One of the largest public sector shared services centres in the UK will handle the HR and payroll records of more than 30,000 employees and is intended to generate efficiency savings of £2.2 million in its first two years of operation.
The initaitive, called SWiTch, is being undertaken in Greater Manchester. Local partners Trafford, Stockport and Wigan Councils have jointly procured and are about to implement a new HR and payroll system to create what has been described as a ‘virtual’ IT network across the city.
And the initiative appears to have got off to a good start. So far no less than £260,000 has been saved as a result of undertaking joint procurement activity.
The system has also been designed to enable other authorities to sign up to the scheme without requiring major configuration work and is intended to provide a “modular and scalable secure platform that could be used for delivery of private cloud-based solutions across local authorities”, the partners said.
They decided to go down the shared services route after realising that their existing systems were outdated, inflexible and no longer fit-for-purpose, they added. As a result, several options were evaluated before deciding on Midland HR’s iTrent online applications as the system of choice.
The packages, which will be hosted by Wigan Council, handle activities ranging from transactional HR, payroll and reward management to talent and performance management, workforce planning and learning and development. Participants will not have to outsource all activities, however, and will be able to choose what HR services they keep in-house.
The North West Improvement and Efficiency Partnership have provided funding of £490,000, which will be used to set up a programme office in Stockport. The office is intended to complement the operational teams undertaking implementation work at each of the three local authorities.
Phase one was the deployment of the core HR/payroll system, which went live earlier this year. Phase two will see the roll-out of manager and employee self-service functionality, which is due to be completed by March 2012.
Steve Houston, corporate director of corporate & support services at Stockport Council and the board chair of SWiTch, said: “Collaborative working is at the forefront of the local government agenda and is fully supported by each councils’ executive. The SWiTch results to date have contributed to our corporate aims and objectives. We look forward to realising maximum benefit in the future by achieving collaborative ambitions.”
