Luckily for small and expanding businesses, there are many solutions available. Payroll and HR software are growing in popularity as they relieve business owners from time-consuming repetitive tasks, promote an organized, clutter-free workspace, and make working with people a pleasure again. Let’s take a look at the key functionalities offered by top payroll and HR services on the market today.
Recruiting
One of the biggest responsibilities for businesses is hiring the right people. Every leader feels the pressure to not only hire top talent, but to hire top talent that fits the company’s culture and mission. Even more, the demand for compliance in recruiting has increased in recent years and shows no signs of slowing down. A good recruiting software solution is key to hiring the right employees and simplifying the nuanced and complex recruiting process.
One of the best recruiting software solutions for small businesses, is Zenefits. The company offers a flexible and comprehensive platform for the entire HR ecosystem, but especially excels when it comes to hiring. The recruiting stage is the first time a potential employee will experience and interact with your company, so it’s important to make a good first impression.
Zenefit’s HR platform takes care of everything you need to hire. This includes things like sending offer letters and running background checks. It’s fast, easy, efficient, and since it’s meant for small business owners, it’s simple to use. The software also has in-depth reports that harness your HR data to show you trends that can impact hiring decisions.
Since the product is catered toward small businesses, it offers a tiered pricing plan. It also has a free product that you can use to see if it’s right for you, integrates with add-on services you may be using in your organization, and is used by over 10,000 small businesses across the US. The only downside with Zenefits is that it’s only available to businesses in select states (CA, FL, WA, TX, AZ, CT, NY, CO, NJ, GA, IL), and companies in Washington aren’t eligible to use the free product.
Employee Onboarding
After the critical step of recruiting comes the time-consuming yet important task of employee onboarding and the continual task of engagement. You not only want to hire the best, but you want to keep the best by ensuring a good experience. Employee engagement is a hot topic, as the lack of it – a disengaged worker – can cost your company valuable resources. More and more companies are developing onboarding programs to ensure employees have a positive onboarding experience and to build employee engagement.
An easy way to get good results is with a software solution like Paycor, which offers an employee onboarding tool. With its Employee Self Service, new hires can enter their own information before their first day. All compliance documents, both Federal and State, such as a W-4, are completed and reviewed by the administrator electronically. Employers can upload important company documents and policies to the platform such as an employee handbook or social media policy for new employees to review online. It is possible for employers to reduce compliance risks by tracking which new hires have read and acknowledged company information.
To improve efficiency and avoid mistakes, new hires can enter their own direct deposit information. Employees can also complete and submit their I-9 form directly within the electronic application. Administrators and new hires can download, save and print employee documentation once completed. Employers can create a customized welcome message for new hires to ensure a great first impression. Once they start working, administrators can review a new hire’s progress and give final approval. Once approved, the new hire’s information integrates with HR and payroll.
Payroll Processing
Another HR task that HR software solutions can help with is payroll. It’s extremely time consuming, and often complicated and frustrating. In fact, making errors while processing payroll could cost you some big bucks. Many small business owners pay an accountant loads of money to run their payroll for them, but why spend that cash if you don’t have to? There are many great solutions out there that automate the process for you, ensure you don’t make any errors, and won’t require you to break the bank.
Take Square for example. This all-in-one payroll solution works with any type of business and has already processed over one billion dollars in payroll for business in the United States. Its payroll tool lets employers pay employees and contractors on a salary or hourly base via direct deposit, manual check, or to the Cash App or Cash Card. Payroll can take place multiple times a month at no additional cost. Most importantly, Square takes care of all tax management, calculations and filing (W2, 1099, vacation) automatically for you, so you never make any errors ever again.
Employee timecard and sheets can be imported to the platform so it can automatically make payroll calculations based on employees' clocked hours. Employers can also use Square’s platform to purchase benefits packages for themselves and their employees, such as health insurance, retirement savings plans, pre-tax spending deductions and workers’ compensation insurance.
Using Square’s mobile app, employers can pay their team from anywhere in the world. The app also includes a clock-in/clock-out functionality. If you run into any problems, the platform has access to phone support from Square’s US-based team. If you want to get an overview of you company’s payroll status, custom reporting is available. This way, all the information you’ll ever need is constantly at your fingertips anywhere you are.
So which one’s right for you?
Whatever it is you would like to streamline, be it recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, or managing payroll, HR software solutions can assist. Solutions can partially or fully automate time-consuming tasks, alleviating the stress and pressure from you, and allowing you to think big to expand your company.
So no matter if you’re a small business owner looking to make your days more efficient, or a business that’s growing and considering how to set up an HR department, the right software can help you win when it comes to having strong HR.
To check out more payroll and HR software providers and learn about the best one for your business visit this page.