Strategic HR: Using Case Management to Build an Enterprise-wide Knowledge Base

Science fiction author Ray Bradbury wrote, "Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future."

A similar argument can be made for almost any enterprise organization, and particularly for their HR departments.
 

Without a library of your organization's employee-relevant documents, forms, policies, benefits information, and similar items, you run the risk of seeing the same HR problems repeated over and over, and you have no clear path for preventing similar problems in the future.

A highly featured, automated HR case management solution can help you build a living library — a searchable, constantly growing, and evolving document repository that will expand your organization's knowledge base. HR departments can use the repository to store and update standard forms and company documents that employees, HR staff members, and customer service representatives can access and download.

A related feature is a system of reports that gives you updated insight into how employees and HR are using any of the myriad items in the knowledge base.

Let's assume that after you announce a new policy for paid time off, you see a spike in the number of requests from one region compared with the others. It might prompt you to be sure that everyone is getting the same communication about the new policy, or find out if managers have communicated it differently from region to region.

A knowledge base is even more beneficial if it includes searchable answers and solutions to concerns and questions that have previously been addressed within the system. This ensures that employees and HR staff are all working from the same book, all the time. When you extend the knowledge base to include employee self-service and access from an employee portal, the workforce gets the information they need by accessing their own personalized, searchable information. The results: fewer calls to HR and a more certain future of accurate employee actions and employee engagement.

With an enterprise-wide knowledge base, you can achieve:

• Faster resolution of HR cases — from the smallest to the biggest
• Greater alignment with policies and procedures company-wide
• The ability to update documents on the fly

To see the value of having a knowledge base integrated into your HR case management solution, ask yourself this question: What was one major HR case in your experience that could have been mitigated by providing that front-line employee or manager easy, direct access to current, accurate, and relevant information?

Image source: DKRZ Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum

Why Are Employees Leaving? HR Case Management Can Provide Answers

Authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman wrote in their 1999 bestseller, First, Break All the Rules: What The World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, that people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. If anything, that statement rings more true today than ever before.  And it’s even more sobering when you consider the most recent findings from Modern Survey, the employee engagement measurement company.

Modern Survey’s Spring 2013 National Engagement Study found that:

1. Disengagement among U.S. workers is at its highest level since the company began conducting its twice-yearly study six years ago.
2. Just over 1 in 3 employees feel that direct managers and supervisors are “most responsible” for engaging employees.
3. Nearly 1 in 4 managers are, meanwhile, unfamiliar with the concept of employee engagement.

So, when someone leaves your organization, odds are good that the relationship between that person and his or her manager had at least something to do with it. How would HR know what those reasons were? More importantly, how would they know in time to change the course of events? How might the problems that one employee is having with a manager be affecting other employees?

Throwing a wider net, what else is going on among your employees that’s not readily visible on the surface but that could nonetheless be causing employee disengagement and, ultimately, be contributing to their decisions to leave? To begin to answer that question, think of all of the personal and professional issues in any employee’s life that might cause them to reach out to HR.

In an enterprise organization, HR is going to be contacted about employee concerns ranging from complaints about their managers to questions about paid time off. Or employees may need help resolving difficulties over, say, getting medical claims reimbursed or their sales bonuses accurately paid.

We're not saying any one of those concerns in and of itself would lead to employee disengagement or cause someone to quit. But what if you could see where the common denominators lie? What if you could compare the issues affecting disengaged and terminating employees with those of their colleagues, other business units, or the entire company?

A fully featured, automated HR case management solution with robust and accessible analytics, like LBi HR HelpDesk, gives you the power to look back among HR cases of disaffected and exiting employees to get accurate and timely insight into their concerns and to see how those metrics compare with similar reports for other groups. You can track the same metrics against performance and productivity to determine how trends among exiting employees are affecting the bottom line.

From there, HR can be a more strategic business partner and proactively suggest changes in policies or processes.  With a system like LBi HR HelpDesk, you have the tools to help managers positively affect employee engagement and to generate greater engagement among more front-line workers.

To learn more about how an automated HR help desk can help HR transform data into better workplace performance and up its strategic game, download our white paper "Stay Competitive: Use Your HR Help Desk to Drive and Measure Employee Engagement."

Image source: CallMe! IQ

Want to Support Talent Development? Get Vision Into Your Workforce

You probably wouldn't think so, but Helen Keller had some advice for today's HR leaders. "The only thing worse than being blind," Keller wrote, "is having sight but no vision."

Today, HR leaders in enterprise organizations often have access to huge piles of data. It sits before them, a sight to behold, a mountain of data compiled from reports and analytics. But do HR leaders gain vision from what they see?
 




















Does HR get perceptions of who their employees are and what truly matters to them? Do they get fresh insight into how to better support talent management and their organizations' learning and development systems, or where the opportunities for positive change lie?

That kind of vision can come with the incorporation of an automated HR case management system into a talent management solution or a learning and development strategy. With that combination, the enterprise HR leader can support the employee's entire life cycle, from onboarding through career development and succession.

Sure, an enterprise talent management system — like a good learning and development system — will show you an employee's defined goals and the training they've completed. But will they give you insight into the employee?

What if you could look at an employee's talent management curve related to his or her historical interactions with HR … and do that at a glance? What if you could compare how your high and low performers differ in their concerns about such personal, ground-zero matters as the use of paid time off, out-of-network medical coverage, problems with an immediate manager, or any of dozens of other potential red-flag concerns?

And what if you could see how cohorts compare based on pay scale, demographics, or business unit? Now you're talking about having a vision of what your workforce is all about. You gain actionable insight that empowers you to respond immediately and act strategically.

This kind of analysis becomes increasingly important when you further consider such diverse trends affecting American business as the continued increase in spending on learning and a rise in the number of employees working remotely. High-performing organizations look at the entire spectrum of talent management and development through the lens of HR interactions.

A fully featured automated HR case management solution that provides robust and accessible analytics, like LBi HR HelpDesk, turns seeing into insight through real-time tracking of transactional data across every department and system. Logistically, it's a no-brainer: The best systems, including LBi HR HelpDesk, integrate seamlessly into most HRIS software and talent development applications.

To learn more about how an automated HR help desk can help HR transform data into better workplace performance and up its strategic game, download our white paper "Stay Competitive: Use Your HR Help Desk to Drive and Measure Employee Engagement."

Image source: Ecribouille