What is Case Management for HR? – Part 2 of 3
Case Management for HR empowers everyone in the organization – employees, HR staff, and management. Let’s revisit the original premise: the employee cannot find what he or she is looking for on the portal. What happens next?
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Where does the employee turn?
The HR Help Desk – a single point of contact across multiple channels: Phone, E-mail, Web [Portal]
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How does the HR Advisor find the information?
The Advisor can access a library of articles – or Solutions – that captures knowledge generated in the service delivery process. If the employee question or issue has been encountered before, the resolution is available, and can easily be located using Google-like text search. The Advisor can also search for corporate content that resides anywhere in the organizational network.
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How does the HR Advisor record the interaction?
The specific question or issue 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.
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Where does the HR Advisor get assistance?
If the HR Advisor is unable to answer the employee question or to resolve the issue, he or she can either ask for assistance from other Advisors or ask another Advisor to take responsibility for the task, typically by dispatching it to a suitable Queue, perhaps using auto-route facilities, or by assigning it to an individual. Any and all such workflow-related events are logged to the history – or audit trail – of the Case. This permanent record tracks precisely Who did What, When. And again, any such event can set in motion – or cancel – any number of automated processes. The dispatch of a Case to a Queue, for example, will result in notification of all Queue members that this has occurred.
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How does knowledge get captured for reuse?
Casework is notoriously difficult to parse for reusable knowledge. 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 sometimes idiosyncratic 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 themselves have moved on.
