While the long-lasting economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic won’t be fully understood for years to come, in the short-term it has required all industries to rethink their approach to work. SOPs have been implemented for the service and manufacturing industries, where human presence is necessary to function, and businesses and organizations have had to reckon with implementing a hybrid or fully work-from-home model to control the spread of the disease.
For any business that’s able to move to such a model, one of the biggest concerns is transitioning the concept of the “workplace” and “workforce”, two aspects that are the domain of the on-site HR. With the transition to work from home and hybrid teams, your approach to HR needs to transition and evolve as well, to make the most out of this ‘new normal’ workplace. That’s where technology comes in: A managed HR software is the best solution for your human resources to champion hybrid work and will end up being cost and labour-effective even if we as a society return to the pre-pandemic work model.
Let’s look at how an integrated software solution to HR can help successfully manage a hybrid workforce.
Automate Core HR Tasks
The daily workload of any HR team involves a lot of document and personnel data management, tasks that usually involve handling a lot of paperwork and communication with employees. The advent of managed HR solutions allows HR to go paperless and minimize unnecessary processes to complete those core tasks. A good software solution will let HR digitize and automate work such as employee role definitions, personnel data management, while offloading manual communications to self-service dashboards that are not only more efficient, but thorough.
Accelerate Payroll
With the pandemic causing undue financial stresses and instability among people, having a long, drawn-out (and manual!) payroll process will likely add to those concerns, with the high possibility of impacting employee morale and motivation. That’s where you as a business can step in and alleviate those worries. An automated payroll management system, part of an integrated, end-to-end HR solution can reduce payroll processing time from days to minutes and eliminate any human errors and delays that can naturally occur during the course of manual processing.
Not only does that remove excess burden from your HR during the critical monthly payroll period, it also boosts employee morale to have timely, punctual updates on their HR dashboard on pay day!
Enable Flexibility
Any competent, cloud-based HR solution generally comes equipped with attendance and time tracking features, both of which let employees and HR monitor how their daily or weekly work hours and punctuality are being managed. This is key to enabling flexible work hours, especially for hybrid teams that are now spread in multiple time zones. Employees can check in and out on their defined schedules, with the HR system providing real-time updates and tracking to that effect.
For businesses, especially small to medium sized ones, that are transitioning (temporarily or permanently) to home-based hybrid work models, it is imperative that the move is as smooth as possible both for the workforce, and the organizational systems in place, key among them of course being HR. Leveraging technology and choosing a competent software solution such as PeopleSonic can help HR be the guiding force to an effective evolution of the concept of a workplace, and help your business stay on top in these turbulent times.