Human Resources (HR), like the enterprise IT organization, is a shared service ...
HR department replace inefficient email-based service request and fulfill ...
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Modern HR Case Management How IT Can Step Up to Better Support HR Service Delivery
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Modern HR Case Management IT can help transform HR service provisioning and management capabilities by leveraging their own service relationship ecosystem, experience, and service automation capabilities.
Human Resources (HR), like the enterprise IT organization, is a shared service provider – it fields service requests ranging from simple benefits and payroll questions to on-boarding and off-boarding employees or handling complaints. But while service relationships are well defined and automated within the IT organization – thanks to ITIL1 and fit-for-purpose IT service management (ITSM) products – service relationships in HR are often completely unstructured and inefficient. HR’s traditional IT systems, while facilitating many data management-driven HR activities, typically do not enable and manage these service-based, people interactions, or are too complex to set up and maintain to be truly effective in a dynamic HR environment. As a result, there is an unhealthy reliance on siloed email correspondence, other personal productivity applications, and manual activities when fulfilling HR service relationships. In fact, it is estimated that, for over 50% of companies, HR functions still spend too much time on day-to-day tactical activities that add little to no value to the business. Combine this inefficiency with a lack of auditability, tracking, and real-time reporting, and it becomes difficult to understand, measure, or report back on HR performance and its impact on the business. Thankfully, savvy IT leaders have seen this as an opportunity to help their peers in the HR department replace inefficient email-based service request and fulfill processes with proven IT service models. IT can help transform HR service provisioning and management capabilities by leveraging their own service relationship ecosystem, experience, and service automation capabilities. Extending IT service models into HR finally gives HR the ability to meet employee expectations of HR support and customer service with more efficient HR operations. A secondary benefit is improving business perceptions of the IT organization and its strategic worth. Improve HR Service and Reduce Cost through Service Automation Over the last ten years, ITSM has become a common element of most enterprise IT operations, albeit to different degrees of process adoption and maturity. Enterprises have taken the opportunity to consolidate multiple legacy IT help desk systems and disparate IT processes across geographical and organizational boundaries. But this consolidation activity is no longer confined to the IT organization, nor to IT-related support. The use of common IT processes and tools outside of the IT organization is now an economies-of-scale option for innovative and financially-astute companies. A desire to automate shared services functions has grown over the last five years, with HR case management a commonly identified opportunity to leverage existing IT product investments and common processes.
1 ITIL
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is the IT service management best practice framework formerly known as the IT Infrastructure Library.
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Modern HR Case Management
IT needs to help HR move away from its unhealthy reliance on email and personal productivity applications.
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Many ServiceNow customers have already used the IT management capabilities and custom application creation on the ServiceNow Service Automation Platform to support HR activities to varying degrees. For example: • Envision Healthcare, a leading US provider of emergency medical services, decided to use ServiceNow for HR case management to support 17,000 employees. • MetroPCS, the operator of one of the largest telecommunication networks in the United States, implemented 15 custom applications to improve governance and to automate workflows across HR and other service domains. • A large Global 2000 investment bank rebuilt its global HR request systems in ServiceNow. The ServiceNow Service Automation Platform enabled HR case management, displaced existing line of business systems, and provided self-service case management, workforce administration, recruiting, employee off-boarding, legal management, management of employee relations, and records management. Based on this customer demand, ServiceNow has created a purpose-built HR service delivery application – ServiceNow HR Service Automation. This makes it easier for IT and HR to partner and transform HR service delivery for the organization. HR: A Great Opportunity to Automate and Better Manage Service Relationships HR needs more than an arm’s length, shared services approach where common service management products and processes are leveraged across multiple business units. It is more than a traditional IT or business project that just delivers additional service management technology to HR. Instead, there needs to be a greater appreciation of how the learnings of the IT organization can benefit HR and ultimately the enterprise’s ability to deliver service. IT needs to help HR move away from its unhealthy reliance on email and personal productivity applications. Recognize that while email and legacy products such as Lotus Notes and the Microsoft suite of Exchange, Excel, SharePoint, and Project have done much over the past 20 years to boost personal productivity, they are now holding HR organizations back from effectively and efficiently managing global, enterprise service relationships. HR needs to move beyond repository silos to benefit from a single system of record for service relationships. Recognize HR’s Service Relationships Service relationships exist throughout the enterprise – between IT and lines of business, HR and sales, legal, marketing, facilities, operations, and even between internal and external service providers. They connect requesters of a service and the providers of those services. These services include a defined request for a product, a service, information, a change, or assistance with an issue. These service relationships not only need to be managed, they should be facilitated by automation wherever possible (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Managing Service Relationships
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Modern HR Case Management
HR and the IT organization both have a need to fulfill service relationships which include requests for help, information, service, and change.
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To illustrate this, using a number of common IT service relationships as an example (see Figure 2), a similar set of service relationship scenarios can be shown for HR (see Figure 3).
Figure 2: IT Service Relationships
Figure 3: HR Service Relationships
In Figures 2 and 3, HR and the IT organization both have a need to fulfill service relationships which include requests for help, information, service, and change. While some HR service relationships are relatively straightforward and self-contained, for example, the operations request for benefits package information depicted in Figure 3, others are not.
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Modern HR Case Management
Meet employee expectations on timeliness, quality of service, and customer experience.
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Consider the request by legal to onboard a new employee. This requires HR to orchestrate and manage a number of discrete services across a number of business functions, including but not limited to: • HR Collecting and verifying employee personal data, the signing of contracts and other official forms, agreeing to a start date, providing HR policy information, and arranging induction training. • IT Providing telephony and IT equipment, software, access to corporate IT services, instructional information, and corporate usage policy information. • Facilities Providing suitable working accommodation, a security pass, and maybe a new network point in conjunction with IT. • Fleet Arranging a company car and maybe working with the facilities group to arrange parking facilities. Such complexity needs to be effectively managed to ensure both the timeliness and completeness of delivery. HR can utilize IT best practices, service automation capabilities, and the IT organization’s experience in managing service relationships to better deliver against the needs of employees and HR’s external customers, such as contractors and recruitment agencies. Automate HR Service Relationships Like the IT organization, HR departments are subject to a number of operational challenges which include: • Ensuring that supply can meet the current and future demand for HR services. • Catering to increasingly globalized and mobile workforces and the operational issues this brings. • Meeting employee expectations on timeliness, quality of service, and customer experience. • Improving employee visibility of available HR services and the associated service levels. • Quickly changing and enhancing HR services as demand dictates. • Minimizing the IT overhead needed to implement and maintain the case management application. • Optimizing the cost of delivering HR services. • Being able to demonstrate efficiency, effectiveness, and value to business stakeholders. IT can help HR to streamline and improve service relationships and HR service delivery by providing: • An Employee Self-Service Portal Deliver a consistent end user experience to employees that provides an HR storefront with 24x7 access to HR information and services, including a self-service catalog enabled by out-of-the-box request-fulfill process automation. • Automated Case Assignment Where requests are directed to a specific individual or group via rules. • Email Notifications Where inbound and outbound emails are set up for cases and tasks within a case that alert an HR team member or group within HR. • A Reporting Engine and Custom Dashboards So HR specialists and management can run standard reports or create their own custom reports to determine areas for improvement or opportunities to drive operational efficiencies.
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HR Needs Service Automation Now, and IT Should Deliver It It is time for the enterprise IT organization to step up – both to provide the HR organization with the technological enablement it desperately needs to help improve HR service delivery and performance, and to improve the business perceptions of the IT organization and the value it delivers. IT can make an immediate impact by helping HR to: • Improve HR Service Delivery and Increase Responsiveness Make the HR organization and its services more accessible, automate activities to increase the speed of delivery and reduce human error, and improve consumer experience. • Improve Insight and Decision Making Evaluate HR resource utilization and better understand the volume and types of service requests to determine opportunities for service enhancements, increased efficiencies, and to drive improvements in service levels. • Benefit from an Enterprise-Wide Single System of Record Gain accuracy, agility, and economies of scale through an enterprise single system of record.
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