HR Services are as old as HR itself. Every HR department offers services, even if they are not always perceived as a service. What is new about HR Services and why should every HR department take a close look at a service offering?
One trend follows the next. Megatrends such as Digitization and Big Data do not stop at HR. The expectation is clear: HR has to do "something". But could the whole thing perhaps be a little more precise? Instead of being blown from trend to trend, why not put HR administration back on the radar? Boring? Far from it. Because this is exactly where the new technologies can be perfectly showcased.
More than 25 years ago, the topic of HR administration was already experiencing a hype and culminated in the introduction of software for payroll accounting. Business Process Outsourcing of HR administration also experienced its first boom - and its first failure - back in the 1990s. Why? Because outsourcing merely shifted the existing problems from the company to the service provider. And because something crucial was forgotten: the employees. Today, the topic is experiencing a renaissance. But what do HR departments need to focus on to prevent failure?
Putting the customer at the centre
The first wave of HR optimisation focused on HR itself. The aim was to streamline HR processes. However, if you change the perspective and see HR as a service provider, this means putting the needs and expectations of the Customer - i.e. the employees - at the centre.
An HR service catalogue can be developed on this basis. However, this is not just simple office work, but hard, back-breaking labour. After all, behind every service is a clearly defined performance promise that must be translated into a service level agreement and communicated transparently, not only in terms of content, but also in terms of fulfilment time, error rate and other quality parameters. For example, if employees know that the simulation of an early retirement requires a two-week lead time, they will not ask every day why they have not yet received anything.
Like any service provider, HR must continuously and systematically optimise its services. The cycle of continuous performance improvement, consisting of evaluating, analysing and improving, must be set in motion.
Do it yourself or hand it over?
If you take a consistent approach to service orientation, Services can be provided with internal transfer prices. In this way, the HR department can actually compete with external providers and check whether its own costs are in line with the market or whether it makes sense to outsource certain services. Better scalability, greater cost transparency or the negotiation of tough "penalties" for non-compliance with the agreed quality criteria are just some of the possible arguments.
Business process outsourcing is not a question of "all or nothing", as individual Services can also be outsourced without any problems. For example, an HR organisation may decide that only the expenses or reference process should be outsourced.
A crystal-clear distinction between external and internal service provision is crucial for success. Who is the employees' first point of contact for HR issues? The service model, consisting of first level and second level support, must be defined without conflict and in a way that everyone can understand.
The HR cloud on the rise
The cloud megatrend is giving new impetus to the topic of business process outsourcing, as modern cloud solutions greatly simplify access to state-of-the-art technology.
But beware: it starts with the process, not the Software! Transferring a bad process to the cloud simply leads to a bad digital process - and therefore to bad HR Services.
Nevertheless, the move to the cloud undoubtedly makes HR (happier). As modern cloud solutions can be up and running in record time, HR can respond quickly and flexibly to changing or new needs with new Services instead of tying up HR Energy in months-long IT projects. Of course, the same applies to an almost greater extent to external HR service providers who use the cloud to offer new services on the market. Customers benefit from lower service fees, as the service provider in turn benefits from lower operating costs. At the same time, the effort required to transfer new Customers to Operations is massively reduced.
Savings potential with HR ticketing
A significant contribution to service quality lies in the processing of employee enquiries. This is precisely where there is still a lot of untapped optimisation potential. If the majority of HR enquiries can be dealt with automatically, HR will become more efficient. In a nutshell, this means that HR is open around the clock - a virtual HR department on call. Employees can find information on regulations, answers to burning questions and much more in a centralised knowledge database. Thanks to intelligent searches, a large proportion of enquiries can be answered without HR having to get involved. Incidentally, as we all know, every IT hotline works according to this principle: it first checks whether the answer to its own problem is already available.
HR ticketing is therefore the magic formula for real efficiency gains in HR.
However, HR has to do a lot to nip at least 80 per cent of all enquiries in the bud. Closed HR tickets must be analysed to identify weak points. New knowledge is added to the knowledge database and outdated information is regularly cleared out. To do this, HR needs a knowledge manager and the right supporting Technology.
Software manufacturers have recognised this potential. The market already offers some excellent tools that are perfectly tailored to the needs of HR and are not "just" a copy of a classic ticket system.
And what's coming tomorrow?
Artificial Intelligence and Big Data are the key to predictive Services. The ingredients: Data, data and more data, as well as self-learning software based on deep learning algorithms. The infinite amount of analysable data can be used to almost predict requests and identify trends before they actually become reality. In large organisations in particular, the scalability of HR resources can be massively optimised in terms of both quantity and quality.
This is already working on a small scale: even without artificial intelligence, we know that one or two days after the payslips are sent out, there will be an increase in payroll enquiries.
The downside of predictability?
The transparent employee says hello. With the help of big data, HR could even know in advance whether a person is overworked, when and where they want to go on holiday and whether there is a new addition to the family or a divorce. But do we really want that?