This is where HR software comes in. Also known as human resource information systems or human resource management systems, HR software can help your organization better manage everything from payroll to personnel needs. This software is built to streamline and automate your human resource needs in one database.
Read on to learn the top 10 benefits your business could see from good HR software.
1. Manage Employees Better and Retain Them For Longer
Employee retention is one of the biggest issues that businesses face. While recruiting will help your organization grow its talent pool, developing your current staff is something that can’t be overlooked, as keeping your current staff is much more cost-effective than hiring new employees.
In fact, research shows that it costs around $4,000 to hire a new employee. If you’re sick of employee turnover and want to make sure your current employees stick around, HR software can help by assisting you in plotting each employee’s career development plan. The software allows you to gather and organize information about performance, training, and development.
This kind of software helps you conduct regular performance reviews, and it ensures the data from the performance reviews are stored in a proper manner. With HR software, you’ll have a designated spot for storing details about the topics you covered during performance reviews, the goals you’ve set, and the feedback that’s been given.
This can help improve employee morale, as they’ll have feedback to refer to and objectives to aim for. Here are some features you may see in HR software that can help you with organizing, training, and retaining your employees.
- Employee documents database: This feature lets you save all of your employee documents in one system.
- Applicant tracking: This feature allows you to easily find the right people and hire the best candidates.
- Performance review management: This helps you handle the performance review process—everything from scheduling meetings to organizing and storing feedback.
2. Make Routine HR Tasks Easier
Too many HR managers waste time on tedious paperwork when they could be spending that time finding ways to improve employee morale and performance.
If you’re looking to take the burden of routine tasks off your HR personnel, HR software can help. HR software eliminates much of the paperwork normally associated with HR operations. It can standardize processes related to employee information, such as employment history, certification, licenses, skills, education, performance, and compensation information.
It can also help you speed up the creation of documents, as you’ll be able to keep all of your employee information in one place, so you can create documents quickly based on this information.
With HR software, your HR personnel will no longer need to sort through piles of documents to create stock plans, employee ratings, or other types of documents.
3. Simply Monitor Leaves and Absences
Life happens, and sometimes employees need to suddenly request time off for sick leave or something else. These unexpected leaves and absences can disrupt workflow and productivity.
Quality HR software can help your company manage absences and leaves efficiently. The software can:
- Simplify and automate the way you plan for holidays
- Calculate pro-rate entitlement
- Keep track of remaining days off for employees
- Handle PTO requests
Many HR software programs also come with company calendars that allow you to see company holidays, upcoming birthdays and events, and employees who are taking time off at a glance.
4. Set and Measure KPIs
Key performance indicators (KPIs) show how effectively employees are achieving their business objectives. HR software can help your company measure and automate KPIs, giving you a data-based way to measure whether you’re achieving your goals. Here are a few example KPIs you may want to monitor with HR software.
- How long employees stay in a position (this can help let you know when it’s time to promote)
- Absenteeism
- Employee retention
- How much time it takes employees to accomplish a task
5. Reduce Human Error
Human error is one of the leading causes of unnecessary business costs. One of the best ways to reduce human error is to invest in HR software.
One major way HR software can help reduce human error is by automating payroll. Manual payroll entry can result in time-consuming errors, and it can lead to employee frustration. Not to mention, errors in tax withholding can open your company up to IRS penalties.
When you invest in HR software, a lot of tasks that are open to human error will be put on autopilot, leading to less tedious work for your team now and fewer corrections later.
6. Visualize Data at a Glance
Sometimes, it can be hard to wrap your head around where your company is at and where it’s headed.
The best way to get an idea of how your company is doing is to look at some data. But, if your data is out-of-date, inadequate, or disorganized, this can be hard to do.
The great thing about HR software is that it collects lots of data and allows you to access it at any time. You can view this data at a glance with just a few clicks. This allows you to drill deeply into the analytics of the data so you can identify trends and spot problems.
With the right HR software, you’ll be able to access data and reports related to audit trails, HR reporting, training records, and more.
7. Secure Data and Information
Not only does HR software enable you to see company data at a glance, but it also helps you secure company data and information.
Gone are the days of storing sensitive employee data in a filing cabinet in your office. These days, it’s crucial to have HR software to store this sensitive data and protect the well-being of your employees.
Many HR software programs come with data encryption, user authentication, and user authorization to ensure that your company’s data doesn’t wind up in the wrong hands. This software also comes with access permissions that allow employees and other personnel to access data they need to see, but not all of it.
Not only does HR software prevent unauthorized personnel from accessing sensitive employee data, but it also allows you to see who has viewed what information and when. Additionally, since this information is saved in the cloud, you don’t have to worry about it getting destroyed in a fire or some other catastrophic event.
8. Give Employees a Chance to Help Themselves
Employee self-service is another crucially important feature of HR software. Often, employees have detailed questions about their salaries, vacation days, leave policies, and other terms and conditions related to their job.
It can be extremely difficult for an HR department to answer all of these questions individually for potentially hundreds of workers or more. This is where automated HR software helps, as it provides employees with better self-service. Working within an HR software system, they can easily check their available paid sick leave, available time off, information related to remote work policies, and much more.
The typical HR software provides each employee with their own account and login information, so they can access this information whenever they desire. This will greatly reduce the number of emails and inquiries your HR team receives, giving them more time to work on tasks that can improve your company as a whole.
9. Simplify Benefits Administration
It’s no secret that benefits administration can be a huge headache. Designing and managing an employee benefits package is extremely time-consuming and complex, and just when you think you have it down, some government rule or regulation changes, and you have to rework the whole thing.
With HR software, benefits eligibility is calculated automatically. This makes it easy for your employees to pick the coverage that works for them. HR software also allows you to integrate benefit information into payroll to ensure the correct amount of money is deducted for each paycheck.
10. Save Time and Improve Productivity
Perhaps the biggest benefit of HR software is that it helps your company save time and improve productivity. Admin tasks, including many already listed above, are incredibly time-consuming, and automation through HR software can significantly reduce the time your HR employees put toward these tasks.
For example, if you receive a vacation request from an employee, you no longer have to record the info on a spreadsheet and track it down later. Instead, all of that information will be recorded and easily accessible in your HR software program.
Conclusion
The right HR software program can help your company in many ways. Not only does HR software help your HR team function better, but it also helps your organization function better as a whole by automating simple tasks, keeping track of important information, and reducing the chance for human error.
With the right HR software, less of your employees’ time will be wasted on admin tasks, leaving them more free time to dedicate to their main job: growing and improving your business.
