Employee Portals to Induce Employee Engagement

Human resource is an essential resource for an organisation to achieve its goals. Maintaining the database of employees is essential for small, medium and large enterprises. If you are planning to expand your business or more of your employees are working remotely and across the country, it is primary to stay connected. Furthermore, it is indispensable to build employee engagement with the organisation to enhance productivity, initiate innovation and strengthen culture.

Employee engagement initiates right from the recruitment or even before and continues throughout the employee lifecycle. Thanks to technological inventions today, the employees can easily stay connected with the company, access data and maintain compliance with Employment regulations. These days Employee Portals are getting prominent in organisations as one of the strategic asset that could help in accelerating the organisation’s agility.

A well designed, well executed and managed portal is essential to ensure that the employees are efficaciously supported the system is safe and secure to perform well. Employees can now be heard for their grievances and can be empowered to take part in human resource management programs with the help of Human resource Information systems. These software program increases the transparency and visibility into the HRM process.

These software systems comes with Employee self service features that enables the employees to access their profiles, appraisal history, time logs, salary slips etc. thus, it helps in reducing HR’s work load and leads to faster feedback cycles and happier employees.

With the HRMS, the employees can –

·         Manage their attendance and time

·         Monitor the trainings, approvals and benefits

·         Apply/ cancel leaves

·         Manage their personal profiles

·         Stay connected to seniors and sub-ordinates

·         See the feedbacks

·         Manage self appraisals

·         Raise grievances/ complaints

·         View and act on assignments and can work towards individual and group goals

There are many variations in these software systems. Leave Management is amongst the most important processes of HR and to ensure availability of resources on time and compliance with the leave policy, a proper leave management system is essential to improve employee satisfaction. This system helps in managing employee leave balance and effectively meeting the project delivery deadlines.

Using Performance management Systems, the companies can effectively monitor the performance of the employees as individual and as team players. It helps employees understand what is expected out of them and the importance of their contributions to organisation’s goals and objectives.

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Give HR Function a New Lease of life by deploying HR Software

Gone are the errors prone days of calculating payroll on excel sheet, manually generating and distributing pay slips to employees and then spending the next week or so responding to employee queries and recalculating salary due to incorrect deduction or extra payment. Payroll Management system enables easy management of all aspects related to employee’s financial dealing with the company including salary, reimbursements, taxation etc. A well-designed payroll software goes beyond mere calculation of salary, it enables an organization to monitor and track cost and expenses against each employee. Advanced payroll modules also provide for an employee self service application wherein employees can view their pay slips and other details online when needed. The ESS module removes much of the administrative burden associated with payroll management as all information pertaining to their individual finances,with respect to the company can be accessed by employees through their own unique ID and password.

The extensive range of reports and features available is what distinguishes a good payroll system from an average one.

1.Automation of salary calculation based on formulas for tax and allowances
2.Auto generation of pay slips
3.Manage statutory payments
4.Greater control over data
5.Reduces time and effort spent on administering payroll manually
6.Claims management including Local Conveyance, Travel claim, Medical, LTA etc
7.Easy browsing historical salary records for audit purposes

Modern payroll systems are designed to be flexible and adaptable to integrate easily with an organization’s existing HR system or Human Resource Information System making it a single window for all HR information and activity related to employees. The ESS application when combined with the HRIS and payroll system helps to streamline the entire HR process and make it paperless as all approvals and forms are then submitted and approved online rather than on paper.

The greatest benefit of employing an Employee Self Service application is that it makes dissemination of information to geographically dispersed employees easy to administer and manage. Also since the onus of updating his or her information in the system lies with the employee, employee records generally tend to be more relevant and efficiently managed.

The prominent features of a good ESS are

1.Ability to view / edit personal information
2.Submit Tax declaration online
3.View pay slip and tax working online
4.Makes it possible to submit tax returns online
5.Manager access to view team member records
6.Define workflow for employee joining and exit
7.Leave Attendance System
8.Leave Management System through integration of attendance / access card with shift system
9.Asset Management
10.Travel requisition or taxi requisition
11.Book Conference room
12.Mobile / SIM Card or Data card requisition
13.Raise request for ID card/ visiting card

A hallmark of a good HR software is its ability to scale up to add on more features and module based on requirement. In today’s scenario when organizations are looking at automating administrative and repetitive tasks to reduce operational costs and free staff for more value adding activities, it makes sense for organizations to opt for an integrated Human Resource Management system (HRMS) which covers the entire employee life cycle. Read more.

Human Resource Information System– A Quick Guide

The Human Resource Information System (HRIS) is basically an online solution or software designed to meet the data needs of the HR team and is mostly designed to include an option to add an integrated payroll management and accounting module.

A well-designed and implemented Human Resource Information System provides organizations with a three-fold benefit. Firstly and most importantly, an HRIS system empowers employees with tools to update their own particulars as well as access critical information related to team management, career growth and skill and knowledge enhancement.  Secondly, It frees up HR staff from administrative query management and record updating to perform a more strategic role. Lastly, a Human Resource Information system enables managers to make better decisions and support their team by providing them with tools for real time access to data and analytical reports on their team.

Businesses that invest in implementing an HRIS system suited to their culture and employee values are able to reap rich benefits of a more engaged and productive workforce. Key benefits of using Human Resource Information System include

Newer features like chatting within the HRIS system enable easy flow of information among employees allowing for greater team work and productivity. With a centralized database accessible from anywhere and at any time, Human Resource Information system provides a convenient tool for organizations to host company policies as well as make important announcements. 

Workflow based HRIS system is particularly useful for automating recurring events like monthly payslip generation or annual tax return filing which can easily be completed without human intervention.

Well designed HRIS systems incorporate flexible designs with databases that can easily be  integrated with a range of modules and features. A good HRIS system also provides options to generate customized reports for fast and accurate data analysis and workforce management. Self service module enables more efficient administration of benefits and other employee related processes.

A basic Human Resource Information System typically includes the following features

A more advanced comprehensive HRIS system provides options to add or integrate related application modules such as recruitment management, succession planning, performance management and even learning management.

The HR function is increasingly being called upon to play a more strategic role in current economic conditions for companies to derive and sustain competitive advantage. As the war for available talent pool intensifies, HR and consequently human resource information systems (HRIS) will need to constantly evolve and innovate to include even more value adding business intelligence reporting features, above and beyond, self-service and access to critical information and processes anywhere and at any time. A Human Resource Information system can prove to be an immensely useful tool in helping businesses seamlessly manage a globally dispersed workforce, enhance employee satisfaction, improve efficiency of HR processes as well as achieve cost savings. Read more.

Growing Popularity of Employee Self Service Portals

Employee Self Service solutions are fast gaining ground as they relieve the HR function of time consuming administrative responsibilities to focus on strategic initiatives. Self service as the name denotes facilitate managers and employees to independently manage information, data and processes related to their roles.

Employee Self Service Portals provide significant advantages and cost saving to businesses by enabling a "paperless" office and streamlining processes. With ESS, all confidential data related to employees can be stored in a centralized database providing data protection and easy accessibility and navigation to all relevant stakeholders unrestricted by geographical or time differences. An ESS system allows the HR team to set access rights based on the role of an employee.

By virtue of empowering employees with easily accessible data and information, employee self service portal helps to build an organizational culture of trust and transparency. Information can be accessed on demand eliminating the need to get in touch with the HR/Admin teams and waiting for a response.

Key features of an employee self service portal include

Employee Self service portal allows employees to view pay slip, earning statements, loan installment details, PF details as well as YTD statements online at their convenience. There is no lag time between raising a query and accessing data and information. 

Employee self service portals are based on pre defined workflows aligned to company policies. The system enables employees to initiate a workflow when required and company policy is automatically enforced at the application stage itself significantly reducing turnaround time and administrative costs. All stakeholders are connected via system-generated emails, which help in reducing transaction time and cost.

The Help Desk feature in the employee self service portal helps to set SLAs and monitor and enhance service standards of internal teams like IT, Administration, HR and finance. This feature enables employees to raise a ticket based on the issue being experienced, which is then routed to the concerned department. The ticket remains open till the issue is resolved enabling the manager to track the time taken to resolve an issue by the concerned department.  The feature also allows for an escalation mechanism in case an issue is not resolved within a defined time period.

A well-deployed ESS portal enables organizations to maintain a leaner HR team with higher productivity. The HR survey conducted by the Hunter Group in 2010 found that “companies with successful self service implementations reported a staff-to-employee ratio of 1:151 while companies without self service had a ratio of 1:99”. Self-service becomes an even more valuable tool when employees are provided access to update their personal information in real time. Data accuracy is higher and the system allows managers to update team information online, which is then routed automatically to HR team for approval enabling speedier transactions and better quality of service with lesser staff.

By allowing anywhere, anytime access to information and processes concerning them and their teams, businesses can make use of a powerful tool to empower employees and enable them to make better decisions. Read more on OfficeNet Portal.

Leave and Attendance Management System – A Key Enabler

An online system that helps organizations capture & evaluate an employee’s leave & attendance record, offers myriad advantages to all 3 constituents viz The Employee, The Human Resources Department & the Organization at large.

Leave & Attendance Management systems also lend themselves to the employee’s real time reporting of planned leaves, which enables line managers to allocate work to existing staff, well in advance thereby ensuring department productivity is unaffected. The system also goes a long way in ensuring timeliness & absenteeism’s kept under check especially in case of remote locations.

The integration of the Leave & Attendance Management system with the punch card/ biometric system of attendance recording, ensures that the system is error free & requires no manual intervention. This facilitates efficient payroll processing as it takes away the need to capture attendance data from a multitude of sources, namely different attendance systems, manual registers etc. It is a great step towards saving time & money spent towards cumbersome administrative tasks& improving not just ROI but also employee morale as the HR personnel focus on a range of strategic issues.

The system can be customized to each organization’s requirements ensuring that shift timings, compensatory offs, weekly offs & other such organization/department specific data is per-fed into the system.

The system also functions as a great repository of information, with the facility to store Employee Demographic information including but not limited to:

This central repository of data could be put to multiple uses such as employee motivation schemes centered around personalized birthday wishes etc.

A great feature of the Leave & Attendance Management System, is its ability to empower employees. With the Leave & Attendance System speaking seamlessly to the Employee Self Service (ESS) module, it can among other features, generate automated mail alerts asking employees to update their attendance status.

Other than its tactical function, Leave& Attendance Management System also works as a great strategic tool in empowering the organization with valuable data that aids decision-making & business intelligence. The leave & attendance records can be filtered using a number of variables such as location, department, function etc, offering valuable insights.With the system enabling a number of MIS reports, it not only helps track employee leave & attendance records, it brings to the fore, any emerging trends that can be proactively tackled.

Needless to mention that it is also a great way towards a paperless office & the “Go Green” initiative adopted by most forward looking organizations. Read more.