A new employee relations team documented 2,661 cases, then used the data to win headcount

In August 2021 the business created a new employee relations function, taking work that had previously sat with HR and other departments. The team grew to five ER partners, a leave and accommodation partner and an ER manager, reporting to the Director of HR Compliance, Employee Services and Employee Relations.

The top three case types are investigations, corrective actions and consultations. Harassment and discrimination cases and time and attendance cases carry the highest priority. Union employees hold nine different contract types, some requiring an ER case to be resolved within 10 to 15 days depending on the agreement.

The team was running all of it in Microsoft Teams and Outlook. Three problems followed:

• No documentation. Cases were not documented, tracked or visible. In a multi state organization with thousands of employees and high leader turnover, no continuity of information is a serious exposure.
• The wrong tools. Managing ER cases through Teams and Outlook was slow and cumbersome, and collaborating on a case was difficult.
• No visibility of workload. Case data sat in multiple locations, on different devices, across remote locations.

The team looked first at the IT department's existing ticketing system. After assessing it, the answer was no. It had been designed for IT, and IT operates in a black and white world where a defined event produces a defined response. Employee relations does not work that way, and the tool was not configurable or flexible enough to fit.

A Google search found Dovetail, and the team submitted a demo request. Two other case management providers were also assessed. Neither could meet the ER team's configuration requirements.

Ownership of the system was the deciding factor. The ER team can adjust and configure Dovetail themselves rather than raising a ticket with IT and waiting.

The business needed the case management system integrated with its Ceridian Dayforce HCM system, which Dovetail provided.

The capabilities in use include the HR console, case creation, instant knowledge search, case tracking and escalation, emails and notes, templates, the audit timeline, SLA, workflow automation, the HCM data view, attachments and out of box reports.

Correspondence threads onto the case. Before Dovetail, every email relating to an employee's leave had to be printed to PDF and uploaded to Teams, then repeated each time a reply arrived months later. Documentation consumed a large part of the day. Email now sends from inside the case and replies attach automatically.

Cases can be picked up by someone else. Everything about a case sits in one place, accessible to colleagues, so a case continues while its owner is on leave. That was not possible in Teams.

Case data became a staffing argument. With 2,661 cases logged since go live, and 1,400 cases across seven people in a four month period, the team had concrete evidence of actual workload. They used it to request a staff increase in the budget year. Investigations are time consuming work, and before Dovetail that volume was buried in email or deleted.

Reporting supports consistency. The team reviews case data to identify comparable situations across divisions and keep outcomes consistent and equitable, and reviews cases by location to see where additional support or training is needed based on what case types are trending.