Employee Service Portal

An employee self-service portal is a web portal giving employees a centralized way to submit and track service requests, or even answer their own question by leveraging built-in informational resources.

In general, web self-service portals are an internet-based, electronic form of customer support. They can be used to perform certain tasks like submitting service desk tickets without help. Web self-service portals often appear in the form of easy-to-use websites allowing customers to navigate the available services with ease and perform tasks like managing their account information or looking up relevant information.

When employees are the specific users of a web self-service portal it’s called an employee self-service (ESS) portal. An ESS portal gives employees the ability to perform various tasks autonomously. No matter what form an ESS or general web self-service portal takes, the key feature is the lack of a human agent interacting with the user. This can help streamline the overall process, reduce errors, and prevent your technicians from wasting valuable time fielding requests.

In HR, ESS stands for “employee self-service.” It has become common practice for many organizations to employ ESS portals allowing employees to take care of many of the HR-related tasks otherwise requiring interaction with an HR representative. This saves labor hours for HR personnel and managers in addition to reducing frustration for employees, who now have greater control over their information. Even more importantly for their general happiness, employees no longer need to interact with anyone to perform basic tasks, whether it’s requesting vacation time or updating their contact information.

Some of the specific benefits of an employee service portal are that it avoids disruptions to business and it reduces the likelihood of inaccurate information. One place where disruptions and frustrations can be avoided is with open-enrollment periods. When it comes to benefits, employees want to have time to research all their options. If they’re working directly with an HR representative, there can often be time pressures causing stress. That stress can seriously impact their productivity, leading to disruptions. By allowing employees to enroll in benefits for themselves, those pressures are largely removed, meaning employees can conduct their research as they see fit as long as they enroll within the open-enrollment period.

Allowing employees to input personal information themselves not only gives them a sense of autonomy over their own information, it also reduces the likelihood of misinformation. Entry errors and other mistakes are much more likely if someone else is inputting information than if the employee is putting it in and evaluating it themselves.

There are many benefits to utilizing an employee self-service portal for your organization. These cover everything from improved efficiency and saved labor hours to more satisfied employees.

Companies often see immediate increases in efficiency and productivity when they implement employee self-service software. Both personnel and managers will likely save labor hours, in addition to frustration, when they no longer need to spend time every day navigating requests and questions. Not only can employees take care of those types of matters on their own, they can do so from anywhere—even their home—which saves them time and can make them feel more empowered.

For instance, an employee self-service portal might include a “Commonly Asked Questions” section where employees can investigate questions and solve problems on their own, without asking a human agent. This not only offers employees greater autonomy and control, but it saves the time and resources of the agents who would otherwise have to field those requests.

The best ESS solutions provide ease and visibility to help improve employee productivity and reduce stress levels. By letting employees submit and track their service tickets through the ESS portal, you can reduce the time they spend worrying about the status of their requests, letting them return to their work knowing their request will be addressed.

In general, an employee self-service portal allows employees to look up information or submit service management requests without having to engage directly with any kind of human agent. Importantly, it simplifies the process of problem resolution by providing constant, clear information to aid in service delivery.

The best employee service portals go beyond HR capabilities to increase productivity by improving service management for employees. Through an ESS portal, employees can submit and track service tickets themselves. This lets them see the progress of their tickets and understand the service level agreements (SLAs) connected to their requests. This allows for greater peace of mind and the ability to return to productive work without wondering about the status of their service requests.

While beneficial for employees, this system is also useful for technicians, who no longer have to waste their time fielding requests in a range of formats. A portal turns requests into organized tickets and prevents phone calls by offering visibility for both technicians and employees.

Employee service portals can also provide access to a direct line of communication with service providers and a shared knowledge base, both of which employees can utilize to solve their problems on their own instead of needing to wait for a service request to be processed. All of this allows for more streamlined service delivery, letting you meet and exceed your employee expectations.

SolarWinds Service Desk extends the capabilities of employee service portals from simply covering HR capabilities to allowing employees to engage directly with their service requests. It does this by letting employees see how their tickets relate to SLAs, providing them with access to collected information for faster problem resolution, and by letting them easily connect with agents for their internal needs, all through a single portal.

Service Desk is an IT service management solution designed to keep your organization running smoothly and your employees happy. When employees submit a ticket through the portal, they can track its progress. If employees want to engage more directly with solving their service issues, the ESS portal provides access to a shared knowledge base they can use to try and resolve the problem themselves. It also provides a direct line of communication to service providers who can help with the issue. In addition to being easy for employees to use, Service Desk also lets technicians implement custom forms for collecting request information, putting an end to incomplete, ad-hoc requests.