Finding the right HR management solution for your business can feel like an expensive game of trial and error if you don’t know whether the various market offerings can cater to your requirements or not. Do you go for multiple software? How do you gauge the competition and ascertain the right fit for your business needs? One thing is certain, taking the leap to an HR software solution requires an understanding of what the technology has to offer and how that aligns with your needs and goals.

Let’s break it down today, shall we? Starting off with the essential features any good HR software ought to bring to the table:

Integration and Streamlining

There is no reason to invest in an HR solution if it doesn’t do it all. Using multiple specialist software for managing payroll, personnel and leaves can cause conflicts, compatibility  and sync issues, which might end up doubling the work your HR does, rather than halve it. The same goes for automating some aspects of HR, such as payroll, but still keeping some functions manual, for instance, leave management.

The biggest benefit of any competent HR software is streamlining your workflows by integrating processes into one robust software solution. Here’s an added bonus of this: When all functions of your HR perform in the same ecosystem, that means you can view and manage them in a similar fashion! Having access to the wide range of employee information and statistics at one’s fingertips is one of the biggest boosts to efficiency for managers and HR alike when it comes to competent software solutions.

Tailored to Fit

When you’re ready to invest your business’s future into a software solution for HR, you don’t want any off the shelf platform that does not conform to your business’s brand values and aesthetics, or cannot be customized to your unique work needs. 

The best HR software in the market offer tailored solutions to your business needs, from the backend data management to frontend ease of use and appearance, to the flexibility to modify parameters and functions on a per-team basis. If your company prides itself on fostering a creative work culture internally and externally, you do not want that image to be tarnished with one of the most essential employee services not conforming to your company’s brand guidelines. Similarly, if the HR software solution can not adapt to your business growth, or the size of your organization, then it is not the right option for you. An HR software that tailors itself to your every requirement is a boon not just for your business needs but for your company culture as well.

Customised Support and Updates 

Here is how you can tell a good HR management solution from a great one; A good HR software is a ready to execute solution which will streamline your workflows and be personalized to your business’s requirements; a great HR software like PeopleSonic will do all that and provide you customised aftersale support and feature updates after the purchase has been made. They are the difference between building your HR practices around a robust, long term solution and building them around a software that goes obsolete in a year’s time, or two year’s time.

Efficiency

A good HR solution brings with it several avenues of efficiency to boost your business. Efficiency in terms of time, as your manual processes get automated and digitised. Efficiency in terms of cost as you transition away from paper usage and waste, which also helps reduce the burden put on the environment. As your teams get comfortable with using the software, they can even customize the workflow to make their own pipelines more efficient – provided you chose the right solution which gives you these customization features!

An important point to note here, however. ]While a great, or even good HR solution will bring a host of benefits to your HR practice and management, it doesn’t come without caveats. That caveat being the time cost. 

As with any process upheaval or change, there is a learning curve associated. With a unique, all-in-one solution of an HR management software, there will be an associated time cost for the period where your HR and associated personnel gain the knowledge and training necessary to operate your new software. There will also be a time cost for transitioning from your old system to your new one.

However, these caveats can easily be overcome with the right planning and strategy to update your HR to a modern, state of the art integrated software solution. This upgrade will definitely change the way you do business, quite literally!

Whether you are part of the HR team for a large business, or the sole face of HR for a small firm, the a-z of managing time-off taken by employees, i.e. leave management, is a complicated, lengthy affair. For smaller businesses especially, there is often the added hassle of having to use a manual, non-centralized system, even if it is augmented with tools such as spreadsheets and macros to automate those sheets.

What does this mean for the HR personnel managing leaves? Is there really enough of a verifiable improvement to automating leave management that can justify discarding established practices? Let’s find out. 

Understanding The Need For Automation Of Leave Management

Remember the manual or non-centralized leave management system referenced earlier? Here’s what that means for you, the HR: 

It means that you are stuck collating leave applications from phone calls, Zoom calls, emails, text messages and IM apps like WhatsApp or Messenger onto a central location; following up with team managers for approvals and then collating that while also informing employees on the outcome. This doesn’t even factor in keeping track of leaves accrued by each individual employee and the back and forth involved with team leads in getting the necessary approvals – it’s all too much! How can you keep everyone up-to date at all times if you are doing this manually?

Another essential reason in favour of automation applies to those businesses who have employees spread globally – you need to ensure your business is adhering to the labor laws of the employees’ home countries. All those country-specific variances need to be calculated and associated with the right employees, manual management leaves a chance for human error which would have tough consequences. 

The Benefits of a Dedicated Leave Management System

The case for automation is strong, but we understand that businesses need to see tangible benefits to adopting an entirely new process. Let’s speak in those terms.

The biggest benefit by far to any organization adopting a leave management system is the simplicity and ease-of-use. This applies to everyone from the employee to the team leads, admin and HR personnel accessing the system on the employer side. 

For HR, it cuts down the inconvenience of keeping track of leave requests (especially, as mentioned above, they come from a variety of sources) and associated follow-ups. Employees and employers alike can keep track of an application in process and not have to wait for a timely response to their communique. 

For managers and team leads, it cuts down the hassle of scrolling those massive spreadsheets looking for information on a specific employee’s leave entitlements. If they are using a modern, smarter HR platform like PeopleSonic , they will also have access to a centralized dashboard where they can easily see the status of every employee, summary reports and leave types accrued. This allows effective communication between employees and managers, and enables them to schedule workloads accordingly and prevents loss of productivity due to someone’s leave notification slipping through the cracks.

What does this all amount to? In a sentence: increased productivity. This happens in several ways. First, it frees up HR significantly by reducing the tedium associated with leave management. That time can be spent in pursuing holistic improvements to the company instead of being spent on admin tasks. Second, it gives managers a clear view on which team members are scheduled for leave and planning projects and work tasks accordingly, saving significant time costs. A major admin cost associated with manual leave management was the problem of planning around leaves that employees were entitled to in a way that did not impact productivity and waste resources. Leave management systems can make that a thing of the past.

Let’s say you’re convinced to make the jump, what leave management system do you choose? There are a few available in the market but every business’s needs may vary, so the platform needs to be customizable while also affordable – small businesses often can’t afford to splurge. Here are some of the things you should look out for to find the leave management system that is right for you.

What A Great Leave Management System Brings To The Table

Compliance

As companies become increasingly global, there is a greater proportion of remote employees based in countries around the world, each with their own set of labor laws and even public holidays! 

Any modern leave management system needs to be able to handle this variety, and in fact provide instant information to HR and management about a specific country’s specific leave types, rule-of-law requirements and any other legalities necessary to operate ethically. 

This may seem like a small thing, but adherence to labor laws is the cornerstone of a good working relationship between employees and employers and needs to be catered to by your leave management system.

Real-Time, Anywhere Access

In the era of an always-online workforce, your leave management system needs to be on par with those technologies. That means a UI that is web and mobile friendly, real-time status of leave entitlements and applications in-progress, simplified request forms and approval steps and flexibility to modify relevant parameters (leave types, application rules and reporting hierarchy) as needed by the business.

Frankly, if a platform is limiting you on how you or your employees access it, that is not the HR platform for you.

Peace Of Mind

The primary goal of shifting to any smart, automated system is peace of mind. Once it is set up, you never want to have to consider any of the problems that existed before it. For a leave management system, that means it provides peace of mind to HR in the following ways: no more time wasted checking the public holiday calendar of a specific country, or tracking down managers regarding signing off on leaves, or having to search through complicated datasheets to calculate leave balances. 

Peace of mind also means flexibility to adapt to any business’s evolving requirements and rules. The ability to have standard, pre-configured rules and regulations promises ease of implementation, the freedom to update or modify those rules per department or per team means that every employee and manager is happy to keep things operating to their own needs. 

And finally, a great leave management system, as part of an effective HR platform, provides peace of mind by removing human errors (in calculations, reporting or planning) and leveraging the data-driven leave system (among others) to give the business greater power in making informed, strategic decisions.

In a year where a global pandemic has impacted every aspect of businesses, HR has not escaped unscathed but in fact have had to adapt the fastest to the slew of new issues faced by employees and coming up with helpful, impactful solutions. A modern, flexible leave management system that can encompass a change as drastic as that one could mean the difference between failing business and one where employees remain engaged and satisfied as we work together through these trying times.

 

No matter how small or big a business is, the team behind it keeps working effortlessly to get the work done. As the business expands, the recruitment in the departments increases hence making a bigger team of talented people working together. In the mid of handling the departments, individually or in a group, the HR works hard every second for the smooth communication among the hierarchy. More employees mean more work when it comes to salaries. Hence, to help these issues out, automating the payroll system has proven to be a great help. Have you faced this problem where a basic human error has caused big issues during the payrolls and the whole flow has been collapsed?

Why opt for an automated payroll system?

Stats show that businesses have opted for automated payroll systems which has resulted in 80% reduction in the payroll costs, overall. This includes a significant amount of human errors like mistakes in invoices, cheques, and etcetera that are issued to the employee.
Another study shows that almost 90% of the companies have now moved to an automated payroll systems with direct salary transfers, paperless payrolls, and new options of self-services. It also reduced the workload of HR as self-service allows employees to add personal information in the tools.

Benefits of Automating a Payroll System

There are tons of benefits of an automated payroll system and here are some of them

1- Payment Calculation

The automated payroll system basically uses payroll tools that require manual input to compute all the wages by calculating gross to net earnings of the employees. Hence, the accuracy of the results completely depends on the accuracy of manual input. So, in case, a terminated employee is due some severance payment and the payroll employee forgets to make his entry, the tool won’t update any payment. Such software and tools work best as long as the entries are entered correctly. So, the better option is to go for full automation tools like peoplesonic. Such software performs all the types of payments including hourly, weekly, overtime, double-time, commissions, bonuses, salaries, raises and etc. So basically, the automated payroll system does automated payment calculation and eliminates the manual paycheck writing and does direct transfers.

2- Efficiency

As it’s been already mentioned that payroll automation helps to reduce the overall time that is consumed in the manual payroll system processing that employee information, salaries, taxes, and etc. However, there are additional efficiencies presented by payroll tools as well. For example, these tools can be integrated into other systems and can help to track employees time, performance, reports, development, and other HR systems. This efficiency can be seen in the end when there is no manual work left.

3- Automated salary slips to employees

These tools have also diminished the manual work of generating salary slips and sending it to each employee according to the corporate SOP. Some businesses send salary slips every month and some don’t. They only generate if an employee asks for it because of some reason like for opening a bank account and etc. So, this is a plus point of an automated payroll tool that it generates salary slips after the transfer of salaries and individually emails it to each employee every month.

4- Security

The more a tool can help us, there is always a fear of data security. But you don’t have to worry as the automated payroll system will have more of a robust information security system that can easily prevent the leakage of sensitive informative data of the organization. The system’s dashboard can easily help the organization track the changes made in the data by which individual and when.

These tools and software can also help small businesses because they can be run without hiring multiple individuals. Also, there is no expert-level needed to run these tools. Keeping in mind the current scenario of quarantine, software like these are a blessing in disguise for you to manage a huge chunk of responsibility without creating any hassle.

We understand how the current rapid spread of coronavirus has affected businesses globally. On one side, the companies are laying out resources due to the minimization of their operations; on the other hand, some companies like pharmaceuticals are desperately in need of resources as their operations have peaked. In the mid of all this, companies are finding it really hard to manage the current employees as the mode of work has been shifted to work from home, also recruiting new employees has become a big hassle as well. But don’t worry, we realize it’s a big stress for many businesses but why don’t we find a way out to smoothen these processes?

What are the current recruiting challenges that you might be facing?

 

Managing a remotely working recruitment team

Companies have only allowed key workers to work onsite and the rest from home. This means that there is a big responsibility for managing teams remotely and building a positive atmosphere. There are many online collaboration tools that are helping teams and making their work easier like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello and etc.

Assessing the candidates remotely

Recruiting candidates remotely comes with a great responsibility. Many challenges come when it comes to interview the homebound potential candidates, accessing the candidates and etc. In the current situation, empowered mobile-friendly tools are needed to take control over the entire journey.

What are the efficient methods to adopt remote recruitment?

 

Efficiently hiring in short term

Online recruiting isn’t a new concept to the world but definitely the only one nowadays. To make it more efficient, there are tools and software to make it easy for you.

Application & Screening

Online screening can be a big help to you while looking for a suitable candidate. It can ease down the process and make it quicker. By just asking killer questions, you can easily identify the best-suited candidates for your company.

Online Video Interviews

Make your interview room virtual with video interviews where interviewers and the candidate can join remotely. With different tools available, you can set up the branded interface. And the candidate can give the interview by sitting in his comfortable spot. Skype, Hangout, Zoom and etc are your software to opt. If it has to be scheduling then zoom helps you with setting up the meeting.

Interview guidelines and ground rules

It’s always great to provide a set of guidelines to your candidates before hosting an online interview as it might be the first time for them. Inform them things to check and recheck before the interview, what to do if the software doesn’t work out and etc. Also, set some ground rules before the interview like what language it would be preferred, if the candidate has a question then when should he ask, if there’s noise in the background from the interviewer’s side or the candidate’s side then don’t hesitate, it’s okay.

Interview Conclusion

Always conclude the interview with precise and proper information. Tell your candidate to share their feedback if needed, tell your candidate the proper means to contact in case of any query. Communication is the key when it comes to remote recruitment.

Efficiently Managing in Long Term

After you are done with hiring, how would you manage your newly recruited candidates and even current remote employees virtually? It sounds tough but with the right tools, it’s pretty easy to manage. Tools like PeopleSonic can help to manage the current data of your team including payrolls, attendance, designation, department, training of newly recruited employees, and much more.

No one really knows when we are going to get out of this global pandemic but we can’t stop the businesses for that long. Everything’s possible virtually now and more tools are being created as the demands are increasing. Important meetings, meetups, interviews, recruitments, seminars, workshops, fares, and much more are being held virtually using different tools.
So, don’t let this pandemic affect you or your employees, strengthen the team remotely and create a positive environment. Recruit employees easily and be a help for those who lost their jobs, recently.

 

Attendance tracking software should work to reduce rather than increase a person’s schedule. Attendance Tracking Software suite can generate, manage and maintain records on payrolls and taxes that are required during auditing. An Attendance Tracking Software can keep track of employee attendance, work assigned, leaves, overtime, and more from a single, integrated platform. Let’s talk about the top key player in the market at the moment  which is a modern cloud-based HR platform for increasing workplace productivity.

PeopleSonic  is a time and attendance system designed to automate employee time and attendance tracking for small to medium-sized businesses. This software dramatically reduces the number of hours it takes to process employee time records. Available in Standard, Professional, and Enterprise editions, Peoplesonic is scalable to grow with your business.

PeopleSonic works with a variety of employee time clocks, allowing you to choose the optimum way to capture employee time. Select from biometric (fingerprint), HID, RFID, or barcode clocks. PeopleSonic clocks feature an integrated network (Ethernet) connectivity, eliminating the expense of a dedicated PC that systems with just a USB connection require. Moreover, its geofencing feature (in mobile App) tracks the attendance based on user location. Hence, making it ideal for a wide range of industries where hourly and salaried employee time needs to be tracked, including hospitality, manufacturing, warehouse and distribution, healthcare, retail, IT companies, professional and medical offices, government, and educational agencies.

PeopleSonic gives you control over lost time and productivity, which can significantly impact your organization’s profitability. A study by the APA (American Payroll Association) shows that implementing an automated time and attendance system allows companies to save up to 4% of annual hourly payroll expenses.

It provides business owners, HR, and payroll administrators an easy way to gain control of employee time.A web module for time card editing and review is available in Professional and Enterprise editions.

In addition to attendance tracking software, it has the following functions:

• Holiday Options
• Daily, Monthly and Employee based reporting of working hours
• Timesheets
• Multiple shifts
• Status of each employee
• Bulk time/clock import
• API based integration

Is PeopleSonic for you or not?

It is an appealing Software for employees and administration to improve accuracy and maximize employee productivity. It is for you if you are looking for:

Superfast company setup
Migrate or get started in 5 minutes or less with bulk upload functionality.

Easy to use interface
Navigate and become productive effortlessly from the moment you log on

Flexible Platform
Choose existing HR Apps or get a custom HR solution to suit your needs

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