We are all busy; whatever your role may be, we’re pretty sure there’s lots to do yet not enough hours in the day. As an HR function, how often do you feel bogged-down by human resources administration tasks? Sound familiar? Don’t panic, there are many ways you can take the strain off your HR department or dedicated HR employee.
Recent research has found that even HR Directors can spend up to 8% of their time purely on administrative duties, with some HR Managers spending a whopping 30% on administration. What if you don’t have dedicated HR resource within your business and you are that person? That’s a lot of time spent on tasks which could potentially be automated or passed to a third party, leaving you the time to concentrate on more strategic elements of the business or more strategic elements of human resources, such as improving employee relations or implementing a training and development program for example. But how can you make this transition?
1. Employee self-service
There are many types of HR software packages, with a wide range of possible applications available. And in our opinion, HR software is a huge step in the right direction when it comes to reducing administration tasks for your dedicated HR resource. Prior to implementation, if an employee wanted to book annual leave or update their personal details, they would have to fill-out a form, pass it to their line manager for approval and it would then be sent to on to HR for it to be reviewed. Then an acknowledgement would need to be sent to the employee.
You can see where we’re going here…..this process is lengthy (especially when you consider the amount of requests coming into the department from the entire business) and it’s easy to lose physical documents or forget to complete an action without a prompt. Historically these types of processes have worked, however this really does place the burden on HR and obviously leave the floor open to human error.
However, once an HR solution is safely in place, employees can take control and are able to input the details of their request themselves with their updates being reviewed and approved by their line manager or the HR manager. With only one input for information, this saves the HR team a huge amount of time and also hugely reduces the possibility of human error!
2. Moving HR processes and procedures online
There are many procedures which can also be moved online by utilising HR software-as-a-service. For example, many processes such as performance management or logging a grievance can be streamlined in this way. Key stakeholders can be set to receive communications, notifications and prompts and if you need to refer back to something, you can find it quickly and easily by logging in to the system. HR software-as-a-service is a far better way to focus your processes and procedures, as opposed to arranging meetings, sending emails and exchanging physical papers. It also allows Hr to remedy issues promptly and instead frees-up time to focus on business critical HR strategies.
3. A paperless culture
The world is turning digital and we’re pretty sure it won’t be long until paper is totally frowned upon, especially when you take into account sustainability and GDPR as two huge drivers. With physical filing systems, it’s hard to ensure these are secure and private and it’s also hard for other members of staff to understand the method behind your system, which can cost hours of work…
HR software can alleviate all of these troubles. You can upload PDF’s, word documents and excel spreadsheets – All you need is a log-in. You can also set user preferences to each of your managers and employees, only allowing them access to the information they need to see. With this in mind, you will reduce your costs and improve organisation and productivity.
4. Data is equal to power
Whatever area of business you’re in, it’s important to analyse your data and measure your return on investment. And of course, HR is no different. Gathering data from an HR perspective is an administrative task and can be extremely time-consuming. However, it is entirely necessary to make informed decisions about your workforce. If you are able to automatically gather data, your HR function can focus on strategy or remedial action plans. And software is integral in allowing HR to gain important information allowing instant insights into your business, without manual data input.
As you can see, HR software is an integral part of reducing your HR administration tasks, giving you the time for more strategic tasks. If you’d like to understand more about how implementing HR software can help you and your business, or if you need support choosing which HR solution you’re going to select, please do not hesitate to contact me on 01453 297557 or email enquiries@peepshr.co.uk.