Feature Highlight
Employee Self Service: How to save your HR team's time
Sharon Monteiro
April 1, 2024
7
mins
Your HR team needs to be saved. Day in and day out, HR teams are hounded with requests.
“What’s the wi-fi password?”
“Why have I been taxed so much?”
“What’s my remaining holiday entitlement?”
It can take a lot of time to ensure that all employees have access to the same information, from answering the same questions over and over again to providing the most recent updates on taxes and returns.
The time has arrived to ensure your HR team stops being the intermediary between employees and the organization. So, how to save your HR team’s time? I suggest moving everything in your organization to digital in the form of employee self-service.
What is employee self-service software?
The concept behind employee self-service is to help employees help themselves. Employee self-service (ESS) software is a web based technology that enables employees to do the same. With a self-service platform, employees can manage their HR needs without the help of a dedicated HR person for support. Typically, employee self-service software can be found within the company’s HR portal and workforce management systems. Employees generally get round-the-clock, easy access through the ESS portal to accomplish a variety of job-related tasks, from payroll, schedules, and benefits information, to make updates to their information whenever necessary.
With employee self-service software in place, you can save your HR team’s time by enabling employees to carry out all such tasks that required the assistance of HR.
But why is it critical that HR software has employee self-service capabilities? Mostly because your HR system needs to adapt in tandem with the changing organizational cultures. Although the evolution of business processes may appear to be a given, HR systems have taken a long time to adapt from decades-old patchwork manual processes.
With employee self-service HR systems, the HR landscape is rapidly evolving toward a more rational and efficient approach and minimising the bureaucracy of paper-based processes.
Now that we’ve cleared that out, let’s take a look at some of the common features you should find in an employee self-service platform.
Common features of Employee Self Service
An HR Employee Self-Service (ESS) software should typically include the following features:
- Employee provision to update their information
- Access to onboarding materials, policy manuals, and handbooks
- Access to pay stubs, payroll, and income tax information
- Management of time off and approvals
- Benefits enrollment and expense management
- Performance reviews and evaluations
- Timely notifications and reminders
- 24/7 access to HR information
Benefits of choosing employee self-service software to save your HR team’s time
When you implement a robust employee self-service HR portal, you are likely to see a rise in employee productivity and efficiency. Repetitive mundane activities from your to-do list are cut off. Imagine how it would feel to see this happen every day. That’s the euphoria that your HR team would experience when your company has employee self-service software in place.
1. Employees have the authority to make changes to their information
Employee self-service software allows employees to update their personal information, access payslips and documents, enrol for benefits, enter details, and so on, almost instantly and without the intervention of HR. An organisation can benefit from employee self-service software in two ways: First, because employees can change their personal information, managers do not need to do it for them—they simply need to approve it! Second, when employees know they are responsible for their data, they become data owners and are more cautious about the information they share.
2. Significant decrease in HR workload
Employees can get information, access benefits, and take care of personal business more easily with self-service platforms. The less time HR spends on operations such as setting up payroll details, the more time they have to deal with big picture issues such as employee morale or performance management. Employees who can handle their administrative tasks are generally happier because they aren't waiting on hold or sending multiple emails for simple requests.
3. Streamlined recruitment and onboarding
With an employee self-service software handling the majority of the mundane tasks, the HR team is free to develop and implement a recruitment strategy. They can examine previous results to find ways to improve the process. Employee Self-Service software can also help with new hire onboarding and orientation. It enables businesses to track and monitor new hires during the onboarding process, go paperless by eliminating manual data entry and signatures, create organisational charts, and so on.
4. Easily manage time off
Your employees won't have to send multiple emails to request time off if you have an employee self-service solution in place. They can simply log in to the portal, submit a request for time off, and the manager's approval will be granted automatically. Notifications are sent to everyone involved, and time-off balances are updated. Employees need only log in to the portal to plan and apply for vacations, view upcoming holidays and time-off balances, and request approvals.
5. Greater employee engagement
An employee self-service portal's employee directory lists all employees' contact information as well as their birthdays, work anniversaries, and other significant dates. Employees can socialise with one another in this manner, which improves the community spirit.
6. Access to information at any time and from any location
Employees have access to company information from a variety of devices and locations, ensuring that they are always up to date. This has a few immediate advantages: less effort spent scanning for data, more energy spent working productively, and fewer headaches about lost or outdated documents for mobile workers. Employees have more freedom in how they spend their time in general because they are not frequently seeking information that is otherwise right in front of them.
Employee Self Service: Not Just for Employees
When HR self-service is mentioned, it is typically thought of as an option available to employees. Employee self-service receives the majority of the attention because it takes time to train employees and can result in significant changes.
However, manager self-service is available wherever employee self-service is, and if used to its full potential, it can significantly improve organisational performance. The following are a few ways employees and managers can use peopleHum’s self-service platform to improve the company, make their jobs easier, and save the HR team’s time.
What can you do with peopleHum’s Employee Self-Service Software?
Smart features of peopleHum
Social Interface
Nothing screams “self-service” like a social media user interface. And before you ask, no, peopleHum is not a website for connecting with strangers around the world. Social media user interfaces are designed to give users quick and easy access to portals on the website. With peopleHum’s quick access user interface on the home screen, employees and managers gain easy access to actions which they can perform on their own without the need for HR intervention.
Easy Approval Flows
Get the executive capability of designing the hierarchy of approval flows in your company for the smoother administration of duties. Create role jurisdictions for business operations, such as job creation approvals, leave approval, and new employee offer letter approval. With easy approval flows, streamline repetitive duties so you can focus on the bigger picture.
Mobile Application
The peopleHum mobile app enables your employees and managers to find information about their colleagues, access company policy, apply for leaves, clock in and clock out, and essentially perform every action that they could once perform on the peopleHum platform on the mobile app when they are on the go.
Phia
This HR chatbot is not just a chatbot, but an intelligent assistant to every employee. Onboarding, engagement, HR help desk and FAQs – Phia does it all.
Other features of peopleHum
Hire
Applicant Tracking System
peopleHum Applicant Tracking System, the powerful recruiting tool that comes as a part of your employee self-service HR software, will change the way you recruit beyond recognition. Smart automation lets you hire in collaboration with your team and gain real-time analytical insights into your recruitment efforts. And with the peopleHum mobile app, you can even recruit on the go.
Employee Referrals
Employee referrals are one of the most efficient ways to find talent and your best bet at improving talent metrics. Employees and managers can simply head to the Hire module on their peopleHum portal and select New Referrals. And all they have to do is drag and drop a person’s resume, and peopleHum’s resume parser intelligently extracts information to fill up the fields.
Engage
Make announcements
Get rid of traditional memo crafting and email blasts. Make announcements just the way they are supposed to be - effortless and noticeable.
Give recognition
Connect, recognize & celebrate your colleagues – whether on mobile or the web – and create a culture focused on teamwork and excellence.
Employee voice
Bid farewell to the suggestion box and empower employee voices to reach company stakeholders. Create a culture of honest conversation and feedback on peopleHum’s employee self-service engagement platform that supports the voices of employees.
Submit an idea
Break down silos and geographic barriers, and ideate with your team in real-time, wherever you may be. With this employee self-service feature, turn ideas into real action.
Perform
Performance feedback
Choose and set up feedback cycles just the way you like. Managers can choose between customized feedback templates to enable smooth, continuous feedback.
peopleHum’s employee self-service Performance module lets employees pick their reviewers at the start of the feedback cycle and provide peer feedback for a well-rounded feedback experience.
Create goals
Employees and managers can create and track daily goals on peopleHum’s Perform module. Set objectives and due dates, make it a part of the appraisal cycle and derive key results.
Manage
Organization chart
Just apply the right filters and hit “search” to see how teams fit together. Built for the way people work today. peopleHum’s dynamic organizational chart enables easy navigation to find the people you want.
Attendance management
With an HRIS driven by automation, biometrics & self-check-ins, make attendance tracking work for you without it being a chore.
Leave management
peopleHum’s employee self-service software enables employees and managers to apply, approve and manage leave requests from the website or on mobile. Get a one-view of who’s in or out for the day, week or month.
Shift scheduling
Managers can now manage multiple shift patterns, streamline the way you create employee schedules, and track the hours worked.
Surveys
Measure what matters with employee surveys. Elevate employee voice, encourage collaboration, & boost engagement in real-time, with automated & recurring pulse surveys – customizable & easy to launch!
Learn
An intuitive learning management system for skill-based, value-based, and personalized learning on your employee self-service platform. Create and set up courses based on your organization’s learning needs.
Employees can pick up course materials and complete courses at their convenience. Also get insights into your training programs with our wide array of reports that gives you insight into your employee learning trends, top-rated courses, highly rated trainers, top-performing employees, and more.
ChatHum
Communicate, collaborate and break down internal organizational silos with peopleHum’s internal communication tool and boost workplace engagement and transparency.
SignMe
Efficiency looks like a digital document signing platform that’s fast, organized, and painless for everyone involved.
Do we look like software that has met your employees self-service needs and could answer your question of how to save your HR team’s time? Then book a free demo with our specialists to get further assistance.
