HR Case Management and the WIIFM
With the 14th Annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition just days away, social media sites are buzzing with all the new technology and vendors exhibiting at this year’s show. As noted in my Top 5 Reasons to Visit Dovetail Software blog post, we’re one of those new vendors. We provide a HR Case Management and Help Desk solution that integrates with your existing HRMS to improve HR productivity and employee satisfaction. Since Case Management is a fairly new concept in HR, I wanted to briefly discuss what it is and the WIIFM (what’s in it for me?), which is usually the first question that comes to mind when implementing a new solution. To ensure I don’t go skipping down the marketing-jargon-of-meaningless-fluff trail, I’ve asked our Dovetail Support Suite for HR Product Manager, Russ Resslhuber to answer a few questions:
Emily Lewis: What is HR Case Management?
Russ Resslhuber: Case Management handles employee interactions with HR helping organizations ensure consistency and timeliness for HR service delivery, comply with legal and regulatory standards, and store sensitive data and records in a secure environment.
Core functions of HR Case Management include:
- Closely tracking employee questions and issues, providing for both task ownership and workflow – e.g., escalation and collaboration
- Enabling HR representatives to both capture and access knowledge that is developed in the course of casework
- Automating workflows and information delivery based on configurable policies and procedures with an event-based workflow engine
EL: How do HR Departments use a Case Management Solution?
RR: Most organizations probably already have an internal web portal for employees to use when updating personal information, selecting benefits, requesting vacation time, and so forth. But how do they handle questions and issues that aren’t addressed by the portal, when the employee has to contact HR to obtain an answer or resolution?
The HR Help Desk is a single point of contact across multiple channels: Phone, E-mail, Web [Portal]. When an employee contacts HR, a case is created. The entire interaction is captured in the Case. Context is also delivered by the application: employee information obtained from the HRIS/HRMS is immediately available, the history of this specific employee’s previous interactions with HR as well as assets associated with the employee can be reviewed, and the Case is categorized for further handling. The creation of the new Case can also set in motion any number of automated processes – for example, to set timeframes for a subsequent activity, or to notify appropriate stakeholders.
Our case management solution also allows HR Departments to automatically capture knowledge for reuse. Cases typically contain a lot of information that turns out not to be relevant in terms of issue resolution, as well as potentially confidential personal data. They also tend to display vocabulary that does not contribute to successful text search. This broad range of vocabulary also means it’s hard to analyze casework, for example to determine what types of questions or issues are dominating HR Help Desk activity in a given timeframe, and to spot developing trends.
For this reason it’s useful to capture knowledge developed in the context of casework in a separate article or record that can be linked to Cases. As a new Solution is developed in response to an employee question or issue, the HR Advisor summarizes the situation as well as the resolution and then links the Case being handled to that Solution, which is immediately made available to all other HR staff. If the question or issue recurs, the Solution can easily be found and linked to the new Case. In this way, it’s very easy to see if a given question or issue – however worded – comes up repeatedly.
A new Solution can also be published to the internal portal for use by employees, allowing them to find answers to their questions and resolutions for their problems 24×7 via self service. Typically, Solutions are published for employee use following an approval process to ensure accuracy and readability. Finally, Solutions capture the knowledge and expertise of the HR community. As team members change positions and perhaps depart, their useful knowledge is retained for use by the community long after they have moved on.
EL: How do organizations benefit from HR Case Management? WIIFM?
RR: Case Management for HR empowers everyone in the organization – employees, HR staff, and management – and provides a rich set of features and benefits, including:
- Lower cost of HR service delivery and increased effectiveness through automation and getting it right the first time
- Improved employee satisfaction with HR services through timely, consistent responses to employee issues
- Documented employee interactions with HR, across all channels provides an audit trail for regulatory compliance, and reduced risk of litigation
- Easy access to HR expertise through issue-related knowledge captured for reuse & analysis
- Insight into staff activities and trends enabling continuous service improvement
- Automation of repeatable tasks
- Reduced administrative load on HR Advisors – freeing up HR talent to work on more strategic initiatives
- Greater standardization and alignment of HR related output throughout the enterprise
This is really just the tip of the iceberg on how Dovetail Support Suite for HR can impact your organization. If you’re planning on attending HR Tech, drop by the Dovetail Booth #353 to learn more. If you’d like to set up a personal demo or speak to a sales rep, please click here.
