Careers
Reinventing an employee portal—a reason to dance
Deepika D. was presenting in a meeting when she found out that the newly created My ServiceNow had been recognized as one of the 10 Best Intranets of 2023 by the Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g).
“I got up and did a little victory dance right there in the meeting,” says the senior manager of My ServiceNow products at ServiceNow, in celebration of the award for revamping the company’s employee portal.
“I pinged my team and leaders right away that our hard work had brought us industrywide recognition. And, yes, I finished my meeting with a huge grin.”
Rahul V., senior staff user interface engineer at ServiceNow, was returning from his son’s daycare when he saw the notification. “I felt like I was driving at 100 mph to get back and share the news with my family,” he says. “Woohoo! It was a dream-come-true moment.”
More than a company intranet
Most employee portals are a simple repository of links, making them more of a roadblock than an enabler. Employees put up with, ignore, or work around them until an outage or failure occurs. Then they complain about the issue.
Ours is a different story altogether. Our digital technology team saw a huge opportunity to reinvent the company’s employee portal to create a central, intuitive, customizable, employee-first hub on the Now Platform using our Employee Center Pro product. They wanted a single place where people could find exactly what they were looking for 24/7.
A focus on people
The team departed from a traditional intranet approach to design My ServiceNow, a next-generation employee portal that’s easily accessible from a browser or a mobile app.
“With My ServiceNow,” Deepika explains, “we’ve moved from prioritizing the services we’re providing to focusing on our people and on meeting their needs more effectively.”
Accessing important tools and resources? Check. Finding the best next course to take? Check. Seamlessly connecting with colleagues within the department or around the world? Check. Solving problems through intuitive self-service? Check.
“Through My ServiceNow, we’re making the employee experience even more seamless, intuitive, and efficient,” explains Kellie R., senior vice president of digital technology experience at ServiceNow.
“We’re helping our employees find and action what they need quicker, which helps them live their best lives at work, saves time, and lowers our operational costs across the business.”
Keys to a world-class intranet experience
For the latest iteration of the portal, the team kept four key concepts in mind:
An employee-first approach that prioritized scalability and human-centric design
Alignment of all content to three core user needs: connect, work, and grow
A cohesive employee experience for an increasingly hybrid and distributed workforce
A seamless, intuitive user interface
Eight months after the project began, ServiceNow had a new portal. “We were able to create a place where the whole company can start their day with whatever’s important to them,” says Spandan C., director of application development at ServiceNow.
My ServiceNow was lauded by NN/g for reflecting the brand in the portal design, incorporating Virtual Agent and AI Search, and “prioritizing user needs and ensuring swift access to crucial information.” In fact, NN/g included a detailed ServiceNow case study featuring best practices in its Intranet Design Annual: 2023.
Amazing? Sure. But there’s more to the story.
Using our own technology
My ServiceNow was built almost exclusively in-house with minimal external agency support using Employee Center Pro and other ServiceNow products.
Employee Center Pro provides the technology backbone of the employee portal experience. The team also used an enhanced complementary Now Mobile native app to offer popular functionality for employees on the go. Other important features for both desktop and mobile experiences include:
Manager Success Center to help managers navigate the employee journey for their teams, including hiring, onboarding, and growth
AI and machine learning algorithms for personalized content on the homepage, employee profile, and community pages
Centralized approvals so users never have to log in to a multitude of systems to drive processes forward, from expenses to candidate offers to invoices
Curated learning recommendations to support employee career development
Single source for opening IT, HR, legal, and workplace services requests
Kudos!, an employee recognition program to help promote the company’s culture of appreciation and collaboration
Enhanced profiles for stronger connections between employees
Workplace application integrations that surface important tasks, info, and events
Rashmi G., senior staff user experience designer and the project’s design lead, is proud that the connect, work, and grow themes are strongly represented in the design of the portal itself. They help us “create a digital experience that makes work just flow more seamlessly and intuitively,” she says.
With the Now Platform as its foundation, My ServiceNow provides easy access to vital information, simplifies navigation and search, promotes open communication and collaboration, and curates and targets content to each employee—all from a central, customizable, single pane of glass.
Find out more about how ServiceNow technology helps enhance the employee experience.
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