How Employee Self-Service Portal Can Benefit The Organisation

As a HR professional, you are likely to be familiar with the feeling of being inundated with HR-related queries from your employees.

In fact, according to the HR Software Survey Data conducted by BambooHR, they found that 71% of HR professionals within the surveyed organisations found that they spend most of their time on employee management. This includes answering questions, resolving issues, recognition and discipline. However, the same group of HR professionals feel that they should be spending more time on professional development, conducting training, and managing and overseeing company culture.

What can HR do about this?

The solution is to empower and equip employees with the right tools to solve problems or get answers themselves, without having to ask you! Software tools such as Employee Self-Service (ESS) provide employees with access to HR-related information such as their leave entitlement or benefits information. Some software even allow employees to update their personal details, such as home address or phone number.

Here are some reasons why leveraging an Employee Self-Service (ESS) software or portal can benefit HR and the overall organisation:

Enhanced communication between employees and employersr
An ESS portal allows organisations to easily disseminate information on any changes to HR policies or key announcements to employees. While email blasts tend to be a commonly-used and convenient tool, not every employee may check their inbox regularly for these updates. Given that employees may check back to the ESS portal regularly on their internal HR entitlements, posting relevant announcements or updates on the ESS portal is a great way to reach out to employees.

Incorporating an ESS portal as part of the new hire onboarding programme is also a good way for HR to connect with the new hires. Company policies, employee handbooks, or any other orientation details can be shared on the HR portal, allowing new hires to access their documents during their first week with the organisation. At the same time, an ESS can facilitate the onboarding process, such as allowing new hires to sign and upload their paperwork prior to their join date. Leveraging an ESS portal can significantly enhance internal communication between employees and employers, as well as increase visibility in terms of internal communication.

Increased data security

Keeping physical employee personnel files (P-files) is a fairly common process within the HR department. However, physical copies of employees’ personal details may not be the best method of record-keeping. It is administrative and insecure, and anyone can easily take a file and browse through employees’ personal and confidential details.

ESS can be integrated together with the organisatio
HR Management System (HRMS) to store confidential employees’ data and payroll information securely. This helps to reduce the risk of fraudulent activities and unauthorised update of critical information. Most ESS companies come with built-in data security software or multi-factor authentication (MFA), which helps to add that additional layer of data security. Given that cybercrimes such as identity theft data breaches are becoming increasingly prevalent, ESS helps to ensure that critical employee data and information are stored safely and securely.

Drives internal efficiencies

The key benefit of implementing an ESS is to have a single platform that holds almost all the answers to employees’ HR-related queries. There is no need for employees to shoot across multiple emails to HR on questions relating to their leave entitlement, compensation packages, benefits entitlement and so on. Instead, an ESS allows employees to view their compensation and benefits entitlement and more!

In some cases, ESS software can be integrated with HR’s leave management system or even payroll. This means that any leave applications or claims can be fed into the payroll processing software or leave management platform, facilitating ease of leave approval while ensuring that accurate data or deductions are being captured in the payroll system.

Maximises cost savings

Finally, cost savings are a major benefit of implementing ESS. As employees are able to view their payroll-related matters or HR details on the platform, this eliminates the need for HR to print out physical copies of payslips or spend time addressing employees’ HR-related queries. Not only does this help to minimise the amount of paperwork, it also reduces manpower costs as there is no need to have a large team to address employees’ individual HR requests.

As workplaces and HR are gradually embracing technology to streamline and enhance internal processes, there is a need to ensure that employees are well-trained to utilise the new software. This is particularly so when using an ESS system. Key considerations such as use-centricity, functionality and software costs should be taken into account when investing in an ESS. After all, the main goal is to drive operational efficiencies and reduce costs while ensuring that employees themselves benefit from the new software.