The Employee Relations product was released in Paris to help organizations manage their most sensitive cases. The purpose-built Employee Relations plugin provides agents with the ability to work on sensitive cases that often have a complex set of data and security needs. In the Rome release, we have added features in three main areas: Evidence Management, Interview Management, and data model enhancements.
Evidence Management
A new table has been added to enable a more organized, secure tracking of evidence artifacts related to Employee Relations cases. Records can be added to this table to track and organize artifacts related to a case as supporting evidence in an investigation. Evidence can be captured as attachments securely added to the evidence record, or links to external files/folders. Involved parties will not be able to see any evidence that is added here.
This feature is delivered in it’s own plugin ‘Evidence Management’ [com.sn_evidence_management] so that it can be utilized outside of Employee Relations cases. Information on the roles within this plugin (sn_em.admin, config_manager, reader, writer) can be found in our product documentation.
Interview Management
Two features are now available to better manage Interviews related to Employee Relations cases: Interview Question Templates, and Interview Scheduling in HR Agent Workspace. These two features enable consistent, efficient, and centralized interview planning.
Interview Question Templates
Interview Question Templates allow agents to plan their investigation interviews within ServiceNow. Interview questions can be per-configured and tagged for easy filtering. Agents can then filter and select the interview questions they plan on asking. The interview questions selected are added to the interview notes field to allow for easy capturing of notes.
This is delivered in a separate ‘Interview Templates’ plugin [com.sn_interview_templates] so that it can be used outside of Employee Relations. This feature has its own set of roles to easily allow who has access to create and use Interview Question Templates. Information on the roles within this plugin (sn_interview_temp.admin, reader, writer) can be found in our product documentation.
Outlook Interview Scheduling in HR Agent Workspace
Agents can now schedule Outlook meetings directly inside of ServiceNow. After the agent selects the scheduling method ‘calendar’, a pop-up modal appears allowing the agent to specify meeting duration, title and meeting invite text, and then select from a list of available times. Any changes to the meeting that happen in Outlook are also updated in ServiceNow. This feature is only available in HR Agent Workspace, and not supported in the classic UI.
Data model and usability enhancements
Case timeline view in HR Agent Workspace
The case timeline shows agents key events such as interviews, due dates, and more in chronological order. Having this view helps agents and investigators quickly identify what’s already taken place and determine if they’re ready to move forward to next steps. The timeline can be filtered to see specific event types. The timeline also allows for easy navigation; clicking an event will open the associated record in a Workspace child tab.
Accommodations
A new delivered HR Service and accompanying record producer are now available to support accommodation requests, which can be opened by both employees and agents. Delivered Accommodation types include Equipment, Job restructuring, Leave, Reader or Interpreter services, Reassignment, Schedule, Workplace modification, Workplace policy. These Accommodation types can be easily configured in the ‘Accommodation Types’ (Employee Relations – Accommodation Types) module to fit your organization’s unique needs.
Union membership
Several new tables are now available for capturing unions and employee union memberships. Unions can have local chapters and union contacts added, as well as which employees are in which union. Configuration for this information is available in the HR Administration > Labor Unions module.
