HR Shared Services Begin February

The Government will begin the roll out of Shared Corporate Services (SCS) next month, with the delivery of Human Resource (HR) Shared Services.

Sixteen individuals from various entities across the public sector, who will be engaged in this pilot phase, have been trained and installed in their new posts.

They will operate from the Shared Corporate Jamaica headquarters at 6 Saxthorpe Avenue in Kingston, the central location from which all Shared Services will be offered.

SCS, being implemented by the Transformation Implementation Unit (TIU), involves the consolidation of certain administrative and support functions that are performed in each Ministry, Department and Agency.

It is expected to achieve greater levels of efficiency and effectiveness in the public sector.

At an orientation session for the new employees at Shared Corporate Jamaica on Thursday (January 21), Executive Director of the TIU, Maria Thompson Walters, explained that all systems, processes and resources will be tested during the pilot.

“We are not expecting perfection at this stage and this is why we are doing a pilot, to give us the opportunity to find the errors that we know we have, to correct those and modify any glitches in our systems or processes,” she noted.

Ms. Thompson Walters said that at the end of the pilot, the expectation is that “public sector employees will receive higher levels of HR services and HR departments will begin seeing improved effectiveness and efficiency in their operations as they begin to turn away from operations and focus on strategy and implementation of strategic HR.”

Deputy Financial Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, Wayne Jones, noted that the introduction of HR Shared Services is only one component of a “multi-pronged approach to the transformation of human resource management in the Jamaican public sector.”

“In tandem with the introduction of HR Shared Services there is the continued roll-out of My HR+, which is the integrated HR and payroll system that provides the platform on which services will be provided,” he pointed out.

Entities participating in the pilot include: Office of the Services Commissions; eGov Jamaica Limited; Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency; Aeronautical Telecommunications Limited and the Transport Authority.