When your grandfather looked for a job, he probably knocked on the door of the “Personnel Department” of whatever company he thought was hiring. In those days, employees were known as personnel, so that’s what the department was called. Things have changed, as you may have noticed.
For one thing, it’s rare for a job applicant to visit a prospective employer in person and knock on the door. And now, the department is called “Human Resources” (HR). This change in nomenclature is not simply a stylistic shift from the old days. It represents the new ways that businesses view their employees today.
Employees are a resource for the business. Talent is an asset, acknowledged to play a big role in the ability of a company to function and have value as a going concern. This resource must be managed, hence the HR department. The human asset also presents liabilities, as we all have likely seen. There can be all kinds of disputes and difficulties with employees, including legal risk exposure, insurance claims and regulatory issues that bring government agencies to bear on the HR department.
Managing the human resource asset without letting the liabilities negatively affect the business takes software. Some HR work is still paper-based, but it’s becoming increasingly paperless and automated.
HRM software offers many benefits. At a high level, software helps tie together the many different strands of work and documentation that comprise HR. Software solutions keep unified records for an employee’s job application process, onboarding, benefits, training, discipline issues, termination and so forth. Handling all of this manually is laborious and error-prone. Here are five notable advantages we’ve seen in our work with companies that adopt HRM software:
1. HR document management
Effective HRM requires fast, accurate access to paperwork. HRM software provides digital employee files, ensuring the right information is always at hand and easy to update. HR staffers can instantly retrieve contracts, conversation reports or personnel details. This capability makes it harder to lose important HR documents, while also enabling notifications of deadlines.
2. Digital process workflows
HR entails numerous separate process workflows. HRM software helps digitize these workflows so HR staffers can accomplish tasks more quickly and completely. The workflows can also be set up to interact with other company departments and systems.
3. Employee self-service and collaboration
HRM software lets the HR department assign some of the work back to the individual employee. This can save a lot of time compared to in-person interviews or rekeying data from paper forms and so forth. Acumatica HRM software provides employee self-service on a wide variety of mobile devices so people can interact with the HR system from pretty much anywhere at any time.
4. Integration with external platforms
HR departments frequently have to interact with systems at third party entities. These include insurance companies, benefits managers, training firms and government agencies. An HRM software solution that can provide seamless integration with these outside systems is beneficial for efficiency and accuracy in HR.
5. Streamlined reporting for compliance
Employers may have to file reports with the government, e.g. reporting compliance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). HRM software like Acumatica provides ready-to-go standard reports for ACA and many others. Having reports prepared with HRM software is far faster and more efficient than creating them manually.
Get Organized With HRM Software and The Donas Group
HR is a challenging area of corporate operations. It’s document-intensive, highly detailed and potentially sensitive. The costs of making a mistake, such as losing a document, can be surprisingly high. HRM software offers a solution, automating many key processes and managing important documents. We have worked with many companies on the implementation of HRM software. To learn how we can help your HR department become more efficient and better able to serve the overall business with software, let’s talk.