The case for intuitive self-service HR tech
HR self-service for all members of the workforce – often referred to as employee self-service (ESS) – allows employees to securely access their own documents and details directly without recourse to their HR administration team. ESS lets employees take responsibility and more ownership of their data, development and job-related tasks. Self-service saves you both time and money.
This year HR teams have understandably had to deal with an overload in the number of questions and queries from employees. The hire to retire employee life cycle process and activities generates a lot of repetitive and standard queries and questions in normal times. However, 2020 has been exceptional, creating additional burden. This is why HR leaders more than ever, want to deploy a wider set of employee self-service functions with better adoption by front line staff. The case for intuitive self-service HR has never been more important as remote working becomes the norm – which is why it’s on the HR Christmas Wish List.
HR leaders have been implementing employee self-service initiatives for years, making use of internal platforms, intranet and tools to improve information transfer to and from employees, reduce labour costs and move the burden of routine and repetitive transactions away from managers and HR administrators to employees. Too often HR spend their time on mundane admin rather than focusing on the strategic needs for the organisation.
Many of these self-service initiatives have not been intuitive, or kept up with modern trends. This has meant that for many organisations, although they have seen some reduction in queries and support calls, they have not realized the expected ongoing value and time savings. Our conversations with HR leaders and their teams indicate the demand for smarter, intuitive self-service HR is increasing. Tech is now available at your fingertips, and the days of calling or emailing HR to answer routine questions are numbered.
The people side of HR working in harmony with HR tech
HR self-service does not need to feel impersonal, but it does need to be intuitive. Organisations have turned to self-service technologies like digital assistants, chatbots and smarter, searchable databases. Human interaction of course still plays an essential role in HR, but the real value comes with balancing intuitive self-service for high volume transactional tasks (such as holiday bookings or annual review), balanced with access to human knowledge and expertise for high value or advisory tasks.
There are wide-ranging processes that really benefit from a self-service approach such as:
- Sickness, absence, holidays and other time off
- Payslips
- Work rota and scheduling
- Availability for work
- Payroll processes (e.g. bank and personal details maintenance)
- Recruitment processes
- On-boarding
- Self-drive training
- Benefits enrolment
- Health and safety
Self-service tools applied in the right scenarios will pay dividends for HR functions, providing they are intuitive for the user. They will deliver cost savings and return time to central functions, whilst staff will be empowered and happier that they have access and control of their data.
Key benefits for intuitive self-service HR
There is a lot of research regarding the vital role of employee experience in driving a company’s success. Employee self-service aids that goal, delivering benefits for leaders, managers and staff. Consolidating all aspects of your employee life-cycle into one intuitive self-service interface, delivers efficiencies and productivity along with staff satisfaction.
A wide range of HR processes and operations previously performed through paper or silo-ed activities and workarounds can be handled through a single gateway. Some of the key features and benefits of self-service include:
- Streamlined and consistent communication
- Employee engagement and satisfaction
- Time savings across all processes
- Data accuracy – removal of repeat and duplicate keying
- Compliance (e.g. GDPR)
- Faster recruitment
- Cost reduction
- Process consistency and agreements – via alerts and notifications
With intuitive self-service, everyone’s happy
Intuitive HR self-service enables your people to take more control, balancing instant access at a time and place that suits the employee, whilst having your HR department on hand to deal with exceptions, challenges and the bigger picture. There are significant cost savings across the organisation. There are time savings for staff in accessing what they want along with smarter help and support to help them find what they need. Onboarding is faster and more efficient, reducing time to achieve staff that are fully contributing in their new roles. There is peace of mind that data is securely maintained in electronic rather than paper files – with appropriate data governance and compliance with GDPR. Improved data collection, management and accuracy also delivers significant improvements in insights, and next best actions.
The correct balance of HR self-service tech and human expertise in Human Resources improves productivity, reduces hours spent on data input, admin and support, and enables HR to correctly focus their efforts where they are needed.
If you’d like to find out more and understand how intuitive HR self-service can make a difference at your company, talk to our elves: santa@elementsuite.com
