Starting without the right stakeholder buy-in
Written by Annemarie Sint Jago on 21/03/2025
Learn about the importance of getting the right stakeholder buy-in to deliver a successful ServiceNow HR Service Delivery (HRSD) program.
ServiceNow is a powerful platform for modelling processes with a high degree of variation such as HR workflows. It is important to recognise the difference in approach needed when implementing the Platform for HR compared to using the Platform for IT Service Management (ITSM). ITSM processes are often similar across organizations, with few variations, because IT teams often follow a standard process model such as ITIL.
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of practices and a framework for IT activities such as IT service management (ITSM) and IT asset management (ITAM) that focus on aligning IT services with the needs of the business.
While there is typically an underlying compliance requirement with National legislation for many HR processes, IT Service Management or IT Asset Management processes, tend to be more standardised and less complex than most HR Service Delivery (HRSD) projects. We have seen HRSD projects struggle where teams take a top-down approach to design and development, which can work for ITSM in an organization using a standard process like ITIL, but HRSD projects benefit from a broad bottom-up development approach to understand processes and their variations.
HR processes are frequently more varied due to local country legislation, unique company policies, industry or sector standards, or the HR organisation structure in a company. For HRSD implementations to be successful, it is critical to get ‘on the ground’ HR agents and specialists from within the organization to help implementors understand these variations in requirements and account for them in configuration.
How this looks in real-life: Getting the right stakeholders involved in the design
For example, an employee’s payroll information, processing a salary increase or a financial incentive. When designing the workflow for Managing Payroll at one customer, we were informed there would be little difference in the process except for which HR team would action the case, so we proposed it could be handled by a simple routing update.
However, when sitting down with HR process experts from the organization, we were informed that there was a must-have variation in the process, certain employees, depending upon business line, required additional sign-off from various stakeholders. This organisation had a unique in-house policy that users with access to financial systems of record were not able to action these cases without additional approval steps. Because we had these stakeholders, HR process experts, in the design stages, we were able to account for this in the design of the workflow and remain compliant with this company policy.
These differences are often amplified when implementing large-scale HR services, such as Joiners, Movers, or Leavers (JML). It might seem reasonable to assume that leaver processes are reasonably standardized between business lines in an organization. A large-scale JML process for a customer covered multiple geographies and when designing the leavers HR service and workflow it became clear we needed local HR experts from each country organization to inform us of local country legislation requirements, so that we could build these into the workflow to allow the HR service to be viable and compliant in multiple geographies, with this regional legislation accounted for in the workflow.
In both examples above, we needed to combine technical skills to build the workflow, with the correct on-the-ground HR experts who knew their local processes and requirements. From our experience, implementing HRSD requires broad buy-in from stakeholders who can guide the technical team through any process variations, to ensure the HR service and product delivered is fit for purpose on day one.
It is imperative to have the right senior stakeholders on the project who understand, and are committed to, the vision for the enterprise's employee experience and know the underlying principles of the project. This means understanding the key principles governing the decisions about digitising processes into ServiceNow. E.g. “Is this in line with our ESx vision?,” “Is this future proof?” etc
The stakeholders need to have the authority and support of the executive team to challenge the status quo. Involving key stakeholders from their areas of expertise is important, but they can get stuck in their ways of working and may not see beyond that to alternative, more efficient, options to improve the employee experience.
Key points:
- When scoping HRSD projects initially, HR processes can seem standardized, but when interrogating HR processes in more detail, variation often emerges.
- Processes should be streamlined before the start of the project to build efficiency into the new platform.
- It is critical to spot variation early, to prevent re-work - variations are easier to configure prior to deployment to reduce risk.
- The variation is often non-negotiable, as it commonly addresses critical company policy or local legislation.
- Involve HR agents early in the process to verify what will be configured.
- Buy-in from top management should not only be from IT/finance. The CHRO and HRDs should be involved and sponsor the project and be ready to challenge the status quo.
Written by
Annemarie Sint Jago
ServiceNow Solutions Consultant at Fujitsu
With over 9 years of expertise in the ServiceNow ecosystem—including pre-sales, delivery, product development, business development, and people leadership—Annemarie is passionate about unlocking the full potential of Employee Workflows. In her current role as ESX Lead Europe, Annemarie drives sustainable growth and innovation across Europe, delivering transformative solutions that empower teams, enhance employee experiences, and create measurable business impact.
