Employee experience platforms have created a buzz in the human resources technology industry, but what exactly are these systems, and what new benefits can they deliver?
Employee experience platforms are software or online portals that help employees find basic HR information on their own—letting HR provide higher-level service and boosting employees’ perceptions of HR and the company.
At the recent HR Technology Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas, industry analyst Josh Bersin projected that employee experience platforms may soon become the employee portal of choice for HR organizations.
One version of such platforms is the integrated HR service delivery (IHRSD) system. This system typically includes employee self-service portals, automated case management functions, a searchable knowledge base and a single sign-on that facilitates one-stop shopping for employees seeking answers to their HR questions. In its report Market Guide for Integrated HR Service Delivery Solutions, research firm Gartner projects that by 2022, 30 percent of midsize and large organizations will have invested in IHRSDs.
IHRSD platforms integrate with existing HR technologies such as human resource management systems. Examples of IHRSD platforms include ServiceNow, Ultimate Software’s PeopleDoc and Deloitte Consulting’s ConnectMe.
These platforms can:
- Route employee requests to the HR professional with the right expertise. This automated case management technology can help avoid problems or service delays associated with employees’ sending requests or questions via e-mail to general HR inboxes. Those with questions about payroll, for example, can fill out forms and have that request sent straight to a payroll specialist, not to a general HR e-mail distribution list.
- Customize content and push personalized HR information to employees based on their unique information needs, such as when they get married, are promoted or request a leave of absence. When employees get married, for example, they may need to add a spouse to benefits packages or change a name or tax withholding.
Automate events like onboarding or offboarding that begin in HR but can carry over into and require action from other departments like IT, finance or legal. Online retailer Overstock.com in Salt Lake City uses an IHRSD platform to help reduce the chance of delays and errors in its onboarding process. Overstock.com estimated that it took 60 to 80 transactions to get all needed requirements in place for each new associate. Because of delays in a manual onboarding process, employees wasted three days on average waiting for everything they needed. The new software platform now helps manage that process by automatically informing a facilities manager which type of workspace to allocate, communicating with IT about technology needs, creating employee accounts and more. Automatic alerts are sent if onboarding tasks haven’t been completed or are getting close to due dates. - Give employees 24/7 self-service access to HR information, allowing them to find general HR forms or benefits information, review policies or obtain approvals without having to submit a request and wait for responses.