HR No-Brainer: Extending IT Service Management To HR

HR has been heads down… but IT has a way out

It’s no secret that the past year and a half has been challenging for all departments across organizations. One unsung hero? HR.

HR is quite literally responsible for the employee journey from beginning to end, and all the paperwork that is associated with it. Employment contracts, HR and company policies, documentation of required trainings, submitting paperwork for health insurance and retirement plans, and the list goes on. Due to the broad range of HR responsibilities, it is challenging to provide a single, seamless solution for employee engagement. This typically leads to one or both of these negative consequences:
 

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. IT has been at the forefront of digital transformation and HR can benefit from the lessons already learned in another part of the organization. As HR departments are up against flat or shrinking budgets, IT has already mastered the art of automating tedious manual tasks and re-shifting its staff’s focus to driving more strategic initiatives. And the benefit of being able to scale without having to add excessive headcount is a welcome relief to budget restraints that HR departments are facing.

HR has been going above and beyond the call of duty to maintain business continuity – and then some. There have been long nights, lost weekends and high pressure as teams have done and are still doing more than they could have ever anticipated to keep pace with the changing work environment.

Having said that, things have come to a head and this breakneck pace isn’t sustainable… at least not without utilizing tried-and-true service management practices to mature the HR department.

The way forward is by adopting service management principles and leaning on IT to guide the process to avoid pitfalls. The risks of not implementing IT best practices in HR to guide the business as digital transformation continues to accelerate, as complexity increases, and as the demand for better employee experience rises are plentiful. They include issues like diminished employee experience, productivity and efficiency, more disparate and complex systems, diverted budget, and a lack of HR relevance.

An integrated HR service management (HRSM) solution is becoming a business imperative for HR operations. Effective HRSM tools can help reduce HR administrative costs and mitigate risk through consistent application of policies and organizational rules. Pairing the right technology with institutional knowledge from the IT department to make sure the systems supporting the HR processes integrate is a game-changer as digital transformation continues to accelerate.

There is currently an HR tech market renaissance underway and new best-of-breed solutions are emerging. By applying service management practices to HR, businesses can deliver service to employees in a modern, unified way which has many benefits.

Employees want to be able to find answers to their questions and want quick resolutions to their problems, whether they’re working in-office or remotely. Not knowing who to go to for what and where, as well as the status of their requests can create a very frustrating service experience.

Through HR service management, you can provide employees a one-stop-shop self-service portal that they can utilize for all their needs.

With a unified service delivery strategy, employees can find what they need quickly and get back to doing what they do best, saving frustration and time.

When the majority of workflows can be automated and handled without human intervention, that’s a win-win for everyone. Automatically, requests are routed to the right teams, status notifications are sent, and requests are resolved.

Applying service management to HR helps employees get back to work faster and frees up the time of those delivering to work on more pertinent employee needs and strategic projects. Plus, with a unified service management strategy, progress can be tracked, handoffs are clean and process breakdowns can be identified. Cross-team collaboration becomes that much easier.

A disparate and fragmented approach to service delivery makes it difficult to see issues and improve upon them. But imagine if you could gain visibility into problem areas, not only in HR but across other lines of business!

A unified approach to service management allows organizations to be more strategic in general. Not only can high priority issues finally be clearly identified and fast-tracked, but bottlenecks can also be easily uncovered to support continuous process improvement.

Via various reporting and analytics dashboards, you can drill down to the KPIs that matter most team-by-team, but also to executives. Resources and energy can be shifted to where it matters most to keep the organization moving forward.

Enabling whole departments and individual employees to do their jobs better means HR understands the organization’s strategic objectives and can effectively help implement them. HR will be viewed as a trusted business partner and can be relied upon as a leader when it comes to other strategic initiatives, especially as businesses tackle the unique challenges presented by hybrid and remote work. This strategic organizational role will only continue to grow as opportunities are uncovered (hint: they’re pretty endless).