Award Winning University Re-envisions HR Service Delivery

This public university is a globally preeminent research university and a driving force for innovation and discovery. Consistently ranked among the country’s best universities, this client excels in a broad range of fields and garners national recognition for its schools, departments, and programs as seen by its annual economic impact on its surrounding community which exceeds $4 billion.  

On the Road to Change: Embarking on an HRSD Transformation  

Already using ITSM in the Office of Information Technology, this university was looking to further expand their ServiceNow footprint. They knew they wanted a full HRSD transformation to intersect with the upcoming rollout of their new university-wide payroll system, so the solution was twofold: one, to support a rollout of their new payroll system, and two, to support the consolidation of their HR organization into a shared service. 

Driven by the objective to establish themselves as an enterprise shared service provider for HR services across several university colleges and groups, the university’s HR team had 3 clear goals in mind: 

• Create the central service source for employees support 
• Build out workflows for events including onboarding 
• Establish case management for multiple HR functions such as Payroll, Benefits, Employee Relations, etc.  

The Power and Potential of HRSD 

When it comes to HRSD, project goals center around simplifying access to services, improving productivity, streamlining employee transitions, and optimizing service delivery. By providing “consumer-grade” employee experiences, organizations boost output. Employee experience is intrinsically linked to employee productivity, meaning that HRSD enables efficiency wins by simplifying employees’ journey to get what they need from all areas of the business.  

Unfortunately, success isn’t for the weak. It’s common for HR projects to start running without client teams first aligning with other departments. For university-specific HR projects, this is especially important as most implementations result in changes that extend beyond just HR. For true transformation, there must be a strong commitment to ServiceNow shared across all departments, and in this context, even across departments and schools within a university.  

Delivering the Right Digital Experience Anywhere 

In order to deliver on the client’s vision, Acorio’s first release of this project included onsite workshops, 64 HR Services configurations, building a new HR portal, and providing onsite UAT Support and training. Coming off of Release 1, Acorio aligned the employee self-service with the university’s larger payroll system used across the entire school system. 

The Go–Live Strategy was initially planned to be performed in two releases, but following the success of the first release and the “better than expected” adoption of the new HR Portal and Services, the client expanded the project scope to deliver more services and enable their team to create and manage services by themselves. 

The second release of the project continued to build out the HR Service Catalog, configuring 7 Employee Relations Services (with custom security), two HR Leaves Services, and one Leaves Life Cycle Event Service, along with 27 additional HRIS Services.  

Lastly, the final release of the project reworked the Onboarding Lifecycle Event Service, configured several enhancements, and provided Sys Admin and HR Admin Enablement Sessions and Training.  

Exemplary Sponsor Leadership  

A defining success factor for this project was the customers Executive Sponsor commitment to partnership. He remained actively involved in the project from beginning to end, working side by side with Acorio and the internal project team alike. Looking beyond just his direct reports, the Executive Sponsor also made it a habit to reach out to actual users of the system to earn their cooperation and participation. This attention to detail, deep communication, and commitment to best practices was absolutely key in making the project rollout so smooth.  

Another key addition to this project was a dedicated OCM team on the client side owning the project marketing and communications. Through this group, the client was able to proactively and thoughtfully communicate project updates across the entire university via written correspondence and hosting town halls.  

From the initial project announcement to the GoLive of the final project phase, the OCM team worked diligently to achieve a strong employee adoption rate. We’re happy to report that following this project’s rollout, the usage of the employee experience center continued on a steady upward trend. With this increased self-service, the HR team is now passed fewer cases, leaving them open to handle more strategic projects.  

A True Employee Experience Transformation 

Three successful project phases later, the client now has an intuitive, omnichannel Employee Experience Center that provides team members with a single point of entry to secure the services they need, while also offering a growing bank of over 100 Knowledge articles. Coinciding with the rollout of a new organization-wide payroll system, their provided HRSD solution enables the university to weather the rapid changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 so they can meet employees wherever and whenever they need. 

After completing a project that implemented nearly every aspect of HRSD across the enterprise, this client’s HR organization is able to match the degree of modernity and innovation of the university it supports. 

If you’re looking for more client success stories, download Acorio’s Case Study Compendium.