The curious case of Suspended HR cases

[Juhi Yasmin]

Hello Everyone,

We use the ServiceNow HRSD module. One of the case management features is the ability of HR Agents to suspend HR cases using different pre-built reason codes. The practice we have been following is to suspend cases when Agent is awaiting from other HR groups, external vendor, requestor etc. We have SLAs in place too which pauses if a case is in Suspended status. We have identified that a lot of times this status is misused to avoid a breach or the case is suspended for genuine reasons but the agent forget to follow up or check on it.

Do you have any guidelines or best practices to share around the use of Suspended status? How do you monitor it? Any guidelines designed to follow up and close suspended cases faster? Thank you!!

[jcmings]

A few thoughts:

• Agents abusing the Suspend feature could suggest that the SLA timelines are unrealistic in the first place. 
• You can set up notifications to send to the agent to remind them that a case they are assigned to has been suspended.
• You could require justification to un-suspend the case (although this may be overkill).
• You may need to re-educate the workforce to ensure they are using the Suspend feature properly. This will also mean that supervisors need to monitor the adoption of the guidelines.

It may be helpful to have this conversation with some of the agents themselves. I have a feeling they'll echo point #1 (the timelines are unrealistic). Keep in mind that any successful organization should be iterating. Just because you set the timelines at X days on go-live doesn't mean they have to stay that way. Make the system work for the user.