Key facets that are vital for a Successful Human Resource Service Management (HRSM) Deployment
On 28 January 1887, Gustave Eiffel broke ground on what became known as the Eiffel Tower. The goal was to construct a grand structure as a center piece of the 1889 World's Fair and a centennial tribute to the 1789 French Revolution.
A rapid 777 days later on 15 March 1889, the final construction was completed and the 81-story elegantly designed iron structure towered over Paris; awed the World Fair's audience; and became one of the most celebrated piece of French culture[1]
The reason I mention the Eiffel Tower is it a great analogy for discussing core building blocks for deploying a successful Human Resource Management Solution (HRSM)[2]
For deploying a HRSM application, the following are key building blocks that align process, data, and technology into a successful solution: Organization, Process, Service Catalog, Data and Security. A slightly deeper dive on each follows.
Organization
From a business perspective, a HR Department can be structured in a variety of ways. However, within a Human Resource Service Management model, the HR Director will need to consider operating on a a four level structure (these levels are based on a paper produced by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM)) [3].
The basic concept level structure is as follows:
- Level 0 — Self Help (Knowledge is Key!)
- Level 1 — HR Generalist (capture incoming calls and striving for first call resolution)
- Level 2 — HR Specialist (address more involved requests or generate case records to manage more detailed or complex situations)
- Level 3 — Practice Group (Center of Excellent — Review overall performance and conduct policy reviews)
The organization concept is to leverage Level 0 capabilities through strong knowledge content and well trained Level 1 HR Generalist to address common issues effectively. The higher costing Level 2 and 3 resources (organized into assignment groups) can be pulled into requests due to complexity, sensitive nature, or impact to a set policy.
Process
The high-level process flow is fairly simple to follow in regards to a request that needs to move up the hierarchy. The diagram below is a progression from an employee request that eventually gets the attention of the Center of Excellence.
More specific processes (assignment routing and task management) come into play within the Service Catalog space.
Service Catalog
As stated in a Previous Blog one must enter into a discussion with HR without IT jargon and focus upon topics such as:
- Rewards and recognition
- Training
- Hiring
- Retention / Performance Management (Career / Productivity)
- The corporate culture (Harmony and Productivity)
- Leadership development and succession
- Risk assessment (Workplace Safety)
The primary goal of the Service Catalog is to present a logical list of HR offerings to the customer (i.e. Employee). Once a best practice series of services has been establish, you can then work on setting up supporting sub-processes (keep them simple); data requirements; assignment strategies; task s management; and notification rules. My first shameless plug — please consider Fruition Partners for best practice approaches : -)
Data
Data is the key tenant within the HRSM offering and very deep pondering on this topic can easily ensure, however, since this is a blog (albeit, longer than usual), here is a brief overview…
Within the HRSM model, open approach to organize and control data is as follows:
- Core — This section represents the foundation data that transcends HRSM and is shared with other areas (such as IT). Topics within Core would include: security/access (Users, Role/Groups); and Service Catalog.
- Definitive Data (w/ possible Integration) — I purposely separate data elements such as Personnel (i.e. Employees), Organizational Departments (i.e. Cost Center); and Geographical Locations. While the data is important and can be classified as 'core,' the source of the data is critical. As an example, it is common for HRSM systems to be directed to pull data from existing Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) which SAP, Oracle, Workday, and even legacy mainframes are examples. The take away here is to determine where the definitive data resides and plan to establish rules for consumption by the HRSM and updates by the HRSM (if it is even allowed).
- Knowledge — "Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge!" This cannot be stressed enough with the HR Service Management deployment. A successful HR Department will focus upon release articles and information that will increase Level 0 (Self-Help) resolution stats to free up HR Personnel to manage the knowledge and focus upon organizational improvement.
- Service Catalog Forms — As mentioned above, specific data will need to be captured depending upon the specific forms that would be deployed. Plan on working with HR to design forms and data field necessary to complete and manage the request
- Service Level Agreements — Establish a Service Level Agreement model to ensure proper support to Requests
Security
Security within the HR space does pose a massive risk if mishandled (i.e. Law suits, data loss, and media scrutiny). I provide a link to a quick online legal brief describing the risk.[4]
Here are a few examples of risks that need to be addressed within the HR Space:
- Social Engineering
- Confidentiality HIPPA —Example of law suite
- Personal Information — Wage / SSN
- Internal Investigations (i.e. Harassment)
What this translates to within the ServiceNow environment is the compartmentalization of data by employing concepts like domain, form access, field access, and record access.
Additionally, business rules need to be in place to go beyond basic partitioning in order to deal with individuals who attempt to manipulate personnel and the process to access sensitive data (i.e. social engineering).
To conclude, there was an interesting twist in the history of the Eiffel Tower. The original plan was to tear down the massive structure in 1909 (once the twenty year ownership contract of Gustave Eiffel expired). However, the Paris Government realized the value of the structure and decided to keep it.[5] The same holds true with planning and executing a proper Human Resource Service Management (HRSM) solution. An organization's success within the HRSM can translate expansion of the ServiceNow Platform into other key business areas and ultimately the platform, process, and data can withstand the test of time.
[1] Source: http://www.toureiffel.paris/en/everything-about-the-tower/the-eiffel-tower-at-a-glance.html
[2] Any the analogy and examples can be applied to other solutions as well
[3] Competency Model commission by Society of Human Resource Managers document 2012. Source: http://www.shrm.org/hrcompetencies/documents/competency%20model%2011%202_10%201%202014.pdf
[4] Ceridian and Lookout Services, Inc. are two examples identified within this article. Both companies could be fined $16,000 per violation! (see link - http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ad6b67c0-640f-4137-a61f-21cb79a91170)
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