Global trends and challenges to the HR profession.

The outsourcing of HR activities is a management strategy that may be adopted in response to a number of pressures that an organization is faced with. It is one aspect of business process outsourcing that is increasingly deployed by firms in order to enhance their organizational competitiveness. HR outsourcing can be defined as ‘placing responsibility for various elements of the HR function with a third-party provider’ (Turnbull, 2002, p.11). In spite of the perceived benefits of HR outsourcing and its growth predicted by consultancy firms and HR outsourcing market leaders, the growth of outsourcing remains cautious and the benefits of doing so prove limited. This paper provides an overview of reasons why firms outsource their HR activities, its growth trends, organizational change that may be triggered by the outsourcing decision, and the challenges that are presented to the HR function and professionals as a result. The paper argues that a number of conceptual ambiguities and operational pitfalls may dampen the effectiveness of HR outsourcing for user organizations.