moved to a “three legged” design with strategic partners, centres of excellence and a
shared service centre replacing a more traditional, hierarchical model. The shared
service centre will usually handle routine transactional services such as resourcing,
payroll, absence monitoring and advice on simpler employee relations issues and may
be provided by in-house personnel or a specialist third party. Such functional design
changes have implications for career paths, since vertical movement up the “old”
departmental pyramid will no longer be possible.
There have also been some well-publicised examples of organisations outsourcing
significant elements of their HR activities. The BBC announced in 2006 its intention to
outsource HR administration, recruitment, pay and benefits administration, relocation,
occupational health and disability access services, a move which will see 200
redundancies and the transfer of some 260 staff to the organisation providing the
outsourcing (Pickard, 2006). The outsourcing trend is also highlighted in the 2005
survey of HR careers (CIPD, 2005) which particularly noted the existence of such call
centres/shared service centres as a significant barrier to career progression. The same
survey noted that moving between organisations was seen as an important way to
progress a career in HR, whereas staying in one organisation was perceived as a career
barrier. In the Northern Ireland economy that is the focus of this study, imminent
changes across the public sector are almost certain to include large scale restructuring
of HR involving shared services, also reducing the number of HR jobs available.
The study
The current study was carried out using self-report questionnaires that were
distributed to participants on a Postgraduate Diploma in Human Resource
Management in the Faculty of Business and Management at the University of
Ulster. The 71 participants were educated to third level, and all but one were in
full-time employment in the personnel or human resource field and were studying
part-time for a qualification which would confer full (Chartered) membership of the
CIPD. Such membership has for some time been considered an important
stepping-stone in an HR career and is frequently included as an essential element of
a personnel specification for any but junior HR positions. Participants on the course are
often sponsored by their employer, but many others will make considerable efforts to
gain the qualification if no sponsorship is available, perhaps taking annual leave to
attend required elements. We were interested to explore the participants’ career paths
and progression, their job moves and the reasons behind them, the career and
development opportunities provided by the respondents’ organisations and the
positive and negative influences on their careers to date.
In terms of the overall profile, 53 participants (approximately 75 per cent) were
female. This is not surprising since the membership profile of the Chartered Institute of
Personnel and Development consistently shows that over two-thirds of its members are
female, with women outnumbering men by four to one in “graduate” membership, the
level at which qualified practitioners enter the profession. While 65 per cent of the
participants were aged between 20 and 30 years old, 21 per cent were in their 30s and
the remaining 14 per cent in their 40s. Reflecting the relative youth of much of the
sample, some 44 per cent were single, with 51 per cent married and just 5 per cent
separated or divorced. Most (86 per cent) were not living with dependent children. Just
over half (55 per cent) of the respondents worked in the public sector, with 39 per cent