Employee self-service (ESS) has been instrumental in transforming the HR function from paper-pushing, time-consuming administration to a performance driven role. But just how big or small do you need to be to justify implementing a system and what are the benefits? Â
Today, firms across the world are fast becoming part of a global ecosystem. A space where brands are vying with each other to hold customer loyalty, deliver the best in products and services, all while reimagining the traditional ‘office’ as a workspace fit for tomorrow’s talent. It’s not an easy ask.
Critical resources, like time, technology, and human skillsets can give you that all-important edge.
Employee self-service (ESS) simplifies some of the most basic – and time-consuming – HR tasks, key to any business. Whether a large-scale enterprise or a garage start-up, maintaining accurate and up-to-date employee records is essential. And with continuous upscaling, the process can take up a big chunk of an SMB executive’s time.
Traditional HR process that could be replaced by ESS portals are:
- Logged in hours and backlog views
- Employee records update
- Benefits/compensation plans enrollment
- Insurance/retirement account balance views
- Leave and paid-time-off requests
Interestingly, a reportOpens a new window found that nearly 60% employers already offer the first two activities as part of an employee self-service program, accessible online.
ESS helps iron out several operational bottlenecks your HR teams would face every day. Suppose one of your employees wants to change her emergency contact information. In a large company, this could take anywhere between a day and a week – in the meantime, you take a major risk in terms of employee welfare.
With an ‘anytime, anywhere’ ESS system, on the other hand, the change is registered in real-time with zero intervention from you or your HR team.
3 reasons why you can’t afford not use ESS
First, ESS is the most efficient medium for disseminating HR information and policies – and the numbers agree.
What are the first few questions that a new employee asks, right after signing the offer letter? And more importantly, do they change from person to person?
Chances are, your HR team is answering this same set of queries, every working day of every week. That’s why a staggering 94% firmsOpens a new window with a 5000+ workforce believe ESS is key to workplace efficiency. With ESS, data on payroll, vacation policies, appraisal norms, and more, is just a click away.
This saves your HR teams precious time, that can now be redirected to more complex, high-value tasks.
Second, ESS automates granular tasks, letting you shed old-school dependencies.
Imagine, on the second of this month, a junior sales executive inquired why he wasn’t compensated for a paid leave. By now, it’s turned into a 16-mail long trail, involving a manager, two HR divisions, and a senior branch lead.
Not only are e-mail and paper-based processes cumbersome, they can prove severely limiting when it comes to records management and compliance. ESS is a centralized, ‘one-stop-shop’ for all things HR. Employees can view their pay slips, access older records, and print hard-copies directly from the portals as needed.
However, there’s still plenty of room to grow in this direction. 43% firmsOpens a new window with some form of ESS still use paper or mail for onboarding forms – a gap that new technologies must address.
Which brings us to regulatory compliance, and accountability.
Employees feel significantly more responsible for data accuracy and possible impacts, when they share control over what goes in the database. In fact, about 50% HR professionals agreeOpens a new window that letting your workforce take the steering wheel significantly reduces errors, containing risks.
Also, chances are you’re collaborating with a specialized ESS software vendor to put a self-service framework in place.
In-house management via legacy tools puts the onus on you to constantly update your systems with the most recent tax and payroll laws. ESS software, on the other, hand, makes sure the relevant standards are hardwired into the system, and are continually upgraded.
Who takes ownership – and who gains?
Clearly, ESS portals cover a gamut of tasks, not constrained to one aspect pf HR. However, the teams usually associated with the interface are recruitment, employee onboarding, and employee engagement.
And it’s easy to understand why. For your employees, these teams are effectively the ‘face’ of the organization, taking them through a range of professional milestones – from the interview, to the first day, appraisals, and in-house programs designed to foster oneness. That’s why it’s important experts in these teams know the system inside-out, guiding new employees (and old) through the process.
Done right, your ESS solution-of-choice is sure to have a visible footprint, across the board. Recruits can get information regarding probationary periods, without involving the hiring team. Your payroll team doesn’t have to dole out enveloped pay slips every month. The usual red tape when claiming benefits is markedly reduced.
The result is an organization that spends less time on processes, and more on innovation.
Inside the framework – implementation, rights, and access
With the modern tech arena continually exploding with new ideas and game-changing tools, there are several strategies you could adopt.
‘Build or Buy?’ is a major question for any firm looking to go digital, and it’s no different for ESS. Larger enterprises typically choose to ‘Build’, often working with third-party vendors, creating an interface that’s perfectly aligned to in-house policies, culture, and future goals. Small and medium businesses, on the other hand, prefer to ‘Buy’, gaining the advantages of a turnkey solution, coupled with scalability and cost-optimization.
Today, ESS providers aim at bringing the best of both worlds, with ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions that can be customized to meet in-house needs. You could even phase out the right to access, covering basics such as payroll and attendance from day one, gradually moving to leaves, insurance, and retirement. In fact, HR teams could continue to allow access to historical data for a designated time after your employee has left the company, for ease-of-use.
Executed smartly, ESS could intersect high employee satisfaction rates, with increased HR efficiency.
Further, many of these solutions are designed for the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) generation, hosted on the Cloud. Employees can now log in from smartphones, tablets, and an array of other devices using just a browser, no matter where they are.
3 Pitfalls to avoid in your ESS plan
Address change management. Employees transitioning to ESS applications might think HR personnel is no longer available to attend to their queries. When migrating from legacy structures, it’s necessary to extend the same level of employee-organization connectivity, as experienced before.
Adding new functionalities, defining the amount of data displayed, and security risks should be resolved before they become areas of contention.
Don’t ignore training. Even with a delightful UX and market-best features, an ESS portal demands that your employees know how to use it. And beyond its larger organizational utility, they need to know how it benefits them. Hands-on demos, discussions, and one-on-one conversations could help equip, and motivate, employees to maximize the tool.
Establish security requirements. When it comes to data, certain fields (attendance records, for instance) could require approvals before edits are finalized, others might trigger notifications. A workflow should be established to automatically handle these actions, also setting up a failsafe in case approval is denied.
The interface itself must carry measures for vulnerabilities like extended log in, password resets, and so on.
Begin at the beginning – Why ESS is the baseline for a digitally-empowered enterprise
Employee Self Service portals don’t promise the world. They don’t claim to take your organization to the next era in digital transformation, before everyone else.
However, you can’t get there without it.
While the basics of HR information management have remained largely unchanged in the last few decades, ESS implementation marks a massive paradigm shift. The walls of the traditional paper based office or siloed mail-based communication lines, are now broken – creating an environment where employees have quick, easy, and seamless control over data and how it’s applied.
Like smartphones in consumer electronics or e-commerce in the retail world, ESS can potentially become the ‘new normal’ for tomorrow’s HR mavens.