Hr Service Management: Where It Has Been And Where It Is Headed

Managing employees is one of the most challenging activities performed by an organization. Of all the resources handled by a company, the human resource is the most dynamic and erratic. Every employee has their own unique needs, preferences, likes, and dislikes. An organization needs to cater to all their needs and ensure maximum engagement of every employee. 

This is what makes HR service management important for organizations across the world. 

What Is HR Service Management?  

HR service management is a set of processes that revolve around providing HR services to employees. It involves the HR department of an organization managing employees' requests and providing them with suitable solutions. HR service management allows HR professionals to ensure the well-being of the employees and encourage them to work harder to attain the common organizational goals. 

The goal of HR service management is to increase the engagement and productivity of employees. It allows the organization to provide all the requirements to the employees, ensuring that their work is not hampered and they are provided with a conducive work environment.

What Is The Scope Of HR Service Management?

The scope of HR service management is fairly vast as it involves HR activities that are performed from the time an employee enters the company until they leave the organization. It involves catering to the individual and collective needs of the employees throughout their journey within an organization. 

According to the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), HR service management involves nine major activities as follows: 

• Human Resource Planning
  
  Human resource planning is the set of processes whose aim is to ensure that the organization has the right people for the right tasks to be performed at the right time. It involves extensive planning of the HR services to be provided and how the human resource needs to be managed. Human resource planning involves forecasting demand, ascertaining supplies, and identifying significant sources of employee selection.
  
  
• Design Of Organization And Job
  
  This activity involves charting out the organizational structure, authority, relationships, and responsibilities of the human resource within an organization. It also involves clearly defining the roles of every employee and the tasks to be performed by them. Here, the management undertakes "job specification" – the process of identifying the critical attributes of individuals who are most likely to fit specific employee roles within the organization.
  
  
• Recruitment, Selection, And StaffingThis is the process of assessing job applications and hiring the right employees for the right jobs. While recruitment creates a pool of potential candidates, selection eliminates the least capable resources and hires the ones that best fit the bill.
  
  
• Training And DevelopmentOnce the employees are hired, they need to be trained to perform their respective tasks effectively. This activity involves identifying the training needs of the employees and helping them learn specific skills that help them improve their productivity.
  
  
• Organizational Development
  
  This is a set of activities directed towards creating a synergetic effect in an organization. It revolves around creating effective interpersonal and inter-group relationships between employees working in an organization.
  
  
• Compensation And Benefits
  
  This is the aspect that deals with providing perks and remuneration to the employees. Here, the management decides compensations and benefits for different employees based on their roles and contribution to the company.
  
  
• Employee Assistance
  
  This is the set of processes that involves providing personalized support to the employees. It is natural for employees to encounter hurdles frequently while working, and HR professionals must resolve the issues in the best way possible.
  

HR Service Management Issues So Far  

Since the first implementation of HR service management, organizations have incorporated physical help desks, followed by traditional software platforms to provide HR support to employees. However, the traditional approach to HR support is no longer relevant in 2021. 

Here are some of the major issues faced by organizations regarding HR service management so far: 

1. Lack Of Centralization
   
   The traditional HR service management lacked uniformity. There was no unified platform where every employee could raise queries and obtain resolutions that best suit them. This lack of centralization often resulted in unorganized HR support and lack of clarity.
   
   
2. High Dependence On AgentsThe traditional HR help desks relied heavily on support agents for handling every issue raised by employees. All cases, irrespective of their nature, were routed to the support agents, leading to them getting overburdened over time. When the agents get overburdened, the quality of HR support is likely to get degraded, reducing the value of the help desks.
   
   
3. Lack Of Personalization
   
   The traditional HR service management lacked personalized support provided to employees. The tools failed to understand the context of the issues raised and tailor solutions based on the specific needs and preferences of the employees.
   
   
4. Manual Ticketing System
   
   For a long time, employees had to resort to the manual ticketing system to get their issues resolved by the support agents. While the technically sound employees did not face many issues, their non-technical peers were often confused and lost while locating the ticketing tool and creating support tickets using the same.
   

Where Is HR Service Management Headed?

Over time, HR service management has gone through multiple changes. The increasing digitization of business processes has resulted in businesses implementing modern HR service desks. 

Modern service desks allow organizations to automate several HR support processes. AI and machine learning power these tools to add value to the support provided to the employees. Modern HR help desks understand the intent and context of the questions asked by employees to provide them with personalized support. 

Here are some of the most important features that highlight the direction in which modern HR service management is headed: 

1. AI Chatbots
   
   One of the biggest highlights of a modern HR help desk is the use of AI chatbots. These tools use conversational AI, allowing your employees to interact with virtual assistance to obtain primary HR support. Instead of routing all the cases to support agents, these help desks allow the chatbots to provide personalized solutions to your employees within a few seconds.
   
   Once your employee asks a question, the chatbot would understand the context of the same by referring to historical data, scanning your enterprise knowledge base, and returning with a tailor-made solution for the concerned employee.
   
   
2. Auto-resolution Of Issues
   
   The modern HR help desks facilitate auto-resolution of employee issues by automating the ticketing system. Instead of creating the tickets manually, your employees can chat with the AI chatbots, automatically creating the support tickets for them.
   
   These tickets are automatically routed to the suitable agents and all necessary information about the concerned case and the employee. As the agent looks into the matter, the help desk keeps sending automated notifications to the concerned employee to keep them updated about the status of their case. After the issue is resolved and the employee is satisfied, the ticket is automatically closed, and its details are recorded into the knowledge base.
   
   
3. Onboarding Remote Employees
   
   Modern HR service management has adapted itself to suit the onboarding of remote employees. When the HR professionals cannot onboard the employees physically, the modern help desks allow them to send personalized emails to the new employees to provide them with all the required resources. Right from sending their login credentials and contact details of their peers to the company policies, the HR managers can ensure seamless onboarding of remote employees with the help of modern and automated tools.
   
   
4. Integration With Collaborative Platforms
   
   Over the last few years, the adoption of collaborative platforms has significantly increased across all major industries. When the COVID situation prevented professionals from working on-premise, these platforms allowed them to communicate and collaborate with their peers from a virtual platform.
   
   Modern HR service management involves integrating your HR help desk with your collaborative platform. This provides you and your team with a centralized platform to provide and avail of seamless HR support. While the employees can obtain personalized support without switching to a different platform, the HR managers can reach out to every employee and keep track of their processes.
   
   
5. Conveying Employee Benefits
   
   The modern HR help desks allow your HR managers to convey all the benefits entitled to the employees through a single unified platform. Instead of the employees making calls and writing emails to the HR department, they can simply chat with virtual assistants to obtain all relevant details regarding the employee benefits offered by the organization.
   

The Final Word 

From the days of its inception, HR service management has come a long way. Modern HR support is more automated, personalized, precise, and faster to cater to the needs of your employees. It is, therefore, always advisable to switch to automated HR service management tools to increase the overall engagement and productivity of the employees working in your organization.