As HR and Payroll software continues to grow in both prevalence and popularity, the phrase employee self-service, commonly referred to as ESS, is becoming more well-known. ESS is a feature that allows employees to manage their own personal information and complete administrative tasks from anywhere, at any time.
Employee self-service increases efficiencies for organizations by decreasing staff involvement in the maintenance of employee information. With ESS, employees no longer need to seek out HR every time they need to make minor changes to their personal records, check leave balances, or request a copy of a pay stub.
The best HR & Payroll software vendors utilize the power of ESS throughout their entire solution. Below we explain exactly how employee self-service can empower employees throughout a unified HR & Payroll system, from on-boarding to off-boarding.
Onboarding
The onboarding process can often be a tiring and frustrating process for everyone involved. Excited new-hires want to get off to a good start and make an impact from the get-go, but instead are stuck at a desk completing piles of paperwork. Software with a comprehensive EES feature allows new-hires to fill out these forms electronically inside the HR and Payroll system. This not only expedites the onboarding process, but it also makes storing and securing these documents much more simple for the employer.
Time & Attendance
ESS makes tracking time and attendance easy for employees and managers. Employees can easily login to their system and clock in, clock out, submit timesheets, and view important time and attendance information, such as hours worked and leave balances, from anywhere at any time.
Employee self-service also gives employees the ability to request time off with a few simple clicks on their computer. Notifications are automatically sent to the appropriate manager for approval. This significantly reduces that chances of requests getting lost in email folders, as they are all completed electronically on a shared internal system throughout the organization.
Benefits
Employee self-service plays a large role in benefits administration by giving employees the power to view benefit elections and declined coverage. If an employee is recently married, has a baby, or experiences other major life changes, they can easily go into the system and make the appropriate changes to their benefits plan as needed. This can all be done on their computer without any assistance from HR.
Training
Employee development is growing in importance within today’s workforce. A study by Gallup reports 87% of millennials say that professional development opportunities are ‘very important’ when applying for jobs. With that said, employee self-service can help drive professional development within any organization. Employees can easily be informed of, and enroll in, training courses and events. This ease-of-use increases engagement with internal training programs and will help develop internal talent.
Payroll
Performing payroll manually is a time-consuming and labor intensive process, requiring a lot of coordination and patience. ESS optimizes the payroll process by transferring more power to the employee. Not only can employees view pay stubs and pay rate information, they can also update their own personal banking information, changing and adding new accounts and income allocations as necessary, without any assistance from HR. ESS also comes in handy during tax season when employees are looking for their W-2s and W-4s. Some vendors, like DATIS HR Cloud, allow past employees to access this information through their portal even after they have left the company. This alleviates the task from the former employer’s HR department, saving time and frustration.
Employee self-service saves organizations time and money while simultaneously empowering employees to perform administrative tasks without the assistance of HR. This expedites internal processes within an organization, reduces the burden on HR, and largely eliminates internal communication errors. Since everything is completed on an internal system that is shared throughout all departments, organization-wide communication and transparency can finally be achieved.
This DATIS Blog was written by James Clark, DATIS, on August 14th, 2017 and may not be re-posted without permission.