Employee Self Service or ESS for short is a feature integrated into all modern HR software. ESS allows access to a string of data regarding HR, personal data, and such related information. The key highlight of ESS is in its name, Employee Self Service, the data which would otherwise need an HR representative to maintain, is now in the hands of each employee, at least their own data due to obvious privacy concerns. This simple yet highly effective move saves on precious resources such as time and money. Some companies are heavily invested in the idea whereas some may not prefer it due to the size and nature of their own. 

ESS is not only for employees but for the management as well, as MSS or Management Self Service is often linked and incorporated within the ESS. This often refers to Managers overlooking and aiding employee matters that were needed, but more importantly, having an administrator to handle any situation. The link between the hierarchy is, therefore, kept intact much like the integration between the ESS and your HR software.

It is already integrated into the HR systems and requires no extra fiddling around on the back-end. Usually, such self-service portals are under the HR department’s supervision but for greater efficiency, personal log-ins are assigned to the employees. Still, seem a little unconvincing to you? The following host of features will surely provide the clarity and knowledge you need.

 

Features of ESS

• Personal Info: ESS will allow employees to update their info and personal details by themselves, cutting out the middle-man (HR). This allows for a more streamlined process and prevents long application submission and updating.
• Leaves: Here the employees will have complete access to their current leave situation whether it be related to leave balance or requesting for leaves.
• Programs: Direct log-ins will allow open-access to enroll in benefits programs or other similar schemes.
  
• Policies/Rules: As policies and rules are often updates, sometimes they may go under the radar of most employees. With ESS a few clicks will get the relevant policies up on your screen.
  
• Payroll: Financing is a particular field, especially when payroll is involved. With self-servicing, Employees will have complete access to previous salary slips, pay cut information, taxes, time-logs, reimbursements, and all relevant data associated with their payroll in general.
  
• HR reports: Such analytics will provide the users more clarity in terms of KPI’s and set goals in comparison to their performances during a defined period. This also helps the HR department as a whole.

 

Benefits of ESS

• Engagement: The ESS tool is great for boosting employee engagement and have them update each detail when required. It acts as a new medium to engage in the existing HR software.
  
• Greater Efficiency: As each employee is responsible for their own data, this speeds up the process by a large margin and even decreases the chance of mistakes within the details.
  
• Autonomy: The integrated bit of software from the central management access point allows for the employee to access and edit their data whenever needed without hesitation.
  
• Ease of burden: The introduction of ESS into an office ecosystem drastically eases the load on the HR department which would manually have to amend any changes requested. Not to mention the processing time it may take to achieve a minor task. HR and Managers do however still have all the admin rights to oversee the changes in order to administer effectively.
  
• Easy access: Since the system is entirely digital, it acts as the perfect medium for dispersed teams or even when on the go. This saves time on having to reach out to the HR team which may be located in a foreign place.
  
• Green/Environmentally friendly: An alternative bonus of ESS is the sheer amount of paper being saved. As such office work requires a series of documentation and updates. The system saves a lot of paper while preventing excessive waste.

 

Is there a catch?

ESS is no doubt a valuable addition to any organization’s arsenal and boasts a series of benefits along with features as mentioned. However, a major drawback would be for each employee to familiarize themselves with the software, as understanding is key for the implementation to be successful. This may lead to communication gaps, incorrect data, and a learning curve from manual to the digital entry system.

If your company is already using an integrated HR Management Software such as PeopleSonic, this won’t be an issue as the interface is very similar to the rest and can easily be adopted into the workflow. As the ESS integration goes hand in hand with HR software, opting for solid HR Management Software shouldn’t be overlooked!

 

2020 is undoubtedly a year we won’t be forgetting soon. The world itself was left dismantled due to the spread of Covid-19. Crumbling many businesses to their downfall and shaking up our entire perspective on the way we live our lives, study, and work. As we carry on into 2021 with new hopes, we can’t render the work status from 2020 useless. The post-Covid gameplan will surely reflect our future trends.

Although many trends arise each year and many are still in rapid growth, here’s an insight into the 5 emerging HR trends in 2021.

Digital Tracking and Automation:
As we move into a digital-oriented workplace, managing and sustaining such workplaces may prove to be a hassle without proper software implementation. As with much of 2020, workplaces have modeled their employees to work from home. Though this provides workers with a more relaxed environment in some cases, keeping track of said employees may prove to be difficult. With spaced out teams working together virtually, tracking their progress is just as important. Automating minute tasks such as attendance, auto-syncing, and seamless data transfer will prove to be fruitful for efficient working.

A variety of software and online tools provide adequate service, but only a few encapsulate the entire theme of HR Management such as PeopleSonic.

Hybrid Workplaces and Their Culture
With work from home becoming the new norm in the passing year, some are truly struggling with managing all from one space in their home. Whereas others are striving in the more relaxed and casual workspace created at home. There’s no doubt the pandemic has caused many issues with working at home, especially during long terms of isolation with kids or family bustling about. However, this seems to be the way of life for at least a few more months, until there is more clarity to this pandemic.

Designated workspaces at home are therefore being defined but to a more professional approach. Many establishments offer, shared co-working spaces and multi-use offices for those who need them, following covid-19 precautions of course.  

Performance Management
As established before, handling employee data and performances virtually is a task in itself. Achieving and handling KPI’s is key throughout the organization’s run. In the coming years, we are bound to see a great improvement in virtual management as a whole. Currently setting specific targets via software and implementing that into the system has resulted in brands going fully digital. The ability to have customized reports, detailed analytics, and data displayed in an automated fashion show how far we’ve already come.

There’s room for improvement, with faster speeds and completely reliable figures over the horizon, Performance management is something business should proactively look into.

HR In the driver’s seat
The HR department in any given organization is vastly important in linking the employees to the management and higher hierarchy. The department is known to be at the frontline of customer and employee concerns, the ability to keep a straight head and guide others to what’s best for both parties takes immense skill and effort. The current Covid-19 pandemic has taken everything to an even more intense level. Employees are constantly worried about their wellbeing and juggling their work from home amongst family and young children can become daunting. Similarly, the managers are equally worried as there is uncertainty regarding communications and maintaining company values. 

Being at the core of such an intense situation requires extreme dedication and hefty responsibility. Therefore staying firmly in the driving seat is necessary for the department to drive them through 2021.

Virtual Team
Conferencing and collaborating with co-workers virtually is the new norm for the upcoming years. With the steady and progressive growth of globalization due to the vast majority of social media, it creates an exciting new opportunity for global partners and employees. This adds more depth and new input into the system which may allow for your team to strive! Such interactions are very easily maintained via a variety of online tools. Since we are already working from home, this virtual team management isn’t tedious, especially if you’re familiar with the tools available. Managing time with global teams for meet-ups might be a little tricky, but nothing that can’t be overcome.

Though the virus has separated us physically, we are still able to connect with those who matter and maybe 2021 is the year we excel in it!

There are a limited number of hours in a work day and of those hours, a significant amount can be attributed to manual, lengthy administrative tasks that keep any office running smoothly. While critical, the way those tasks are performed, manually, does not directly feed into the organization’s productivity. Those tasks can range from manually signing in or out of a ledger, following up on administrative things via email or in-person, or more.

HR ends up doing a bulk of such important but inefficient work, so let’s look at how automating their daily grind can help them and the workforce in general.

The solution to improving efficiency

Productivity is just one side of the coin; efficiency is the other. Understanding how to extract the most from your resources (time, cost or person-hours) is equally as important as the amount of work being done. And wouldn’t you know it, the key to efficiency can be summed up in one word: automation.

Human resources work involves a lot of communication, data and coordination to execute flawlessly day in, day out. That is work with a lot of time overhead, and thus something worth looking into first when considering the efficiency of a workplace. 

There are various HR solutions available that can help attain that baseline level of automation to improve efficiency. Increasingly, modern solutions such as PeopleSonic are going cloud based, while also providing an integrated, end-to-end solution. Let’s take a look at how these HR products can help automate repetitive work and boost the efficiency of employees.

The Advantages of Automation

Significant Time Savings

HR tasks such as payroll management and certain core functions such as employee data management, if conducted using ‘typical’ processes, can be incredibly time-taking and error prone. Given how integral both HR functions are, it is essential to remove human error from the processes, while also speeding them up. Automating these processes also ensures that employees are happier – no one wants payroll issues!

Reduced Communication Lead Time

Functions such as leave management, or tracking employee presence in the office require some form of communicative processes, whether it be email, text or phone call. This obviously presents obvious issues: The communication doesn’t happen in a timely manner, isn’t responded to immediately, or just gets lost in transits – phone signal strength still remains an issue in many regions. 

All this means that the lead time associated with the aforementioned processes is unacceptably high, especially if HR spends half their day chasing down the necessary information (or if employees aren’t able to reach busy HR personnel). 

Automation, especially those like PeopleSonic, which are powered by the cloud and accessible everywhere and on every platform, reduce that lead time drastically, while also allowing both HR and employees to communicate their attendance or leave status in a timely, easy-to-access manner.

Speed, with Accuracy

With any task or activity, we’re often given the old adage that one must sacrifice speed for accuracy, or vice versa. A modern, fully integrated HR solution offers the third, and best, option: Speed and accuracy. 

With human error and manual paperwork removed from the equation, HR functions require minimal redoing, while also completing faster. That directly translates to greater efficiency, not just for HR, but for the entire workplace. 

 

The move to an automated HR management solution seems like a no-brainer, yet many businesses out there haven’t still not adopted newer technologies to not only optimize their workplaces, but save their employees from the drudgery of repetitive, manual tasks.

It may sound slightly counterproductive, but your HR team should not be spending a bulk of their time doing “HR things”. Their time and energies should instead be spent on exploring ideas that boost or ensure the success of a business, for instance, through increased empathy and emotional intelligence in employees, or through the successful implementation of essential human factors.

Let’s identify what those “HR things” are that end up eating far too much time and prevent your HR from elevating your organization to its true potential.

Payroll Management

Are you a business that is still handling payroll manually, or through a combination of inefficient apps and spreadsheets? This is something we have discussed in detail a few times before. Whether you are a small-to-medium sized business or even large, there are enormous benefits to automating payroll and freeing up HR to pursue higher value projects.

Statistics show, in fact, that there can be upto 80% reduction in overall payroll costs merely by switching to a competent automated payroll system. With such overwhelming benefits to both cost and efficiency, there really is no excuse for being one of the 10% of businesses still not implementing payroll automation in their HR processes.

Employee Status Tracking

Another avenue that sucks up a significant amount of daily time for HR is verifying employee status and attendance. If you’re not utilizing  state-of-the-art leave management and attendance tracking systems, you are essentially burdening your HR with manual or email-based follow-ups to track down sick employees or monitor punctuality and time efficiency.

Not only can investing in such systems ease unnecessary load from your HR team, these systems have proven track records in improving employee motivation and accountability, which directly impacts their work quality and rate. The benefits to the business bottom line and employee productivity are significant in comparison to systems which especially still rely on emails or text messages to track employee absences.

Essential or “Core” HR Functions

These essential tasks, often dubbed “core” tasks are the day to day work that any HR team is doing. This ranges from personnel and document management to handling departmental and employee requests, and any office administration tasks.

While that may sound like the entirety of what most of us assume HR does, the reality couldn’t be more different. The fact that HR spends so much of their time on these daily tasks prevents them from focusing on other projects. Add into that tedious work like manual payroll management and monitoring employee punctuality and that leaves HR with almost no time in their work schedule at all!

The solution is simple: Invest in a customised HR platform that allows your team to automate and optimize these repetitive and time-taking tasks. In fact, integrated solutions such as PeopleSonic often provide businesses with a suite of features that can handle everything from Core HR to payroll and leave management, along with industry leading productivity enhancements through time and attendance tracking.