Communicating Change for Shared Services

I was recently presenting a business case for Shared Services as part of a sales pursuit when I was asked a question: "When should we communicate the concept of Shared Services to our employees and that their job may be impacted?"

As in any communication, my response is to be truthful in your communication and give information to your employees early and often.  That doesn't mean you should tell your employees that you're thinking about moving to a Shared Services concept, or that you hired a consulting firm to complete an analysis of the prospect.  It does mean that you should communicate decisions after you have a clear vision and timetable for a move to Shared Services.  Employees will be understandably concerned about their jobs and they need to know what they can expect, even if it isn't pleasant.  It's not only the right thing to do, it makes good business sense.

I once worked for a client that refused to follow this advice.  They had made the decision to establish a pan-Asian Shared Service Center for their Finance processes.  We were hired to develop the future state vision, build out the Center, train the new employees and migrate the processes.  We were as far along as having the new employees shadow their respective counterparts in the soon-to-be-migrated countries and the company still had not made a formal announcement that they were moving the jobs to an SSC in another country. 

People are not stupid.  They know when senior management is being honest and when they're not.  Companies are better off when they communicate change early, often, and respectfully.  When they do so, the chances of successfully migrating processes to a Shared Service Center are greatly enhanced.