Among the new product announcements from Knowledge17, held this week in Orlando, Florida, ServiceNow announced ServiceNow Enterprise Onboarding and Transitions.
For employees, getting onboarding and other services from HR can be a time-consuming and extremely frustrating part of starting a new job – a time that is stressful enough without having to deal with provisioning issues. HR departments want to provide great service, but they are too often bogged down with repetitive, transactional tasks. ServiceNow aims to allow enterprises to easily set up and manage employee lifecycle events across multiple departments on a single service delivery platform. The new application orchestrates and automates employee onboarding, offboarding, relocation, leaves of absence and many other processes that begin in HR but span multiple systems and departments, such as IT, facilities, finance and legal.
Employee onboarding starts in HR, but this process can require the coordination of five to 10 departments in order to complete them. Traditional onboarding solutions support HR related tasks such as capturing employee information, compliance and I-9 forms but generally do not manage the work required from other departments. A recent Gartner research report, indicates that, “organizations have begun to realize the significant impact that onboarding has on employee engagement and retention. Application leaders responsible for HR must work with multiple business functions to expand process scope and reach more worker types through all phases of the workforce life cycle.”
“The new hire onboarding experience is a critical first impression for incoming employees,” said Deepak R. Bharadwaj, general manager of Human Resources Business Unit, ServiceNow. “ServiceNow provides a system of action for organizations to streamline and automate the complex services needed from multiple departments beyond just HR to give employees the onboarding experience they deserve.”
ServiceNow Enterprise Onboarding and Transitions breaks these complex processes down into individual activities, such as getting a workspace, credit card, security access, computer, and phones. The system then distributes these to different departments to be approved and actioned. It tracks the status of each activity, and reminds people automatically if they are behind schedule. If an activity is stalled, it is escalated so that problems can be resolved. If exceptions occur, employees can easily open a case in the application as part of the onboarding workflow. Some manual processes are able to be eliminated entirely – for example ServiceNow can create email accounts, and even automatically update Core HR and other departmental systems of record.
In addition to improving the service delivery efficiency of HR and other departments, this new application aims to provide a consumer-like service experience to employees. In order to provide this experience the Employee Service Center provides a single place for employees to interact and communicate with HR for all service needs. Employees are able to get information, such as new hire policies by searching for it or by HR proactively pushing it out. If employees need help or more information, they can submit a request. HR can even task employees to take certain actions like signing documents.
“Our employees are saving lives every day. It is imperative to have processes in place to create a smooth and efficient experience for new hires. ServiceNow transforms previously cumbersome and manual onboarding processes and simplifies the experience for both the employee and the company,” said ServiceNow customer Carlie Bush, director of HR Shared Services at Envision Healthcare, a leading provider of physician-led, outsourced medical services.
ServiceNow Onboarding and Transitions will be available in the third quarter of 2017.
