HR Case Management Can Be Daunting!
HR Case Management: What’s it all about?
As I talk with prospective clients on a daily basis and we at Dovetail collectively educate the HR world about the powerful benefits of properly tracking interactions through HR Case Management with their employees, I often hear the response, “I don’t think we’re sophisticated or mature enough of a HR organization to handle that.” And I get it.
Nearly everyone I talk to genuinely understands the importance of tracking these interactions, having a detailed audit trail when needing to see where an on-going issue with an employee may have taken a bad turn or discovering where one’s HR workforce is truly spending its time. They too want to know what’s most important to employees on any given week/month/quarter, have the ability to actually enforce various compliance mandates and Service Level Agreements, as well as automate repetitious manual HR tasks. The list goes on and on.
The mental trap is feeling that you have to tackle all of them at once.
Slow your roll, folks!
This last year, I eventually mastered how to bake a really good, juicy chicken breast. I finally put the kibosh on rubbery, overcooked chickens, or worse, under-cooked ones. Once I learned that a nice coating of olive oil, fresh cracked pepper, dash of sea salt, few shakes of red pepper flakes, and a squirt of Tabasco was exactly the ticket to throw in a 350 degree preheated oven for exactly 22-23 mins, everything next came easy. Now I’m slicing here, dicing there. I’ve got side dishes on 2 burners, a sauce on another. But I didn’t get comfortable in the kitchen until I got comfortable with some basics. I certainly didn’t tackle multicourse meals and expect everything to come out right or heaven forbid, at the same time.
I think you know where I’m circling back to.
Don’t overwhelm yourself by feeling like you have to take advantage of all the potential splendors HR Case Management can yield at once. You don’t need to start by integrating a complex knowledge base, linking a myriad of private and public solutions to case work, while making some of that knowledge available via a self service portal. Don’t forget to set up queues and sub queues for every HR department, properly link the distribution of case work to SME’s, business partners, management, and executive management in an automated fashion that also allows for complex reporting and trend analysis. Whew…….!
Are all of these tasks and many more like these possible? Absolutely! Should anyone in their right mind tackle all of them at once? Yes, assuming you’re a twisted, self-abusive maniac.
The benefits of applying case management and similarly linked technological solutions to a HR department are significant. Starting with the basics and mapping out sensible workflows that closely mirror the ones already in use typically yields maximum user acceptance in the least amount of time. That’s the definition of a successful implementation. Work at a pace that your users and department can handle. It’s good to know your solution can aid you in complex intricacies that may fine tune your organization’s HR department to that of Formula One race car precision, but remember, even Ferrari started with the foot propelled Fred Flintstone model at one time.
