How motivation and dashboards create flow for knowledge workers

With repetitive tasks automated, teams that resolve customer enquiries, incidents or service requests are left with more complex and intellectually challenging tasks. For these knowledge workers, ServiceNow is a great tool that funnels their work, creating clear queues for teams and specialists. From a process perspective, that’s already a big improvement. However, amidst the current labor shortage, rising labor costs and higher risks of burn-out, people are quickly becoming the most valuable asset of the organization. So, how can we make sure our knowledge workers stay motivated and keep experiencing flow at work?

The ABC method

For our Make Work Flow podcast, I interviewed Chris Wuytens, Director Consulting at Acerta. In that podcast episode, Chris talks about Acerta’s ABC model: a motivational framework.  The framework highlights three components: Autonomy, Belonging and Competence. When those three elements are there, people get motivated and thrive:

• Autonomy can be seen as the attribute that allows people to self-organize their work. No manager or boss that is telling what to do or how to execute their tasks, people can be self-starters and decide what to do first and next.

• Belonging is defined in this context as being part of something bigger. This can be a team, a business process, a division and hopefully people can identify themselves with the “why” of the organization and find satisfaction in their contribution to the greater good.

• Competence refers to the ability for someone to execute a task properly. Do you have all knowledge and skills, and am I surrounded by the right tools and information that provide correct and reliable information at moments of truth?

How ServiceNow caters to the ABC method

Creating flow for people and motivation are two key building blocks to get in a state of flow.  When we implement ServiceNow, we always advise to go for the Professional ServiceNow modules as these contain two very important tools that enable ABC:

1. Workspaces – These user interfaces are built around the information need of a knowledge worker and enable them to work autonomously, as all decision-making information is at their fingertips. Data is in one place, including 360° views on customers, past enquiries, and information about SLAs to help set priorities.

2. Interactive dashboards and KPIs – These will help the individual worker to see the bigger picture: how are we doing as a team? Do we progress? What about our customer happiness and our ability to collaborate? When deployed wisely, dashboards quickly help to gamify work and to turn a queue of tasks into a challenging team assignment. And not just on a daily basis, but the dashboards also show trend levels and high-level indicators that allow you to connect the work to the ambitions of the team and the organization. To top it off, thanks to ServiceNow’s extensive integration possibilities, even data from third-party systems can be consulted or changed right from the pivoting chair of the worker. 

   
   Insights at board level
   Everyone benefits from the reporting capabilities of the Now Platform, even C-level management. They can easily roll up data to a certain level, which makes progress and results visible in the boardroom. That extra motivational push from a C-level leader will most certainly strengthen the sense of belonging even more.

I hope I’ve shown you the value of the ABC model and how ServiceNow can easily help you enforce it to achieve flow for employees and management. It’s one of the many methods we use to make work flow for our customers.