Philips Singapore: Creating Value Through Human Resource Shared Services Centre By Hesan Quazi & D. G. Allampalli

Abstract

In 2003, Philips Electronics Private Limited, Singapore (Philips Singapore), launched Philips People Services (PPS), a shared services centre to provide various standardised human resource services to its 3,500 employees at an annual service fee of S$550 per employee. Dr Elizabeth Martin, Executive Director, Country Management and Vice-President of Human Resource, and Yeo Lay Lay, manager of PPS, designed and implemented the not-for-profit centre in Philips Singapore, and took the company a step closer to 'World Class HR'.

With centralisation and value creation, and outsourcing of HR activities, Dr Martin and Yeo were able to demonstrate that PPS reduced the cost of business support function and improved decision-making related to recruitment and retention activities. At the end of 2004, just when PPS's performance improvement had gathered pace to raise its value proposition to customers, Dr Martin had to mull over a product division head's expectation of lower annual service fee.

Issues: Sharing HR services and outsourcing, value creation and cost reduction in delivering HR services, strategic HR in global organisations.

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