HR service delivery: Creating delight with an exceptional digital experience

Guest post: Thanks to our partnership with Leapgen, we're delighted to have contributions from their team of experts. Thank you to Gail Krieger for sharing her wealth of knowledge in the field of Digital Employee Experience.

What comes to mind when you think about HR Service Delivery? Maybe the words evoke images of the literal HR Helpdesk that distributes forms, links and refers workers to employee self-service.  Not necessarily descriptions that inspire delight. How might we create an “HR Helpdesk” that results in delight? 

Your Customer = Your Workforce

Let’s first consider who needs HR Service Delivery. Who is the client? Of course, it is your team, your employees, your leaders, your CEO and maybe even you! What do all these cohorts have in common?  They are humans; people; individuals like you and me who need HR help. Regardless of how we provide an HR Helpdesk that fulfills HR Service Delivery needs, with enablement tools such as case management or a literal HR Helpdesk staffed with a mix of fellow humans and augmented intelligence, we must consider human interactions and human emotions and feelings. After all, when a customer; aka your workforce, has a need for HR Service Delivery, they are trying to solve a problem. Whether their problem involves a need to add their newborn to their health plan, understand how and when bonus payments are calculated and paid, or even to understand the deductions on their paystub, the problem they are trying to solve is important to them in this moment.  

Your customer is likely experiencing feelings such as frustration, concern, stress, or general discomfort because their HR Service Delivery need is unresolved.

Apply empathy to the process

So how do you ensure you are providing HR Help Desk support that meets your fellow human being’s needs swiftly and completely in a frictionless way without causing additional unwanted feelings such as confusion and irritation? One way is to leverage empathy to understand your customer and then create HR Helpdesk solutions that will delight. Putting yourself in your workers’ shoes isn’t difficult since we’ve all been in the situation where we need clear information and we want it fast. Heck, to google is a verb that loosely translates to getting your answer in nanoseconds. This is our culture; this is our reality; and this is what our customers expect.  By developing an HR helpdesk approach, whether it be literal or a culmination of information in a case management tool, you can provide the basis in which your workforce can use keywords to find the answers they want, right now, in the moment. 

Perhaps Case Management conjures up thoughts of technical documentation that only an expert would be able to translate, let alone apply to a real human problem. Let’s take a moment to unpack what we mean when we say HR Case Management. Case can be another way to say issue or problem and management might be another way to say grouping or arrangement. In our human-centered world, another way to say Case Management is problem grouping. By developing simple to understand documentation; knowledge management articles; that are searchable and easy to digest, we provide that grouping or arrangement of information that can be tapped into at any time.

Let’s face it, we can’t be everything to everyone, and have the ability to solve our workforce's human problems in real-time, with real people, although we might desire to do so. As humans ourselves, we are imperfect and we don’t always have all of the answers on the top of mind. Just as when you google something, there is not a team of humans up on a nebulous cloud just waiting to research and answer your inquiry, within moments, with complete and clear responses. But we get the next best thing. When we google a query, we receive information, based on the keywords we searched, that may fit our situation. We can disseminate the results and select the hits; the results; that look to fit the bill. And if they don’t, we can instantly rephrase our request and try again. Essentially, this is how HR Case Management works. Your workforce, your fellow humans, determine what they need and phrase an ask to your HR Case Management tool and then the magic of HR Service Delivery happens.  

HR Service Delivery is not always Digital

Knowledge Management articles within HR Case Management tools are not always the ideal way to address a human problem. According to the Gartner report, Use Technology to Personalize HR Services, “..it is important to determine when employees would prefer person-to-person contacts. For example, when employees must interact with HR due to a sudden short-lived event such as a death in the family, severe weather or a minor injury at work, 42% of employees would rather speak with an HR specialist than use self-service HR systems.”  That is when a real-life person needs to intervene, to learn more, to offer a personal touch, so it is possible to provide the custom, person-focused, response in the moment.  

Serving up what your clients need, before they ask

Let’s take this a step further. What if you could anticipate what people need and then serve your customers in a proactive way by handing them this information before they even ask! Too good to be true? Imagine you open your browser and before you can even type the first letter of your google search query, your answer appears, like magic. Snap!  With an HR Case Management tool you have an embedded HR Service Delivery platform that understands people and their moments that matter. These tools can learn from the typical search queries and identify the employee lifecycle needs and provide proactive information, just in time, developed on the bases of what the typical human might need, want, desire in their moments that matter. Our CEO, Ivan Harding discusses this topic in more detail in the personalization of digital employee experience podcast. Here he likens the ideal HR portal to that of Netflix, providing content tailored to the needs and preferences of the user. Within an organization you may have dozens of user personas each requiring bespoke content. 

Putting it all together

Summing it up, your HR Service Delivery model can serve up an HR Helpdesk that creates delight with exceptional people-focused digital experiences that use empathy to understand those moments that matter.  And when there is not a clear-cut digital solution, your HR Service Delivery model can search out the right person, at the right time to provide that custom person-focused response that elicits delight.

About the Author

Gail Krieger brings over 20 years of HR operations leadership, project management, and cloud technology experience, serving organizations of all sizes and industries. She is passionate about process excellence, digital technology innovation and employee enablement. She has helped companies effectively deploy HR strategies and initiatives with the employee experience at the forefront. Gail’s achievements include HR technology deployments, HR M&A due diligence and integration and employee on-boarding program redesign.

Prior to joining Leapgen, Gail began her career in Human Resources Operations in various industries including financial services, pharmaceutical, technology, retail, manufacturing and non-profits. Her passion for enabling efficient processes led her to system deployments including UKG, Ceridian, SAP SuccessFactors and Workday. 

Gail holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from SUNY Oneonta as well as a Master’s degree  in Human Resources Management from NY Institute of Technology.  Gail is a Certified Global Professional of Human Resources (GPHR) and is a Global Remuneration Professional (GRP).  She is a Prosci Certified Professional and is Six Sigma Green Belt Certified.