Small business owners often struggle with a major employee management challenge — unreliable and inefficient records.
There’s a notebook for recording attendance. Attendance records are gathered through informal conversations. Performance reviews are either ad-hoc or non-existent. Countless spreadsheets filled with data are driving you crazy.
So many challenges.
Whether you have a team of five or 100, a Human Resource Information System (sometimes called an HRIS or an HR Management Information System) is a more efficient and reliable way to manage all aspects of the employee journey in one place.
In this article, we’re discussing five of the greatest benefits of an HRIS with examples from the Caribbean’s first HR management tool — the HR Helper.
5 Benefits of an HR Management Information System
Efficient employee management increases business success. Here are five ways that an HRIS supports efficient employee management.
1. Create an Effective Employee Performance Tracking System
Employees want regular feedback on their performance. Your team wants regular feedback that will help them identify their strengths and weaknesses so that they can effectively contribute to the company’s growth.
Regular feedback also improves employee engagement. A Gallup study shows that 80% of employees who have received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged.
This meaningful feedback should include recognition or appreciation for recent work, forming connections between team members, providing clarity on goals and expectations, and highlighting the things employees do well.
An HR Management Information System helps you keep track of how well your team is meeting company goals. It helps you objectively measure their progress on key performance indicators (KPIs) and the impact of each team member’s work on the overall objectives.
The image below shows an example of the employee performance tracking dashboard in the HR Helper tool.
An interesting feature of the goal-tracking section of this dashboard is how it’s linked to other areas of employee management. You can link goals to specific projects, tasks, awards, and training as shown in the image below.
Making these connections allows you to keep track of project progress, reward employees for work well done, and offer training that will help employees achieve the desired outcome. The beauty of it is that you can keep track of everything in one place.
2. Access the Benefits of a Structured Payroll System
Payroll is a time of the month that business owners approach with either relief or dread. You’re relieved that you have enough money in the bank to meet payroll but you dread using spreadsheets to calculate each employee’s pay and produce accurate pay slips. This manual payroll process consumes a lot of your team’s time.
HR Management Information Systems are programmed to do the heavy lifting of payroll calculations for you. They also help you automatically produce pay slips. You’ll experience less pressure and regain valuable time.
Below is an example of the payroll dashboard in the HR Helper tool.
3. Track and Monitor Employee Training
Ongoing employee training helps businesses thrive. Employees will see that you care about their growth and development. They’ll also become more productive and better equipped to make your business thrive.
Two tools will help you effectively track and monitor employee training — a learning management system (LMS) and an HRIS. A learning management system helps you plan, monitor, and evaluate the learning progress of your staff. An HRIS helps you connect learning outcomes with important employee metrics such as engagement and performance.
LMS reports provide valuable insights into the impact of your employee training program. Some important information that you can extract from LMS reports includes time spent on online courses, attendance at in-person workshops, course completion rates, and test results.
Here’s an example of a test report from One on One’s LMS. This report allows you to check on each employee’s progress by clicking the icon shown in the image below.
The HR Helper tool has an employee training dashboard. You can use this dashboard to plan your training calendar for the year, identify the critical skills you’d like to target, and track in-person training sessions. An example of the dashboard is shown in the image below.
4. Keep Tabs on Attendance and Vacation Leave
Tired of using that tattered notebook to record when employees check in and check out? An HRIS helps you electronically record attendance and keep track of vacation leave and overtime requests.
You can also easily create attendance reports within minutes. No more combing through pages of data to get the answers you need!
Below is an example of what the attendance dashboard looks like in the HR Helper tool. With the HR Helper tool, you can easily keep track of when employees clock in and clock out, who arrives late or leaves early, overtime requests, and much more.
5. Create an Effective Onboarding Process for Your New Hires
Employee onboarding is crucial for helping new hires succeed. An ineffective onboarding process (where new hires are left to figure things out on their own) leads to frustrated employees and an increase in time to productivity.
An HR Management Information System makes it easy for you to store and assign relevant onboarding documents, as well as provide instant access to the onboarding training new hires will need to excel. Combine your HRIS with your LMS and you’ll create the online environment for onboarding that your team will love.
The HR Helper tool allows you to store all your electronically signed contracts and onboarding documents in a central space. You can assign these files to your new hires for access at their convenience.
Use an HRIS for Business Efficiency
An HRIS will improve your employee management processes. You’ll move away from notebooks and spreadsheets and become more efficient. You and your team will have more time to focus on the things that drive business growth.
The HR Helper HRIS is a good option to consider for your small business. Combine the HR Helper with One on One’s user-friendly learning management system and you’ll create an online ecosystem where employees thrive.
Visit the HR Helper website to learn more. Interested in a learning management system for your employee training needs? Book a demo with the One on One team.
