University of Newcastle
HR Declarations Process
The university uses Service Now for Service Management requests. All staff members at Level 8 and above are required to report any perceived or actual conflicts of interest that could interfere with their ability to do their job.
HR Declaration process
Task
Mandatory annual completion rates were very low due to user confusion and needed to be improved for compliance. Improving the user experience was used to strategically uplift completion rates.
My role
I was the lead designer on the project, working closely with a business analyst to ensure we were solving user problems, as well as business problems. Through user research it was discovered the processes were over engineered using confusing business language that users did not understand. Most declarations were quite simple, but all users were asked to complete the same rigorous process leading to a high rate of drop offs throughout the process. The whole process was overhauled, language simplified, with more examples included. The other main change was the inclusion of a diagnostic process that significantly reduced the effort of users with simple declarations or with nothing to declare.
Outcome
There has been year on year improvement on completion rates of staff declarations, leading to a 51% improvement in 2 years.
The process has been monitored closely with iterative improvements being made that have been positively tested with users.
Recent updates to the ServiceNow module used have allowed greater flexibility to how HR declarations are collected. With further significant improvements expected in 2026.
Good experience =
Good compliance
From the experience of re-designing the HR Declarations Process, and design allocations on other projects, I developed a lunch and learn presentation about how you can solve business problems (like compliance), by solving user problems. I regularly see business problems try to be solved by spending more time collating business requirements, but giving little thought to the users who will complete these business processes.
This presentation showed examples of how the Service Experience has solved similar problems and demonstrated the tools we use to solve problems like this, (e.g. Design Milestones, User Research and negotiation with other practice areas). I used the presentation to show the role of design in the first diamond to give clear problem definition.
The initial presentation lead to really useful discussions with project managers and capability leads. I now include points from this presentation in onboarding for new delivery staff and revisit regularly with the practice when trying to demonstrate the value of design more broadly.