HR service delivery survey results: Executive summary  

Mercer | Leapgen’s HR Service Delivery Study is known as perhaps the most comprehensive study on the topic of HR service experience practices and trends. For more than a decade it has been used by organizations across the globe to benchmark and improve their HR service delivery models. This year’s survey sample includes over 300 organizations across the full spectrum of industries. Following are just a few highlights of the findings:

The findings of Leapgen’s 2018 Experience Delivery Survey pointed to the fact that workforce experience was the new king reigning over business drivers for HR Transformation. Five years later, the Mercer | Leapgen 2023 survey shows that the importance of workforce experience is even stronger today. 

In last year’s study, Mercer | Leapgen predicted that 2022 would be remembered as a turning point in HR service delivery with digitalization as an underpinning of all meaningful HR Transformation programs, largely by the pandemic-driven push toward remote work. Our 2023 study affirms that while most organizations are moving back toward some level of in-office work, remote work remains more prevalent than pre-pandemic levels. 

The intensive focus on workforce experience and digital delivery, as measured in this year’s study, suggests that 2022 was indeed a turning point where HR Transformation took a radical turn. Therefore, old ways of thinking about HR service delivery transformation (i.e., offshored shared service centers, IT ticketing systems repurposed for HR, tier 1 only supporting inquiry resolution, use of a call center, etc.) are becoming obsolete. Workforce experiences can no longer be the product of retrofitting existing HR operating models. Rather HR operating models need to be reimagined based on desired workforce interactions.

While digital and human are sometimes seen as mutually exclusive alternatives, with digital channels replacing human forward-thinking organizations are thoughtfully blending digital and human delivery into bi-modal models that see digital and human delivery as mutually enabling and interdependent. Service delivery models continue to support phone and other types of direct human interaction, but are increasingly supplementing them with digital channels (e.g., virtual agent/chatbot, live agent, web-tocase, or collaboration tools).

Discover the digital workforce experience. A beacon for HR service delivery transformation. Hear from Jim Scully, Kristin Rhebergen and Mike Brennan as they discuss the survey findings.