

Once off / per hour service – Consulting /Advice service

Monthly (Retainer)

Disciplinary matters Retrenchments Handling grievances Handling non-performance issues Handling incapacity or medical boarding issues Trade Unions Legal Representation Consultation with parties Drafting of legal papers Preparation for appearance CCMA Con/Arb, Pre/Arb, Conciliation and Arbitration/ Labour Court & Labour Appeal Court appearance Development and drafting of Contracts of Employment and Policies & Procedures Auditing current contracts and Policies & Procedures. Development and drafting of Contracts of Employment and new Policies & Procedures Training Seminars Training for line and/or senior management on labour law & problems typically experienced around staffing issues

Consulting /Advice On premises support On call support Handling / advising on all disciplinary matters, non-performance, retrenchments, incapacity, union matters, etc. Training Sessions Monthly IR sessions Free newsletter Development and drafting of Contracts of Employment and Policies & Procedures Auditing current contracts as well as policies & procedures Development and drafting of contracts of employment and new Policies & Procedures Legal Representation Consultation with parties Drafting of legal papers Preparation for appearance CCMA Con/Arb, Pre/Arb, Conciliation and arbitration/ Labour Court & Labour Appeal Court appearance

IR Audits Does your business comply with the all Labour Laws? How updated are your Company Polices and Procedures really? Are you aware of proposed legislation changes that will have an impact on your business?

IR Training Seminars Employers cannot always afford that their managers attend lengthy and expensive training programmes.

Our one-day seminars are designed to address key issues that your management team face on a daily basis and/or training sessions that focus on more spesific and complex labour issues.

Training includes:

• Managing day to day issues such as absenteeism, insolence, desertion, etc.
• Sexual harassment in the workplace
• How to deal with serious misconduct
• Case law updates and the impact it has had on Workplace IR

Package includes:

• Training material
• Suitable venue
• Lunch & refreshments

Debt Recovery Services
Aptus is registered at the South African Council for Debt Collectors. We supply a full range of debt collection services. This range from the design of call-centres, the development of workable methodologies to the recruitment and supply of debt collecting agents on all levels. We also accept outsourced debt books. Because of our international footprint, we can do work for large multi-national organisations. Standard as well as custom reporting and targeting information can be generated for clients.

Contact Centre Management
Call centres today can best be thought of as the factories of yesterday – many low level staff under one roof all doing the same repetitive job. Call centres came into being as a result of the reengineering era of the 1980’s and became popular in the ‘90’s because of the realisation of the efficiency theory (“achieving more output with less resource input”). Call centre outsourcing also became very popular during this time and terms such as “outsourcing”, “insourcing” and “co-sourcing” were defined, as were “on-shore”, “off-shore”, “near-shore”, and even words like “outbound” and “inbound” got new meanings. Then the world found out that countries like India and the Philippines can offer call centres services at a fraction of the cost of a US based call centre – and suddenly outsourcing call centre service to India was all in vogue.

The popularity of call centres coincided with the advent of the Internet and the introduction of a whole new wave of technologies that made call centres technically possible. Many new technologies needed to be introduced to handle the new requirements of volume, quality and speed: PABXs were replaced with ACDs, IVRs for routing he calls to the right desk, voice recording became critical for agent quality assessment, CTI middleware to connect the product systems to the call centre systems, and so the list goes on.

The complexity of all the technology, the fit of the human resourcing and the new business model for operating became an immediate new play ground for consultants. Managers were measured on the cost of delivering a service or product to the end user and this needed to be much less than the previous cost. No one took into consideration the high investment cost of the new technologies and the expensive consultants. As the problem of not achieving business case estimates began to realise, many companies took their call centres to experts – either off-shore to India or to outsourcing specialists in the market. Today, most companies have matured in their understanding of their call centre, they have the technical skills on site to deal with the technology and they have a fair idea about managing their call centre staff.

Call centres all have one common need now – to achieve and surpass the corporate targets with the resources that they have available – driving cost down and increasing profitability. All the variables remain the same, however, call centres have specialised into different divisions and departments some doing sales, others doing customer services, marketing, order processing, technical assistance – and the list goes on.

The old BPR/BPO model of people/process/technology with the intersection being the sweet spot is still very much applicable to call centres. The primary difference in today’s world is knowing all the different disciplines very well and knowing where to identify the problems that a call centre might be facing.

The Business Solution
Providing consulting services to call centres depends on the level of the consulting required (strategic or operational) and the level/type of change that the call centre wants to bring about.

Some of the focus areas that Aptus has the expertise in or can source the skills for:

• Strategic directional analysis and reviews of performance for multi-channel and traditional customer contact centres. We can develop the strategic and tactical roadmaps for performance improvement with suggested timelines, resources, and milestones to optimise people, process, and technology.
• Alignment of call centre processes with corporate goals, resulting in improved customer retention, staff optimisation, and cost efficiencies. This includes the design, development, and implementation of organisation structure, selection, compensation/reward systems, QA, staff utilisation, training, and Policy.
• Contact center consolidation for multi-site and branch operation optimisation. This includes developing “as is” and the ”to be” business requirements, the business case, ROIs, and potential scenarios as well as the migration strategy, planning, implementation, testing, and roll-out for both physical and virtual customer contact consolidation.
• Redesign of key call centre end-to-end processes, including backend fulfilment. This includes documenting the “as is” as well as the “to be” customer contact requirements and redesigning processes to improve first call resolution and increase efficiency. This can be conducted as part of a CRM initiative or as a stand-alone project.

Aptus has the expertise to assist a call centre operation to increase their operational effectiveness by developing and/or refining their management systems for phone and web-enabled/Internet customer contact. This includes a comprehensive review of the call centre’s current management systems, consisting of organisation, operating processes, customer access, quality and productivity performance standards and metrics, and benchmarked "best practices," as well as an evaluation of the "gaps" and the development and/or refinement of the management programs to address those gaps.

The key offerings and deliverables of a typical call centre consulting project would include:

• Conduct a fact finding and situational analysis of the call/contact centre.
• Research and analyse relevant industry and contact trends and forecasts.
• Review current call centre management systems and performance metrics against "best practices" benchmarks and provide an impact assessment.
• Identify new market opportunities for growth and expansion
• Define operational costs and savings opportunities.
• Prepare/present business case containing opportunity benefits, ROI’s, payback proposals with detailed risk analysis, market analysis and critical success factors.
• Recommend the investments, options, and action steps and manage and coordinate the project.
• Develop and/or refine current call centre organisation design/structure, job/role specifications/descriptions and duty alignment, reporting hierarchy, and span of control.
• Review quality measurement systems, quality requirements and results and develop/refine program.
• Develop/refine productivity metrics and performance requirements.
• Develop/refine the compensation and grading systems and processes.
• Develop and/or refine current operating processes, including 24x7 access, business continuity requirements, disaster recovery requirements and service continuance programmes.
• Design/refine recruiting and pre-employment selection programs, including proficiency and experience requirements, competency-based interviewing, and skill-based assessments and testing.
• Develop/refine compensation programs, including base pay, analysis and recommendations, competitive analyses, skill-based pay, incentive programs, related performance metrics, payout models, ROI's, funding approaches, and piloting the pay program.
• Develop/refine career progression programs and performance requirements. Develop Dashboard reporting strategies, reports and technology.

To offer any of these services requires an understanding of the client’s requirements and expectations, a solid understanding of the specific measures of success of any consulting project and the backup of a team of specialists who can provide information and assistance quickly and professionally.

Benefits
The benefits to the client range, depending on the specific areas that require improvement. Some of the key benefits might include:

Objectives: Setting objective based measures or outcomes based performance allows the client to focus specifically on those areas that will deliver results in line with the business operations objectives.
Cost Savings: Increasing productivity results and constantly driving to get “more for less”, e.g. driving down the cost per call and increasing the number of calls handled.
Productivity: Increasing productivity of the staff through proper incentive programmes, reward initiatives, measurements, performance management and other measures that enhance the overall productivity of the call centre.(E.g. effective management of working time - working hours, lunch breaks and smoking intervals.)
Growth: Call centres are increasingly being used to grow business operations and expand product and service ranges. A call centre is also a great environment to pilot new services or product sales and servicing, as well as testing other business concepts.
Retention: The turnover of staff in call centres is normally around 25% to 30% per annum, resulting in high training and related HR costs. Often consulting projects require the consultant to recommend measures to bring down the turnover rate and improve the conditions for retaining staff in the call centre.