BLR recently conducted a survey titled Case Management Survey: How Organizations Deal with Employee Complaints, Questions, and Requests, sponsored by PeopleDoc. We recently sat down with Andrea Couto, senior director, Solutions Consulting at PeopleDoc to look at some of the results.
 |
Accessing the Employee Request System
BLR: So, for those who answered that they did have a system for tracking, we asked how employees could access the system. “E-mail” (78%), “in person” (73%), “written note” (70%), and “phone” (65%) were the most often-cited methods. Forms were cited by 34%, and mobile access was possible for 31%. We can see that a diverse set of methods for accessing the system is popular. Why is that?
Andrea: This is an interesting result. Companies are now dealing with five different generations of workers … all wanting different ways to interact. A best-in-class case management solution should accommodate all of these options to either find an answer to their question or submit a request via phone, e-mail … all the way to accessing a tool from a computer or mobile device.
Check Up on Your Question’s Status
BLR: We asked if people who had submitted a request or question could later query the system to find out the status of their case. Just over one-half of respondents said their system did allow employees to query the system to find out the status.
Andrea: Case management solutions like PeopleDoc not only allow employees to create a ticket or request through different modes but also see real-time responses from the HR shared services team to the request.
Features of Employee Request System
BLR: As for the features of systems, “maintaining confidentiality” (66%) and “tracking through to resolution” (61%) were, perhaps not surprisingly, the most common responses. “Monitors response times” (40%) and “leads the questioner to appropriate policies” (35%) were the only other responses indicated by more than one-third of respondents. Some responses, such as “allowing creation of automatic responses” and “ability to communicate with the HRIS system” were surprisingly low.
Andrea: All of the capabilities you surveyed, particularly the top items on that previous slide, are necessary for every stakeholder to get the information they need. So, going back to the second top feature “Tracks through to resolution of the question or request”; this is necessary for HR to have an audit trail of every conversation and every action taken to resolve the issue in case of a grievance or lawsuit.
| Does the system for handling employee questions and requests provide any of the following features? (Check all that apply.) | |
| Maintains confidentiality | 66.3% |
| Tracks through to resolution of the question or request | 61.4% |
| Monitors response times | 39.6% |
| Leads the questioner to appropriate policies (e.g., jury duty, hours of work, leave) | 34.7% |
Pain Points
BLR: We asked about pain points with question-tracking systems. The most common pain points were that the system was too manual and took too much time. A substantial number of respondents reported no complaints. A few sample answers were:
- “Not everyone who works here is very good at using computers, and it requires me to take the time to look things up for them.”
- “Manager follow thru in a timely manner.”
- “Some employees can be quite time consuming.”
Andrea: These are interesting comments, especially the first item. PeopleDoc customers deal with the same thing: a blend between wanting to provide high-touch service to employees but not holding the hand of every employee when the answers are accessible easily in our knowledge base. So, we help customers by recommending that when they respond back to an employee ticket, include a link to the knowledge base article or form, which forces them to log into the employee portal.
When the employee sees how easy the PeopleDoc employee portal is to navigate, especially when HR uses videos to explain something—most people are visual!—the goal is that HR is spending time on critical employee relations (Tier 3 topics) and less time on Tier 1 topics. This is what allows companies to move more toward a Tier Zero platform … employees are accessing the information they need when they need it.
Tomorrow, the conclusion of our discussion with Andrea Couto.