Employee Self-Service and Life and Work Events – Two Ideas for a New User Centric Perspective
By Ulf Bangert, SAP AG – 05/21/2001
Disclaimer: Please note that this edition was written in 2001. Therefore, statements in the articles, particularly those regarding SAP's products, product strategy, branding strategy, and organizational structure, may no longer be valid.
As a portal user you do not want to use the Web in just any old way; you want to solve your problems efficiently and find answers to your questions. You are looking for services and information that will really help you make your work easier. And you will be especially annoyed if you can't find the Web services and information you are looking for in a portal. You rightly expect a portal to provide you with smart ideas how to find what you are looking for quickly and at the right time.
And there are such ideas as well as useful services and easy ways to find them. The applications provided by Employee Self-Service (ESS) and the concept of Life and Work Events have proved this over and over again.
Employee Self-Service (ESS)
Who hasn't been irritated by the complicated and paper-producing procedures for placing requests or changing data in a company. Forms have to be filled in - but what are the right forms? And then the internal mail keeps you waiting and you have to fill in some more forms. This process can seem to be interminable.
Employee Self-Service cleans up your company's processes and at the same - your desk. For example: You moved to a new address? Forget the HR department's forms and change your personal data directly in the SAP System using an ESS Web service.
Figure 1: Change address with Employee Self-Service (click image for larger view)
Employees can use Employee Self-Service to change their personal data (address, bank details, etc.) and to
- Enter working times and submit leave requests
- Look at his payslips and print them out
- Book events and create his skills profile
- Enroll in company benefits
- Place orders and request internal services
- Book rooms
- And much more
ESS covers all the organizational and administrative tasks that employees have to perform in addition to their actual jobs and that normally involve the Human Resources department or an administrative assistant. The result? Accurate, up-to-date employee information and increased employee satisfaction. And a time saving permitting employees to focus on serving customers and achieving business goals.
Find out about all the services offered by Employee Self-Service
Quick Orientation, All in One Hand
How does Employee Self-Service focus on the user?
Single Point of Entry I
With Employee Self-Service, users find all the services and information needed to carry out their organizational and administrative tasks quickly and easily at one location in the portal on their desktop.
Figure 2: Portal Homepage of Employee Self-Service (click image for larger view)
User Perspective I
Employee Self-Service is set up from the user's point of view. The catalog of individual functions is not set up according to the SAP component hierarchy, the underlying system infrastructure or the organizational structure of the HR department. It uses the categories which an employee thinks in and which the employee is looking for.
Single Point of Entry II
Related applications and information are integrated using specific page layouts for the topics. Portal users find everything they need to answer their concrete questions at a glance.
User Perspective II
The specific organizational and administrative tasks differ in how often they are used. Some of them need to be performed very rarely (for example changing your private address), whereas others need to be performed very often and on a regular basis (such as recording your working time). Because of their broad functionality, complex changes would overtax the user in the first case and hinder his work in the second case.
A set of individual Web services like that provided by Employee Self-Service, however, makes it easier for users to use the system since each individual service is tailored to a specific application. The user interfaces can be kept clear and simple for both infrequent and frequent applications.
Figure 3: Integration Information in Employee Self-Service (click image for larger view)
Life and Work Events
A lot of the user activities occurring in private life or at work involve a number of tasks that might have to be completed in a particular order. Regardless of whether these tasks are performed daily, at longer intervals, or just a few times during one's lifetime, they may involve accessing a number of applications and might require information from various sources.
The concept of Life and Work Events gives you a guiding hand here. Do you still remember your first days at work in your company? Everything was new and you kept asking yourself "What do I have to take care of before I can really start working? Have I forgotten anything?"
Figure 4: Life and Work Event My First Days (click image for larger view)
Overview and Guiding the User
Why is the focus on the user in Life and Work Events?
Single Point of Entry I
Users can find all the services and information they need under the relevant keyword, no matter where this information comes from. For example, under My First Days they can find introductory information about their new employer as well as forms, external links, services for maintaining missing personal data and for registering for training courses, etc.
Guiding the User I
Users no longer have to remember the order necessary for completing tasks and meeting deadlines. Every menu ensures that the relevant applications and documents are processed in the right order and every step is assigned a priority (optional/required). So users can be sure that no important information will be lost.
Single Point of Entry II
Applications are presented together with the information needed for each step.
Guiding the User II
Since events are presented in a checklist format, users can follow their progress and monitor the status of their activities. They can check off each task as it is completed. This helps them with the organization of their work, especially when they interrupt processing an event at one time and want to continue processing it at some time in the future. With Employee Self-Service users are always in complete control of the process, with the system providing the necessary support when processing is continued.
Figure 5: Life and Work Events guide the user
Life and Work Events in Employee Self-Service
There are a number of preconfigured Life and Work Events available in SAP Employee Self-Services:
- My First Days
- Annual Enrollment (Benefits)
- Change Employment Status
- Terminate Employment
- Marriage
- Divorce
- Birth/Adoption
You should use them as a basis to start from when building your customer-specific Life and Work Events.
