On paper, we outsourced payroll. Simple line item, budget friendly, seemingly straightforward. But behind that clean transaction, something far more complex was happening something no vendor management document will ever capture. I outsourced payroll, yes. But I also outsourced my sanity.

It began with the usual reasons. Scale. Efficiency. Headcount constraints. The promise that a shared services team sitting miles away across a city or across a continent would run what we once called our “most sensitive HR process.” The vendor pitch decks were glossy, filled with phrases like “compliance first,” “automation ready,” “zero error promise.” All the words that look beautiful in boardroom slide decks and procurement emails. And so we did it. We moved payroll out of the building.

But what we didn’t move was the responsibility. Or the anxiety. Or the 3 a.m. WhatsApp messages from employees asking why their TDS was higher than expected. We didn’t move the blame when the salary file bounced because someone keyed in the wrong UAN. We didn’t shift the emotion of the employee who needed an advance for his mother’s surgery and didn’t know whom to ask now. We just moved the Excel sheet.

Outsourcing HR functions like payroll sounds efficient until you're the one taking the emotional heat for every number that doesn’t reconcile. You're no longer the person doing the job, but you’re still the one everyone looks at when something goes wrong. You are expected to “escalate,” to “ensure SLAs,” to “coordinate with the partner” as though those words mean anything when you’re standing face to face with someone whose rent is due and whose salary hasn’t arrived.

I found myself caught in a strange space. Not the doer, not the approver, not the processor. Just the absorber. The buffer. The one everyone came to with their anxiety and frustration, even though the backend had shifted. And I couldn’t say, “It’s not me anymore.” Because in HR, it’s always you. Even when it’s not.

So yes, I outsourced payroll. But I held on to the panic of month end, the dread of reconciliation errors, the irrational guilt of someone else’s mistake. Slowly, silently, I started outsourcing my sanity. I told myself I wasn’t responsible for delays. I started numbing out when queries flooded in. I became robotic in my replies templated empathy, canned apologies, polite escalations that bought me time but rarely solved problems. Because solving wasn’t always in my hands anymore.

The mental gymnastics of modern HR, especially in shared services environments, is something we don’t talk about enough. We’re in the business of people, yet we run it like a process factory. Every function like payroll, onboarding, exit management, benefits is sliced up, packaged into SOPs, and handed over to someone who doesn’t know your company’s culture, its quirks, or its context. And then the in house HR becomes the middle layer. Not operational. Not strategic. Just human shock absorbers.

I started noticing things about myself. How I dreaded the 30th of each month. How I kept refreshing the salary release email like it was a lottery result. How I had become less patient, less warm. I was trying to protect my emotional bandwidth, to preserve what little sanity I had left after spending hours coordinating fixes for errors I didn’t cause. I couldn’t afford to care too much because caring was exhausting.

And yet, ironically, I was the only one caring. The only one employees turned to. Because while payroll was outsourced, trust was not. Empathy was not. The shared services team could fix a number, but they couldn’t explain the delay with humanity. They couldn’t listen to the silence on the other end of the phone when an employee tried to process why his salary slip looked different this time. That part still came to me. Every single time.

What no one tells you about HR outsourcing is that the process goes, but the emotional labour stays. Or maybe it multiplies. Because now you’re managing both ends the employee's pain and the vendor's process. You're expected to make it seamless, effortless, invisible. And if it isn’t, the failure is yours, not the vendor’s. Because “HR should’ve ensured.”

In moments like these, I often wonder where is the empathy for HR? Who holds us when we’re fraying at the edges? Who asks us if we’re okay, if we’ve slept, if we’re tired of being blamed for things outside our control?

No one.

We’re the function that outsources services and then insources guilt. We build processes for everyone, but rarely for ourselves. We advocate for wellness, for boundaries, for mental health. But when our own boundaries blur, when our mental health dips, we wear a smile and say, “We’re managing.” Always managing.

Outsourcing is not the villain here. Let’s be clear. When done right, it creates efficiency, frees up time, allows HR to be strategic. But that “right” is a rare, elusive thing. It requires context sharing, cultural immersion, aligned KPIs, real partnerships not just vendor contracts. And until then, the cost of that misalignment is not just measured in escalations or errors. It’s measured in emotional exhaustion.

If you’re an HR reading this and nodding quietly, I see you. If you’ve spent sleepless nights fixing things you didn’t break, I hear you. And if you’ve ever said, “I’m fine” when you were anything but, I know what that feels like.

One day, maybe we’ll design HR outsourcing models that come with emotional support. Maybe vendor management will include empathy management. Maybe shared services will be truly shared in ownership, in credit, and in compassion. Until then, we’ll keep showing up, tissues in our drawers, silence in our Slack, and a thousand small, invisible ways we keep this system running. Because even when we outsource payroll, the real work i.e the human work stays right here