HR Service Delivery Academy: ServiceNow Zurich Release Highlights for HRSD

Introduction to the September HRSD Academy Session

Overview of the Session

• The session begins with a welcome message, highlighting the excitement surrounding the Zurich release on September 10th.

• The session is scheduled for 90 minutes, with a recording available later on the event page and YouTube for future reference.

• Attendees are encouraged to use the Q&A panel for questions, as chat will not be monitored during the presentation.

Housekeeping and Feedback

• A short survey will be conducted post-event to gather feedback on HRSD Academy sessions; attendees are urged to provide detailed topic suggestions.

• Specific examples of desired topics should include descriptions to help tailor future sessions effectively.

Forward-Looking Statements and Resources

Important Notices

• A safe harbor notice is issued regarding forward-looking statements made during the presentation, advising against making purchasing decisions based solely on these statements.

Additional Resources

• Information about other ServiceNow events can be accessed via a QR code provided in the presentation, encouraging attendees to explore various HR-related webinars.

HRSD Academy Page Insights

Event Recording Information

• The HRSD Academy page for 2025 is maintained monthly with titles and descriptions of upcoming sessions; it indicates whether events will be recorded or not.

• Attendees are advised to bookmark this page for updates and answers to frequently asked questions from previous surveys.

Speaker Introductions

Meet the Speakers

• Amita Naek introduces herself as an outbound product manager at ServiceNow focusing on case and knowledge management applications.

• Other speakers include Melissa Casease, Melody Young, and Scott Smith; Scott expresses his enthusiasm about participating in today's session.

Introduction to HRSD Offerings

Overview of the Panel and Team

• The session is joined by Melissa Gates and Melody Young, part of the outbound product management team focusing on hiring experience and HR assist.

• Extended members from the product management team are present to answer questions and gather feedback on their features for Zurich. Participants are encouraged to engage with them during the Q&A panel.

Agenda for Today's Session

• The session will begin with an overview of the HRSD offerings at Zurich, led by Scott, who will detail exciting new additions under the HRSD umbrella. Following this, release highlights for Zurich will be discussed.

HR Service Delivery (HRSD) Updates

Key Changes in HR Service Delivery

• Scott introduces updates to HR service delivery packaging and capabilities available for customers, emphasizing a shift from siloed services to a more integrated approach.

• Previously separate products like employee center pro, manager hub, employee relations, and talent development have now been consolidated under HR service delivery to enhance accessibility for organizations.

New Capabilities Introduced

• Recent enhancements include tools focused on talent development such as career growth conversations, mentorship connections, internal mobility opportunities through an opportunity marketplace, and skills data integration aimed at fostering skill-based organizations.

• A dedicated applicant portal has been introduced to streamline hiring processes with features like job requisition collaboration and interview management capabilities based on customer requests.

Packaging Structure of HRSD

Levels of Packaging Offered

• Three levels of packaging are introduced: Standard SKU designed for foundational experiences; Professional SKU which includes talent acquisition and development; Enterprise level that connects all experiences including onboarding and offboarding processes.

• The aim is to simplify access to various capabilities while reducing transactional complexity across different organizational needs within HR service delivery systems.

Additional Capabilities Available

• Organizations can add two additional capabilities: process mining across the platform and generative AI functionalities at professional and enterprise levels tailored for enhanced service delivery experiences.

Employee Experience from Hire to Retire

Understanding Employee Journey in Organizations

• The focus is on the employee perspective throughout their journey in an organization, from joining to leaving.

• New HR service delivery capabilities aim to enhance employee experience by streamlining processes and improving productivity.

• Emphasis on creating a seamless onboarding experience for new hires, involving collaboration between employees, managers, and HR teams.

• Employees are encouraged to utilize self-service support for daily challenges while managers receive insights to assist their teams effectively.

• Automation and AI are leveraged by HR teams to prioritize high-value tasks and improve operational efficiency.

Career Growth and Development

• Personalized career growth plans are essential for making career advancement actionable rather than abstract concepts.

• Managers should align team development with business objectives, focusing on upskilling employees based on corporate goals.

• Learning and development must be integrated into daily work life instead of being treated as secondary activities.

Offboarding Process

• Clear guidance is necessary for offboarding employees, ensuring they have access to support during transitions out of the organization.

• Managers need tools to understand employee departures and plan for backfilling roles or supporting remaining team members effectively.

• Dedicated capabilities like alumni centers can help manage relationships with former employees while easing administrative burdens during offboarding.

Product Availability and Future Sessions

• New features related to hiring experiences will be available for all HRSD customers starting July; users should contact account teams for more information.

• An upcoming session on October 8th will delve deeper into hiring processes and career growth strategies within organizations.

Hiring Experience Enhancements

Challenges in the Hiring Process

• The hiring process presents numerous interaction points, leading to confusion for hiring managers, recruiters, and applicants regarding their roles and next steps.

• Applicants seek clarity on their progress and efficiency in the hiring process to avoid delays that could hinder their potential employment.

Focus on Transparency and Workflow

• Emphasis is placed on transparency within hiring workflows, ensuring a connected experience from application to pre-hire stages.

• Key areas of focus include planning, interviewing, and transitioning applicants into employees, which are time-consuming yet critical components of the hiring experience.

New Features for Different Personas

• Each persona—hiring manager, recruiter, applicant—now has dedicated spaces within the system to manage tasks effectively.

• A new tab for hiring in the manager hub allows self-service access to job requisitions without relying on external communication tools.

Enhanced Tools for Recruiters and Applicants

• Recruiters gain access to a comprehensive workspace with flexible tools for managing requisitions efficiently.

• Applicants benefit from a secure external portal that streamlines their journey from application through onboarding.

Streamlining Job Requisition Workflows

• The job requisition workflow aims to reduce the time taken from identifying a need to opening applications for candidates.

• Interview management is highlighted as a significant area of improvement, focusing on scheduling interviews and collecting feedback post-interview.

AI Integration in Hiring Processes

• AI agents are introduced in two key areas: job requisition workflows and interview scheduling to enhance efficiency.

• The AI assists in creating job requisitions by gathering requirements quickly and validating them against company policies.

Hiring Process Enhancements

Empowering Hiring Managers

• The discussion emphasizes the importance of providing autonomy and flexibility to hiring managers in creating job requisitions while ensuring compliance and structure within the company.

• There is a focus on refining job descriptions, with AI agents assisting in both the creation and enhancement of these documents to streamline the hiring process.

Interview Scheduling Improvements

• Introduction of an interview scheduling agent aimed at reducing the time taken to schedule interviews by automating calendar management.

• Current integration with Outlook allows for better understanding of participant availability, enhancing scheduling efficiency.

• Panelists can specify their availability preferences, which helps in accommodating their schedules alongside applicants' needs.

Enhanced Communication and Management

• AI agents are utilized for drafting communication and sending out interview invites, aiming to simplify this aspect of recruitment.

• The interview setup process is adaptable based on different roles, allowing customization for various phases and requirements during interviews.

Visibility and Notifications

• New enhancements provide better visibility into slot conflicts during scheduling, ensuring applicants see only available times.

• Improved notifications inform recruiters when proposed slots do not meet participant requirements, enhancing overall applicant experience.

Onboarding Process Automation

Streamlining Ramp-Up Plans

• Feedback from customers highlights that onboarding can be time-consuming; thus, automation is needed to enhance manager effectiveness during this phase.

• The introduction of an AI agent designed to generate personalized ramp-up plans aims to save managers time by pulling relevant information from various systems.

• This initiative focuses on driving new employees' productivity while also improving their overall onboarding experience.

Personalized Onboarding Experience

Introduction to AI-Driven Onboarding

• The initial release focuses on providing personalized learning content for new employees and facilitating connections within their teams.

• AI agents analyze the skills of new hires and organizational trends to create tailored ramp-up plans, eliminating the need for managers to compile lists manually.

Enhancing Team Connections

• The system recommends teammates for new hires to connect with, enhancing engagement and productivity through knowledge sharing.

• It automates scheduling one-on-one meetings and introductory activities that are typically managed by the hiring manager in various formats (Excel, email).

Reducing Managerial Burden

• This approach aims to alleviate some responsibilities from managers, allowing them to focus on welcoming new employees effectively.

• Managers can confirm or modify recommendations made by AI agents before finalizing onboarding plans for new hires.

Prehire Experience Enhancements

New Out-of-the-Box Prehire Experience

• A newly developed prehire experience allows organizations to manage tasks like document signing and software provisioning securely before a new hire's first day.

• Organizations can now provide limited access to prehires without compromising security, ensuring they complete necessary tasks efficiently.

Importance of Time-to-Productivity

• Customers emphasize that quick readiness is crucial for employee success; delays in equipment or access can negatively impact onboarding experiences.

Journey Management Improvements

Streamlining Journey Capabilities

• Enhancements have been made to journey management tools, including improved user interface options for journey owners.

Suppressing Unnecessary Information

• Organizations can now suppress irrelevant widgets on journey overview pages, simplifying the process for managers who utilize external systems for onboarding workflows.

Journey Designer Version 7.0 Updates

Enhancements in Logging for Life Cycle Events

• The update introduces improved logging experiences for HR teams managing life cycle events, allowing quick identification of errors during journey execution.

• This foundational update is available to all life cycle event customers and HRSD enterprise customers, enhancing their operational efficiency.

Empowering Employees in Service Delivery

• Amritha discusses the "Resolve HR Case" agentic workflow aimed at delivering prompt and efficient HR service delivery, which is expected to improve employee satisfaction.

• A new AI agent called the "HR Case Planner" is introduced for critical cases, assisting human agents by generating automated resolution plans based on case specifics.

Functionality of the HR Case Planner AI Agent

• The AI agent automates the formulation of resolution plans by analyzing fulfillment instructions, organizational policies, and FAQs to provide contextually relevant information about employees.

• This feature saves time for human agents who handle multiple cases simultaneously by providing a starting point rather than beginning from scratch.

Workflow Overview: Non-Critical vs. Critical Cases

• In the May store release, non-critical cases trigger an agentic workflow that includes record management and criticality checking to determine urgency.

• If a case is deemed non-critical, it proceeds through various agents including an HR search retriever that fetches knowledge articles related to the request.

Detailed Flow for Critical Cases

• For critical cases identified by the HR criticality checker (e.g., payroll discrepancies), a human agent is assigned to manage them directly without further automation in earlier releases.

• As of September's release, the introduction of the HR Case Planner AI Agent enhances this process by providing support even when a human agent handles critical issues.

HR Case Planning and Multi-Instance Integration Overview

HR Case Planner AI Agent Functionality

• In critical cases, the human agent is assigned to manage the case, utilizing a UI action called "generate plan" to initiate the HR case planner AI agent.

• The HR case planner AI agent retrieves fulfillment instructions and analyzes any associated knowledge articles relevant to the service being addressed.

• Contextual information from the employee's HR profile is incorporated, enhancing the relevance of responses based on specific employee locations.

• The AI generates a resolution plan that can be reviewed by the human agent, who has options to accept, reject, or modify it through conversational interactions in the now assist panel.

• Once approved, the final plan is documented in work notes for action by the human agent, emphasizing their crucial role in sensitive cases.

Introduction of HR Multi-Instance Integration (HRMI)

• The HR multi-instance integration offering was introduced in Yokohama to facilitate HR service delivery across multiple ServiceNow instances.

• This integration is particularly beneficial for large enterprises and government agencies with multiple ServiceNow instances needing centralized HR services.

• New features added in Zurich include enabling consumer employees to request remote cases from provider instances and creating targeted HR tasks visible via universal task URLs.

• Knowledge articles hosted on provider instances can also be shared with consumer employees through these universal task URLs for easier access and completion of tasks.

• Wrapper services allow consumer admins to create services that combine local and remote fulfillment processes, addressing common scenarios in organizations with multiple instances.

Licensing Considerations and Future Webinars

• A new feature identifies external profiles to distinguish between remote and local HR profiles, which is essential for licensing requirements related to using HRMI offerings.

• Both provider and consumer instances must have HRSD licensing; thus identifying local profiles becomes crucial for compliance with licensing agreements.

• An additional column labeled "external" has been added to the HR profiles table indicating whether profiles are local or external (true/false).

• The HRMI offering requires participation in a new skew launched during Zurich; further details will be provided in an upcoming live webinar focused on this topic before year-end.

Features Overview and Enhancements

Document Template Enhancements

• The September release introduces signing support for PDF templates on mobile browsers and apps, enhancing user experience.

• Signing is supported across three types: ServiceNow Sign, Adobe Sign, and DocuSign, with a full tab signing experience added for better usability.

• Users can now sign PDF and HTML document templates directly from the agent workspace with one-click redirection for Adobe Sign and DocuSign.

• The ability to fill and review PDF documents directly from the agent workspace has been added for ServiceNow Sign as part of HRSD standards.

• These enhancements aim to empower employees by streamlining document handling processes.

Sentiment Analysis Feature

• A new sentiment analysis feature allows HR agents to assess the emotional tone of cases quickly, improving case management efficiency.

• Each case receives a sentiment score ranging from -5 to 5, providing visibility at both the case list level and individual records.

• The sentiment analysis considers various fields such as short descriptions and comments to determine overall employee satisfaction with their cases.

• This capability helps HR agents prioritize cases effectively, aiming to enhance employee satisfaction and resolution outcomes.

• Flexibility in supporting this feature across UI6 and workspace environments is also highlighted.

Additional GenAI Skills Enhancements

Case Summarization

• Case summarization enables agents to understand context quickly; optimized to show new summaries only when data changes occur.

• Citations are included in summaries for transparency regarding how conclusions were derived.

Email Reply Recommendations

• Email reply recommendations generate responses based on conversation context, reducing manual verification needs by showing citations directly in generated emails.

Resolution Notes Generation

• This skill generates resolution notes automatically; enhancements allow application beyond just case tables to extended tables as well.

General Availability of Enhancements

• All discussed enhancements will be available on Now LLM, expanding their applicability across different platforms.

AI Model Provider Flexibility and Enhancements

Introduction to AI Model Provider Flexibility

• The new model provider flexibility approach allows organizations to choose the appropriate AI model based on specific needs or use cases, while ensuring built-in governance and controls.

AI Agents for HR Use Cases

• A tuition request workflow was introduced in March to assist HR teams with policy validation, which is typically a manual and labor-intensive process.

• Initially, seven out-of-the-box agents were created for handling tuition reimbursement scenarios, focusing on tasks like checking employee eligibility and case management.

• The number of agents was optimized from seven to three to enhance performance while maintaining the same functionality in processing requests.

Enhancements in AI Capabilities

• A new skill has been rolled out that evaluates HR case details against policy criteria, replacing some previous AI agents performing similar tasks.

• HR agents now have access to a conversational experience within the analysis panel, allowing them to ask questions about policies and receive contextual answers for quicker decision-making.

Growth Solutions for Employee Development

Overview of Growth Initiatives

• The focus is on empowering employees through growth solutions that facilitate career development and upskilling within organizations. Research indicates a desire among employees and leaders for clearer guidance amidst siloed systems.

Challenges Faced by Employees and Leaders

• Employees often struggle with visibility into career opportunities due to fragmented tools leading to confusion; this can result in higher attrition rates as they cannot find suitable paths within their organization.

Integrated Career Development Tools

• ServiceNow aims not to be the system of record but rather integrate data from various sources (ATS, HCM) into an employee center that provides tailored solutions for career growth planning.

Manager Support Features

• Managers will benefit from tools designed to facilitate growth conversations, helping them create growth plans and track learning opportunities effectively within their teams.

Upcoming Enhancements

• A new agentic workflow will be introduced this quarter aimed at assisting managers in planning growth conversations more efficiently by reducing time spent searching through disparate systems for relevant information prior to meetings with employees.

Growth Conversations and Mentorship Enhancements

AI-Driven Scheduling and Support for Growth Conversations

• Managers can utilize AI agents to schedule growth conversations, gather employee summaries, and provide actionable talking points.

• The system integrates with platforms like Outlook to find common time slots and directly schedule meetings from Manager Hub.

• It pulls data from various systems to summarize employee activities and suggest relevant discussion topics for effective career growth dialogues.

• Resources are provided for managers to prepare for these conversations, enhancing the overall effectiveness of the growth experience.

Enhanced Mentorship Capabilities

• Employees can now easily find mentors based on skills, job titles, or roles rather than personal connections.

• The new release allows employees to select multiple mentors, facilitating broader networking opportunities across the organization.

Alumni Support Features

Improvements in Alumni Center Functionality

• The alumni center supports former employees with service delivery needs post-employment through enhanced integrations with offboarding solutions.

• Employees leaving the organization can be automatically tasked with registering for the alumni portal during their offboarding process.

Self-registration Options for Former Employees

• A new self-registration feature allows former employees to register later if they were not captured during offboarding, ensuring continued access to resources.

Conclusion and Further Information

• For more detailed insights into these features, viewers are encouraged to check out the "What's New in Zurich" deep dive blog available on the HRSD community site.

• Interested parties should reach out to their ServiceNow account management team for discussions about extending HR service delivery throughout the employee lifecycle.