Using Listening Posts to Gather Feedback & Fine-Tune Experiences

[Allison French]

For many customers, the current process of capturing employee feedback is disjointed, delayed, and ineffective, and there is often the added burden of inadequate reporting, which makes it difficult to derive actionable insights.

While the traditional model of an annual employee survey continues to be used to gain insights on themes like overall engagement, leadership presence, and career growth, there is a need that remains: a more agile approach for capturing quick, in-the-moment feedback and translating it into action to meet employee needs.

Listening Posts, a new application first made available on the ServiceNow Store in January, has been designed with this need in mind. By presenting easy-to-answer questions to employees during the workflows and moments happening in ServiceNow and pairing it with the robust data within the platform around employee questions and interactions, organizations can drive improvements to employee experiences, services, and programs.

What Features are Included in Listening Posts?

• Employee Service Center Widgets: Three new Employee Service Center widgets are delivered with Listening Posts:

• • Listening Posts My Survey: Displays a fillable Pulse Survey.

o Listening Posts Survey List: Accessible from the View All Surveys link embedded at the bottom of the Listening Posts My Survey widget (above) and displays all assigned Pulse Surveys in a list view.

o Listening Posts Take Survey: Accessible from the Take Survey button in the Listening Posts Survey List widget (above) and displays all questions for a given Pulse Survey.

• Reporting & Dashboards: Users with an applicable role can review responses via a drill-able Pulse Dashboard, which can be broken down using various filters (such as by department, country, and title of respondents). The Pulse Dashboard also includes information on response rates, trends, response summaries, and more.

• Pulse Surveys and Pulse Themes: Users with an applicable role can create Pulse Surveys (typically 1-2 questions). Pulse Surveys can be classified under Pulse Themes, which are used to group Pulse Surveys with a similar purpose and can have a type of either Group Pulse or Employee Lifecycle.

If Group Pulse is selected, the audience and dates are fixed and will be defined within the Pulse Survey form. If Employee Lifecycle is selected, the audience/user, such as the Subject Person of a Lifecycle Event case, will be assigned based on a Lifecycle Event, and is configured within the applicable Lifecycle Event Activity Set. An example of a Pulse Theme may be Working from Home (which is likely a Group Pulse), or Onboarding (which is likely an Employee Lifecycle type).

• Pulse Questions and Pulse Question Bank: As Pulse Surveys are created, Pulse Questions can be added directly to a Pulse Survey, or users can add questions from a Pulse Question Bank, which is a collection of questions that can be re-used across multiple Pulse Surveys as needed. When adding a question, users can define items such as the question itself, the format (such as a st...

• Triggering Pulse Surveys: Behind the scenes, a daily scheduled job (named Listening Posts: Create Group Pulse Instance) runs to create Pulse Survey instances when the Pulse Theme Type is Group Pulse. Pulse Surveys with a Pulse Theme Type of Employee Lifecycle are triggered with the applicable Lifecycle Event Activity Set. Note that Pulse Surveys can also be delivered as content via Content Delivery or Campaigns/Content Automation.

• Notifications: If notifications are enabled for the Pulse Survey, the applicable user(s) will receive a notification with a link to complete the survey. As with all system notifications, the notifications can be modified as needed. To review the delivered notifications, navigate to System Notifications > Email > Notifications and search *survey within the name field. You will see Group Pulse Survey Invite and Employee Lifecycle Survey Invite.

• Sharing Responses: Pulse Survey response information can be shared with additional stakeholders by creating a Response Sharing Rule from the Response Sharing Rules Related List.

Listening Posts Academy

Want a more in-depth overview to understand how to configure Listening Posts? Watch the below recorded HR Service Delivery Academy session on the topic of Listening Posts.

Interested in Being an Early Adopter?

Is your organization implementing Listening Posts soon (within the next 3 months) and interested in partnering closely with our Product Team while being a champion for this feature? If so, please comment on this post!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How do I know if my organization is entitled to use Listening Posts?
It’s always best to speak with your ServiceNow account team, but in general, the Listening Posts app is available with the HR Service Delivery Enterprise subscription.

What release do I need to be on to use Listening Posts?
The Listening Posts app is compatible with the Orlando release and beyond.

Where are Pulse Survey responses stored?
Pulse survey responses are stored in the asmt_metric_result table and demographics are stored in the sn_lp_user_demographic table.

Can Pulse Surveys be created in production environment?
Yes, it’s recommended that Pulse Surveys be built in a production environment. Users with sn_lp_creator or the sn_lp_admin roles can create Pulse Surveys in production directly.

Are Pulse Surveys anonymous?
The delivered reports contain aggregate data and do not expose any personally identifiable information of the survey respondent. The raw data is accessible only to sn_lp_admin for exporting to other reporting tools.