The traditional workplace setting has gone through a seismic shift, with an increasing number of employees working remotely. As of 2023, Forbes Advisor states that 12.7% of full-time employees work remotely while 28.2% work in a hybrid environment. This number is expected to grow exponentially by 2030.
While companies benefit with remote work models, it is also important to ensure a smooth, intuitive employee experience with ITSM systems to prevent challenges like unplanned downtime, employee frustration, and lack of a communication process when incidents occur or service requests need to be made.
ITSM software combined with a service desk provides a centralized system for incident management, change management, IT asset management, etc.
Many ITSM and service desk providers take this a step further with the Service Catalog, to enhance the employee experience—vital for business success–and streamline service provision processes for IT support staff and help desk agents.
Companies such as Cisco, Slack, Atlassian, GitHub and Dropbox are all popular users of the Service Catalog for their remote workforces.
Here is how the Service Catalog enhances remote employee experience:
- Provides a centralized platform for access to services
The Service Catalog provides a list of all software applications and hardware allocated to each employee for clear visibility and transparency.
It also includes a list of available services that the employee can access and benefit from ranging from hardware, software installation, and access requests and more.
This enables the employee to easily browse and choose the services they need without having to explore different platforms. The catalog also provides service descriptions and service level expectations to ensure remote employees are equipped with all necessary information to choose an appropriate service and plan their work effectively.
- Offers tools to strengthen cybersecurity
The Forbes Advisor states that 73% of executives believe that remote employees pose a more significant cybersecurity risk.
The Service Catalog can include services and tools to prevent and counter vulnerabilities and strengthen cybersecurity protocols for remote workers such as VPNs, antivirus software, user-behavior analytics tools, etc.
This can ensure that a cybersecurity culture prevails and organizational data and devices are safe and used securely.
- Facilitates self-service
The Service Catalog can reduce the burden on IT support staff by enabling self-service for some specified services. Instead of requesting IT support staff to provide access or to install a certain software, users may have immediate access when choosing the service in the catalog, expediting the process and providing a seamless user experience.
- Improves visibility and transparency
With the Service Catalog, employees can track and view the status of their requests, measure progress, and can easily receive updates to ensure that they are fully aware of where their request is in the support process.
This transparency improves communication, strengthens motivation, and fosters a culture of trust and collaboration.
The employee experience is vital to business success as it is directly linked with morale, productivity, retention, and then spills into the customer experience. Invest wisely in your employee experience!
By Anam Jalil, EZO
EZO will be exhibiting on stand 481 at SITS, The Service Desk & IT Support Show, on 17-18th April 2024, ExCeL London. You can now register for your free ticket here.