Which HR administrative approach is illustrated by centralizing HR at the corporate office and adding vendors to provide leave of absence administration?

• A. Human resources outsourcing (HRO)
• B. Shared services model
• C. Centers of excellence
• D. Hybrid in-house/offshore

Answer: (A)

Centralizing HR activities at the corporate office while bringing in external vendors to handle a specific administrative task shows outsourcing of that function. By consolidating HR operations, the organization creates a single, standardized platform for HR processes, and contracting vendors to manage leave of absence administration leverages external expertise, systems, and scale. This combination is exactly what HR outsourcing entails: shifting the management of a defined HR process to an external provider while keeping strategic direction and governance centralized at the corporate level.

If the model were internal and centralized, you’d expect the leave process to be handled entirely within an internal shared services center rather than contracted out. If it were a center of excellence, the emphasis would be on internal expert teams driving best practices rather than outsourcing to vendors. A hybrid in-house/offshore approach would focus on balancing internal staff with offshore resources for various tasks, not specifically outsourcing a function to external specialists for efficiency and expertise.