PersonnelToday.com, UK 17/05/2005 A third of HR directors want to outsource part of their work 17 May 2005 05:20 One in three HR directors want to outsource part of their department to help them cope with their huge workloads. A survey of 160 UK HR directors, by services company Serco, shows that 31% of respondents would like to outsource their payroll function to ease the pressure, 18% their benefits administration and 23% their recruitment, training and development. Nearly one in three UK-based HR directors say they have got too much to do and too little time, while one in five claim that their department is drowning under a sea of administration, research reveals. Further findings show that 79% of HR directors spend a third of their time creating reports on key metrics and performance, while 72% agree that ineffective IT systems make the task more arduous. One in four (23%) says that simply locating the right data in the first place is problematic, and nearly half (43%) say they then waste more time turning the data into a meaningful format. Jan Woolf, head of commercial operations at Serco, said: "Average HR directors only spend one day a week implementing their HR strategy. They spend so much time coping with the daily demands of their job that they can't have enough time to think and act strategically. "There is no doubt it is avoidable, as so much time seems wasted carrying out repetitive and cumbersome tasks on IT systems that are not delivering."