Can employee self-service (ESS) systems allow employees to take care of tasks usually reserved for the HR department? Yes! Employees will appreciate taking charge of their own information and HR staff can be freed for more significant tasks. Here is a list of what employees can do, typically through your payroll system (as well as mobile app) that can deliver HR, payroll and benefits information.
- Vie and update their own personal information.
- View payroll information including pay statements and tax withholdings.
- Coordinate with managers regarding timesheet changes, time off and other time related functions.
You can turn even more complex systems into self-service. For example, consider open enrollment. If life changes have occurred, employees would rather control their own information. Also, workers can take their time to research various benefit options without feeling time pressured when working with a busy HR professional. Consider the advantages:
- The disruption that open enrollment often presents is avoided.
- It makes the application process simpler.
- Information provided may be more thorough due to the interactive format.
Should your company consider adopting self-serve HR? Consider all the advantages.
- Many companies note an immediate increase in productivity and efficiency.
- It saves hours of frustration for managers and HR personnel in not having to work through scheduling issues and time-off requests, or open enrollment questions.
- Since employees can access scheduling, time-off and benefit information from home, they report saving time and experiencing a feeling of empowerment.
Of course, some training will be required and there’s an initial expense; but typically, the time and money investment quickly pays for itself in greatly increased efficiency.
Getting Started
Think about what kinds of requests your HR folks deal with. A typical list includes:
- Forms requests.
- Emergency contacts.
- Beneficiary maintenance.
- Internal job postings and applications.
- Primary care physician selections.
- Flexible spending account selections.
- Employee directory.
- Employee development.
- Retirement plan transactions.
- Organizational chart.
- Stock purchase plan transactions.
This makes you see that self-serve systems certainly don’t take away your need for HR, but let HR concentrate on doing their jobs better by taking away administrative tasks employees can handle themselves.
Freeing HR from clerical and compliance work — letting self-service handle much of the administrative transaction processing — lets the HR team remain free to deal with issues of strategic importance to your company.
What ESS access is right for your company? Give us a call and we’ll walk you through the options. We’d be pleased to help show you how to make ESS work for your employees!