Position Management in organizations can be very different depending on the company’s size, structure, industry, just to name a few variables. Regardless of any of those, it’s important to have a Position Management process and system in place.
Benefits of effective Position Management include…
- Talent Management
- How many open positions do we have?
- Do we have capacity for promotions?
- Are we seeing frequent turnover in certain positions?
- Work Distribution
- Do we have enough capacity for the current work load?
- Can the work load be more balanced?
- Are we set up for growth?
- Budgeting
- Does our labor budget have room for more positions?
- Are we overstaffed based on revenue vs. labor expense?
Position/Table of Organization (T.O.) Management in a Federal agency is complicated. The T.O. encompasses Position records (“spaces”), Position Descriptions, and how employees (“faces”) are associated…how the spaces & faces are tied together. Over the past year and a half, we’ve had the pleasure of working with a Federal agency to migrate their T.O. out of Sharepoint, into ServiceNow. While it’s continuing to evolve, we’ve come a long way towards making it a reality. The “art” of the solution is in how the data is presented to the end users and their experience working with it. The “science” is how multiple data points and tables are tied together along with the security of the data. The “ServiceNow” part of it is obvious. Let’s dive in!
Problem Statement: The T.O. resides in a platform with little room for improvement, limited visibility and tracking, and a subpar user interface experience.
Goal: Migrate their T.O. into ServiceNow, improving functionality for adding and updating positions. Provide leaders visibility into their organization and enhance the end user experience.
The T.O. Management process involves a variety of departments starting with OCFO (Office of the Chief Financial Officer), Position Classification, and OCHCO (Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer). Understanding the process and security requirements came through multiple workshops with each group. We gathered bits and pieces of the workflow from stakeholders to be able to document the flow from start to finish.
Position records (i.e. “spaces”) hold data points such as what part of the organization the space resides…what Division, Subdivision, Branch, Section, Team, Unit. Pay & Funding data such as Accounting, Program, Agency Use, Funding codes and PPA Levels. A couple additional important fields include the Grade and Grade Ladder on which the Position resides.
Position Descriptions (PDs) can be looked at as Job Descriptions. Their attributes include the duties and responsibilities, task codes, NICE codes. Each Position has 1 or more PD associated with it, to allow movement of the Position to a different grade, thus needing to change the “Primary PD”.
Fortunately, many of the attributes can be found in the Additional Federal Tables application provided by ServiceNow. Those were leveraged in multiple places across the configuration.
The first challenge we tackled was how to get new Positions into ServiceNow. Positions are approved by Congress and the OCFO then has permission to add them to the T.O. We configured a simple record producer to allow them to add multiple positions with the same attributes at once. This could be 1-50 or more at a time.
Once in the T.O., Positions need to be classified appropriately and accessible to the hiring managers. Providing visibility in the Employee Service Center (ESC) was crucial for the end user experience. Leveraging Manager Hub made this possible.
When managers need to make changes to their Positions, they submit a TOCR (T.O. Change Request). This requires the ability to update multiple Position attributes at once. Depending on the data point needing to be changed, one or more approvals is required. Previously, these were conveyed via emails. Getting them into ServiceNow provided senior leadership access to see the progress of each request and identify any bottlenecks.
The challenge of keeping the T.O. updated and accurate remains. We partnered with other contractors to build integrations to specify who is in what position and we included automation to update a position when it’s vacated or filled. Again, this helps keep data accurate, aiding their visibility to know the state of the T.O.
As previously mentioned, the structure and process continue to evolve. The importance of this work can’t be understated as we’ve laid the blueprint for other agencies to move their T.O. into ServiceNow. In today’s Federal government climate of constant change, the need for a simplified process and solution will be extremely important.
For more information or to schedule a call with our team, drop a note to [email protected]!
About the Author: Troy worked 10 years in Human Resources, prior to his 13 years of experience in ServiceNow. He’s been both a customer (2 years) and a partner (11 years). He’s collaborated with 50+ clients on projects in a variety of applications including HRSD, ITSM, and CSM. Troy is also a Certified Technical Architect.
