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How an HR Knowledgebase Increases the Effectiveness of
HR Shared Services/Call Center Operations
Barbara Levin, Enwisen
Introduction
Today, more and more employers are creating HR Shared Services/Call Center operations –
driven by the understanding that HR is most effective in providing strategic value when it
separates transactional/administrative operations from leadership as a business partner.
The benefits of HR Shared Services/Call Center organizations are widely recognized:
• Enhanced accuracy and consistency across all locations and employee groups
• Improved employee service
• Economies of scale
• Higher return on HR‐related technology investments
• Reduction of labor costs and/or redeployment of HR generalists to more value‐
added work
The challenges, however, of creating a highly effective HR Shared Services/Call Center
organizations are also widely recognized:
• Tracking and reporting of calls, issues and response time
• Providing consistent and accurate responses
• Responding to a diverse, decentralized workforce
• Response time and call resolution
• CSR ramp‐up
• Staffing and call volume
To respond to these challenges, and create an effective, world‐class HR Shared Services/Call
Center organization, many employers are integrating an HR Knowledgebase into their call
center platform.
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Leveraging an HR Knowledgebase
An HR Knowledgebase contains comprehensive information on an organization’s policies,
procedures, benefits,
compensation, services – such
as employee assistance
programs, tuition
reimbursements and
training/development –
work/life events, manager
procedures and more. Most
important, the information is
personalized and searchable
by a unique employee ID, so
that when a CSR accesses the
knowledgebase to respond to
a specific employee inquiry,
only the information that is relevant to Figure 1 – Sample view of a personalized search for a particular
that employee is presented. employee’s maternity coverage. Courtesy of Enwisen from the
AnswerSource HR Shared Services/Call Center application
For example, let’s take a simple scenario:
An employee calls the HR Shared Services/Call Center organization with an inquiry on his/her
maternity health plan benefits. Normally, the CSR would have to research the employee’s
particular health plan and relevant coverage before getting back with a response – often taking
hours, or sometimes even days to close the inquiry. However, when using an HR
Knowledgebase, the CSR has on‐demand access to the employee’s personalized information
immediately (see figure 1). By searching on maternity for that employee, the CSR is immediately
presented with his/her plans and specific maternity coverage options – allowing the rep to
respond to the employee within minutes during the first call.
When integrated into the HR Shared Services/Call Center organizations platform, an HR
Knowledgebase:
• Provides CSRs with on‐demand access to any member of the workforce’s
personalized policies, benefits, onboarding forms and more. This can be based on
job code, location, bargaining unit and/or other parameters defined by the employer
• Promotes first‐call resolution with fewer escalations to higher level service reps
• Increases call volume productivity and speeds time‐to‐answer
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• Speeds time‐to‐productivity for service reps – reps can handle a wider level of cases
with less specialization
• Promotes accuracy and consistency in responses across all employee populations
In other words – this model improves service to the workforce with fewer people and dollars.
Extending the Model to Include Self‐Service and a Workforce Portal
Organizations reaching
for a world‐class HR
Shared Services/Call
Center model should
also consider integrating
the HR Knowledgebase
with its employee/
manager self‐service
solutions and within the
employee intranet/
© CedarCrestone 2008
extranet/portal. This
Figure 2. The CedarCrestone 2007‐2008 HR Systems Survey presents this strategy allows the employee
diagram for achieving excellence. The blue portions show HR Service him/herself to get the information
Delivery Excellence as integrating help Desk Software, an HR
Knowledgebase and self‐service transactions within a portal framework they need by accessing their own
personalized, searchable
information. After all, the best call to an HR Shared Services/Call Center “is the one that’s never
made.” By allowing employees to access the knowledgebase via a portal and/or self‐service
systems – such as an Employee Self‐Service or eBenefits application – they can not only get the
information they need, but process transactions, such as applying for maternity leave or adding
a new dependent – all in one session “without third party intervention.” The integration of an
HR Knowledgebase with self‐service/portal platforms:
• Helps employees help themselves by getting the information they need, when they
need it
• Empowers managers to respond to employee inquiries in a timely, fair and consistent
manner
• Reduces call center volume
• Provides better service with fewer reps and a higher rep‐to‐employee ratio. In fact, it is
not untypical for employers combining shared services, self‐service, a call center and a
portal approach to provide a higher level of service with a 1/1,000 ratio. Additionally,
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reps can “teach employees to fish” – showing them how to find their answers via the
portal to reduce calls over time
Things to Consider When Evaluating an HR Knowledgebase
There are several key features to consider when evaluating an HR Knowledgebase for your HR
Shared Services/Call Center organization:
1. Your resources to develop and maintain content: If you have a lot of personalizations to
create and maintain – for example, many different state laws or bargaining units to
comply with and keep up‐to‐date – you might consider a knowledgebase that is offered
from a Software‐as‐a‐Service (SaaS) vendor. These vendors will create and maintain the
data for you without straining limited HR and IT resources. Additionally, vendors can
provide pre‐built content – such as regulatory guides and benefit plans – to speed
deployment.
2. Integration and SSO: The knowledgebase should have the ability to integrate, with a
single sign‐on (SSO), to any HRMS, employee/manager/benefits self‐service application,
ticketing/case management application and portal platform that you have in place or
plan to deploy – regardless if you use all of these applications from a single vendor or if
you have a best‐of‐breed HRMS environment.
3. Integrated Decision Support: Some knowledgebases also integrate with decision support
tools – such as dynamic benefit plan comparisons or medical cost estimators. These
tools are valuable to help a CSR provide informed information to an employee trying to
decide, for example, between two different health plan options – or to an employee –
operating in self‐service mode – to make the most informed decisions when completing
transactions such as benefits enrollment during a new hire tour or during open
enrollment periods.
4. Reporting: An HR Knowledgebase should come with standard reporting and analytics –
and also allow ad hoc reporting from data in the system – allowing call center managers
to measure response time, call volume and more.
5. Integrated Case Management/Call Tracking: An HR Knowledgebase should have the
ability to seamlessly integrate with any case management/call center application you
deploy. If, however, your shared services/call center operation is specific to HR, you
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might consider a knowledgebase integrated with an HR‐specific case management/call
tracking solution.
Integrated HR‐Specific Case Management/Call Tracking
When an HR Knowledgebase is integrated with an HR‐specific case management/call tracking
tool, it allows a CSR to:
• Search on employees with direct look‐ups from integrated HRMS views
• Pre‐populate HR‐specific call tickets with employee data from the knowledgebase
and/or HRMS (see figure 3)
Additionally, such solutions will often provide value‐added reporting and analytics that are
specific to HR – allowing HR professionals and call center managers to analyze calls in order to
spot trends and take action if necessary. For example, if there is a sudden jump in the number
of inquiries on Employee Assistance Programs after serious storms or fires in a particular
location, it might show that a large number of employees were impacted, helping the employer
to determine if special programs – or increased communication on existing programs – might
be necessary. Another example might show a spike in calls after a new benefit plan is offered –
such as a high deductible plan – prompting the employer to improve communications and
decision support tools for the plan.
Last, if such an HR‐
specific case
management/call
tracking solution is
made available via
the employee
portal, even more
economies of scale
are achieved. These
solutions will allow
the employee to
first, go to the
portal/ knowledgebase to find their
Figure 3 – Sample view of ability to pre‐populate a call ticket with a direct
own answer. If they do not find
look‐up from the HR knowledgebase. Courtesy of Enwisen from the
AnswerSource HR Shared Services/Call Center application
what they need, they can use the
portal to open their own ticket and have the information automatically submitted to the call
center – with the information that was found by the employee pre‐populated.
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An HR Shared Services/Call Center organization can be key to an organization’s goals of HR
transformation and leadership and improving employee service while reducing costs. And an
HR Knowledgebase – integrated with an HR‐specific case management/call tracking tool – can
be key to maximizing the effectiveness of your organization.
About the Author
Barbara Levin is the senior vice president of marketing and customer community for Enwisen, a
leading vendor of workforce communications solutions that include hosted, SaaS HR Shared
Services/Call Center and HR Knowledgebase applications. She has more than 20 years
experience in HR technology strategies and is a frequent author and publisher in the HCM field.
She can be contacted at blevin@enwisen.com.
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