HRSD outcomes and how to measure them

[Nidhi Garg1]

ServiceNow® HR Service Delivery

Define and measure success by identifying clear business outcomes and key performance indicators.

 

Introduction

Many organizations want to modernize how they provide HR services. However, to translate this strategic objective into tangible business value, you need a clear vision that aligns with your organization’s business goals, identifies targeted business outcomes, and establishes how to measure success. Not only does this help you ensure stakeholder alignment, it also focuses your team’s execution on achieving these agreed outcomes.

Every organization is unique, with its own culture, goals, and challenges, so there is no “one size fits all” vision that you can take off the shelf. However, you can learn from other organizations that have already embarked on a similar transformation journey. In this document, we draw on ServiceNow's experience working with thousands of our HR Service Delivery (HRSD) customers to provide insights into these journeys, including the most typically targeted business outcomes with specific key performance indicators (KPIs) that HRSD customers use to validate success and drive continuous improvement.

Key HRSD business outcomes

The table below summarizes the most frequent HRSD business outcomes along with specific objectives that support these outcomes, success metrics/key performance indicators, and targets. Think about how each of these outcomes supports your organization’s business goals and create a ranked list. A typical process might follow these steps:

1. Choose your top outcomes and share these with your stakeholders to align on priorities.
2. Evaluate how many of these agreed outcomes you can reasonably address in your initial HRSD rollout, and which ones need to be delivered in future phases.
3. Use this evaluation to create an HRSD roadmap that aligns with your strategic goals.
4. Share this roadmap with your stakeholders to get their agreement and support.

NOTE: You can achieve all the business outcomes below over time. However, by prioritizing which ones to target first, you accelerate time to value and avoid doing too much, too soon.  

HRSD Key Performance Indicators

This article lists examples of some KPIs that ServiceNow HRSD customers use most frequently to measure success. Select KPIs that support your chosen business outcomes and identify how you are going to measure these. It’s also important to establish a baseline for your selected KPIs. For instance, if your KPI target is a 10% increase in your net promoter score (NPS) for cases, you need to know your current NPS so you can measure progress. Once again, make sure you share your KPI targets and timelines with your stakeholders and case workers to get their buy-in. This will allow you to set clear expectations on what success looks like, define processes to measure and influence this success, and then to share that success once you have achieved these targets.

NOTE: You can also use ‘HR Service Delivery Recommended Implementation Sequence’ as a guide to plan for additional and related product capabilities and product maturation over time.

HRSD Business Outcomes – Cost	HRSD Business Objectives	Success Metrics (KPIs) and [Preliminary] Targets
Reduce HR case volume worked (deflection)	Improved employee self-service (knowledge articles, chat bot, etc.) results in fewer cases to the contact center	HR case volume (#) – 40% reduction
Reduce HR case escalation	Intelligently route HR cases and equip agents with a dedicated agent workspace, mitigating the need for escalation to higher support tiers	HR cases escalated beyond Tier 1 (%) – 30% reduction
Reduce HR case resolution effort	Reduce time to resolve HR cases via automated workflows, knowledge articles, etc.	Time to resolve HR case (in hours) – 30% reduction
Reduce employee relations investigation effort	Standardize critical steps and consolidate reporting and analysis to drive employee relations team efficiency	Cumulative effort per investigation (in hours) – 15% reduction
Increase onboarding team efficiency	Use digital workflows to automate and streamline onboarding tasks, reducing manual effort	Manual onboarding activities (%) - 44% reduction*
Increase offboarding team efficiency	Use digital workflows to automate and streamline offboarding tasks, reducing manual effort	Manual offboarding activities (%) – 44% reduction*
Increase transfer team efficiency	Use digital workflows to automate and streamline transfer tasks, reducing manual effort	Manual transfer activities (%) – 44% reduction*
Reduce new hire time to full productivity	Provide an intuitive, frictionless, comprehensive onboarding experience to accelerate the ramp to full productivity for new hires	Time to full productivity (in months) – 8% reduction*
Reduce asset loss during offboarding	Ensure high-value assets are collected and software access is revoked at time of offboarding via automated workflows and digital checklists	Offboarded employees with unreturned assets (%) – 20% reduction*
Decommission legacy HR systems and enterprise portal spend	Retire current HR service delivery software and existing enterprise portals, intranets, etc.	Legacy HR systems and enterprise portals annual run rate ($) – Avoid all future costs associated with decommissioned software [varies]
NOTE: The “increase efficiency” outcomes listed above share similar objectives and similar targets applied to these different, yet similar processes.
HRSD Business Outcomes – Risk	HRSD Business Objectives	Success Metrics (KPIs) and Targets
Reduce new hire attrition	Improve employee experience and access to key onboarding information to drive early engagement and improve retention	New hire attrition (% of 1st year new hires retained) – 1% reduction
Minimize employee relations investigation risk	Mitigate exposure and accelerate resolution through a standardized process and centralized repository of investigations and corrective actions	Employee relations investigations mishandled (%) – 5% reduction
Reduce losses from incomplete deprovisioning	Ensure software is deprovisioned appropriately to minimize unwanted access and data security risks	Offboarded employees with incomplete software deprovisioning (%) – 10% reduction
HRSD Business Outcomes – Growth	HRSD Business Objectives	Success Metric (KPIs) and Targets
Reduce end-user time spent on HR tasks (deflection)	Self-service enables employees to resolve requests quickly, resulting in reduced time spent on HR tasks	HR case volume (#) – 40% reduction
Reduce end-user time spent on non-HR requests	Consolidate employee interaction channels (portals) across the enterprise to reduce time spent on non-HR requests (via Employee Center Pro)	Non-HR employee requests (#) – 15% reduction*
Reduce revenue generating employees time to full productivity	Provide an intuitive, frictionless onboarding experience to accelerate the ramp to full productivity for new hires that generate revenue (i.e. billable / front line employees)	Time to onboard billable worker (in months) – 18% reduction*

*Some metrics might require higher SKUs or additional products to achieve these results. Consult with your ServiceNow account team to determine your needs and your path forward.

Additional Considerations

 

Platform Analytics

The ServiceNow Platform Analytics community forum is a great place to begin learning more about reporting capabilities from ServiceNow. We suggest reviewing our recent ‘Platform Analytics Enablement Toolkit’ to begin your journey within the current context.

See the ServiceNow Community article ‘Reporting Best Practices’ for practical recommendations on how to begin.

Our ServiceNow documentation site give an overview of ‘HR Dashboards & Reports’ and lists ‘Available HR reports’.

Additionally, ServiceNow provides training so users can build their own reports that monitor their progress. Learn more about training for Platform Analytics.

ServiceNow Process Mining

While Platform Analytics shows you the current state of your HRSD implementation, it does not show you why these numbers are happening. Is your time to resolve cases higher than expected? Are your employee satisfaction scores trending lower? What is the cause of so many cases being reopened? This is where Process Mining can assist. Process Mining exposes opportunities to improve your HRSD processes. Maybe one team or assignment group takes longer than expected to process cases? Or maybe you have an opportunity to automate or workflow a process or eliminate unnecessary approval steps? Process Mining is a great way to see where you can improve your return on investment. Learn more about Process Mining.

And definitely watch the ‘Process Mining for HR Service Delivery & Lifecycle Events’ webinar for more information.

UPDATE: Recent releases enable us to data mine HR processes that occur outside the ServiceNow platform, such as those processes supporting onboarding.

Conclusion

Implementing ServiceNow HRSD can bring structure to your HR Service Delivery. You can consolidate case intake channels and begin to see where your volumes come from and where you can make improvements to the employee experience as well as the experiences of your agents/case workers. The concept of measurements and outcomes is simple. Define your opportunities. Measure the results. Learn why you are getting these results. Make plans for improvement. Track your improvements. The journey will take some effort, yet the results are worth this effort.

Value from enhanced Employee Experience

You can enhance the experience of your employees using our Employee Center Pro product. See THIS ARTICLE to learn more about the value of Employee Center Pro.