Saving Time and Money With Employee Self Service

Finding ways to combine operations in order to save time and money is a crucial part of every business. Implementing an employee self service system is just one of many ways a business can achieve this. Employee self service is when all employees within the business have access to the human resource database and can handle the changing of data or management of tasks themselves.

Efficiency is something that every business strives for. Any time it’s possible to eliminate a task or combine operations without sacrificing quality, a smart business will take that option. That is where the idea of employee self service comes into play, and it’s why so many businesses have embraced the practice so whole-heartedly.

What is Employee Self Service?

The simple explanation is that Employee Self Service is when all employees have access to the human resources database in order to handle certain tasks themselves. If an employee recently moved or had a name change then he or she could go into the database and alter his or her private information without having to fill out forms or wait for the request to go through human resources staff. Applications for reimbursement, such as when an employee goes on a company trip and has expenses, could also be submitted by the employee in question rather than by human resources staff. The result? More tasks get done more quickly, and the HR staff can concentrate on tasks that are unique to their department.

Better Working Through Technology

At first, employee self service might look like the kind of task that’s actually more burdensome than the original system. After all, how can employees who aren’t involved in human resources understand what they have to do in order to file the right forms and input the right data?

This is where technology and good ideas merge together: in order for employee self service to work, a business needs to have a system in place that will allow all employees to access the database and make changes. This software needs to be simple to understand, easy to use, and it needs to streamline the process instead of complicating it. The Time and Attendance software produced by ELF Productivity Ltd. was built with this in mind, and it’s why companies who have this software installed will find that employee self service is easier to execute than ever before. Not only that, but this software still delivers access control solutions, accountability, and it will make sure that mundane tasks are taken care of quickly and efficiently, leaving your workforce to focus on the real job at hand.

For more information on how ELF Productivity Ltd. Time and Attendance software can help you streamline your company’s efforts through better employee self service simply, contact us today!

Tips to Improve Productivity!

Improving employee productivity is important for many organisations as hard working employees earn the company more money. Finding ways in which to do so however can be a difficult task. Take a look at these four suggestions below on possible ways in which to improve productivity.

A recent article gives some great insight on how you can improve your employee productivity:

  • Track your employees’ workday with more detail. The article gives the example of one 8-hour worker who spends all 8 hours working in R&D, versus a 10-hour employee who spends 3 hours doing administrative tasks, socializing, and taking breaks. You may think the 8-hour employee is more productive, but without more detailed information, you couldn’t know for sure.
    • Elf Productivity LTD offers innovative employee tracking software which allows you to record your employees’ daily activity. Our software automatically creates trending charts so you can see any changes in employee productivity.
  • Analyse your data. The article states that when “…analyzing data across departments, roles and skill sets may highlight issues with the structure of your business or identify areas of improvement such as training requirements.”
    • Our software allows you to annotate each employee’s file with detailed role and functions. It’s not just a blank box where you place their rudimentary job title – it allows you to specify what the employee’s actual function is. For analysis purposes, if an employee leaves your company, you’ll understand which overall functions your company will be lacking. The software also gives you the ability to visualise your employees’ functions and skills via visual graphs, charts, and trends, so you can determine if you have an excess or lack of a certain function or skill.

Best of all, our software allows your employees to utilise it from anywhere – even outside your company’s physical building. Thus they can check-in from anywhere in the world which gives them the versatility of working globally without restriction. If you’d like more information concerning our human resource software, contact us today!

Internal Skill Matching can save Hiring Costs (and Risks)

In the unfortunate event of having to let an employee go from within your business where do you look when it comes to hiring a new one. Do you choose to contact a recruitment company or do you prefer to promote from within your existing employee base. According to a study done by Wharton school of the University of Pennsylvania, hiring from within can provide added benefits to your organisation.

When you next need to fill an open position in your company, will you focus on outside candidates, or look for an existing employee to promote? A study from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania uncovers some unexpected benefits of “hiring” from within.

Comparing External and Internal Job Candidates

The study found that people promoted from inside the company show a significantly higher level of short-term productivity and success than external candidates. It can take up to two years for an external hire to come up to the level of an internal promotion, measured by comparing employee reviews. But external hires are given starting salaries averaging 18% more than internal promotions, and are far more likely to leave within two years, meaning they never reach a true level of proficiency in their job before they’re gone. Given the cost in both time and money of identifying and interviewing external candidates, this picture makes hiring from outside look like a very risky undertaking.

Getting Behind the Data

There are good reasons for this picture of internal vs. external candidate success. Part of learning a new job is learning about the people and culture of an organisation, and this can be a much bigger task than simply getting to grips with basic job responsibilities. Someone who is promoted from inside has a huge head start in this area over someone who is brand new to the company.

On the other hand, there are good reasons for hiring external candidates in some cases. Bringing in someone new may be necessary to bridge a gap in experience or education, and it can also bring fresh new ideas which will help the company thrive. The data also shows that when external candidates remain on the job for longer than two years, they tend to be promoted faster and show high levels of success.

So there are strong arguments to be made on either side. Choosing the right option when there’s an open position can help a company save time and costs while getting the best people to move the organisation forward.

The Benefits of Skill Matching

This is where great HR software can help. Ceequel®’s Human Resource management module includes a skill matching function which can assist you in both analysing upcoming staffing needs and identifying existing employees who have the right skills and experience to move up into an open position.

Providing opportunities for employees to develop their skills and take on new challenges is key to employee satisfaction and retention. It can also help HR departments remove some of the burden of the hiring process, enabling HR staff to focus on filling positions which truly do need a new face and voice from outside the company.

For more information about Ceequel®’s Human Resource benefits, including skill matching, please contact us!

Avoid Productivity “Speed Bumps” with Employee Self Service Software

When it comes to increasing employee productivity there are a number of things to consider. Do you increase your employees working hours or perhaps even provide them with more tasks, or do you simply motivate them to use their working hours in a better way. Removing distractions from human resources is one of the simplest ways in which you can improve your employees productivity levels.

What factors are involved in increasing productivity? The number of hours an employee works is a factor, but the way those hours are used is a bigger one. Distractions from getting the job done cause productivity speed bumps, and sometimes those distractions come in the form of completely ordinary, completely necessary, administrative tasks.

Common Speed Bumps

Many ordinary employee requests or needs require a brief conversation with a manager or HR person. If the employee can connect with the right person quickly, there is minimal impact to the workday. But sometimes a busy manager is hard to connect with. Many workers have had the experience of checking in at someone’s office several times during the day before they finally make that connection; constantly trying and failing to find someone creates a productivity speed bump.

Email is a more efficient way to handle some issues, but it doesn’t solve all problems. A misunderstanding in email can take several back-and-forth messages to sort out, worse, the volume of email some workers receive makes it too easy for an email to slip through the cracks.

Speed Bumps Send Productivity Off Track

Small speed bumps can turn into big problems. Imagine an employee needs to update their employment record because they have a new mobile phone number, they give the number to their supervisor or an HR person, but the note or email goes astray. The employee doesn’t think to check back with their supervisor to make sure their record is updated. A few weeks later, there’s an urgent need for someone to fill in a shift. The supervisor tries to contact the employee, but is unable to reach them because of their outdated employment record, all of a sudden, a minor oversight in record-keeping has become a big problem: not only is the company short-staffed for that shift, but the supervisor must spend more time trying to find someone to fill in. Future shifts may also be affected because of a backlog of work. The supervisor may need to postpone important tasks in order to handle the staffing issue.

Smooth the Way With Employee Self Service Software

HR software with an Employee Self Service component can eliminate many speed bumps. Requests for holidays or time off can be submitted via the system without needing to personally contact a manager. There is no chance of email or other messages being lost or misfiled. When an employee needs to update a piece of personal information, they are able to do it directly and immediately, which means employee data is always kept up to date.

Preventing speed bumps makes a big difference to productivity in the long term. Contact us today for more information about how our software can remove speed bumps for your business.

The Importance of Human Resource Management

Having information of each of your employees most important tasks as well as their overall job role is key for when your company has to recruit a new starter because a previous employee has left. Keeping track of all of this information however can be a difficult task. Ceequel human resource software allows you to organise your employees into groups and input information about their titles roles and skills.

Why is excellent Human Resource management vital to your company?

In large, or small, companies, often the concentration is on the products or main services which generate the majority of the revenue; human resource management is commonly overlooked as a crucial key for overall success.

Tracking your employees’ titles and roles is necessary so that you can determine which exact functions are diminished from your company when an employee leaves.

With Ceequel Human Resource software, you can organize your employees into groups and then input titles, roles, skills, and much more for each specific employee. By using Ceequel’s software, you can keenly keep track of who your employees are and the exact functions they perform for your company. This way if an employee leaves, you will be able to act fast in minimising any delay this might cause your company by using the software to quickly determine which employee(s) are capable of filling in for the missing function(s).

You can also minimise costs by using Ceequel’s Human Resource software to record all employee salaries in intricate detail (raise, bonus, etc.). In doing so, you can look for trends in your employees’ performance, resulting in you being able to fine-tailor wages and bonuses such that you can improve the overall competitive attitude and performance of your employees. Ceequel’s Human Resource software allows for such detailed record keeping and advanced management parameters that you can record and view the trends of benefits utilisation, using this, you can see if your employees are being productive as a whole, and which benefits are going unused or overused. You can then implement measures to counteract any negatives that you see trending.

The Ceequel Human Resource software also has future trend analysis features which allow you to make predictions about future overall employee performance and costs.

Contact us today to minimise your costs and improve your company’s performance and profits!

Increase your Efficiency with Human Resource Software

Keeping track of employees as your organisation grows can become an impossible task. As the business sector grows, so does the variety of jobs available within your company and as new ones are added and old ones removed, your human resource department becomes overworked. An overworked human resource department leaves your business open to liability issues.

Have You Outgrown Your HR System?

As your business grows, keeping track of all the employees within your organisation becomes a complicated task: new jobs are added and obsolete positions are removed, your employee ranks swell, and your human resource department ends up overworked and stressed because they don’t have the right tools to handle the growing needs of your business.

Leaving your human resource department to limp along with inadequate tools can cost your business big and leave you open to liability issues. If your human resource department is struggling to keep up with recent growth, then it is time to invest in the tools they need to keep your business running smoothly.

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Help Put Employee Self Service To Operation With 3 Easy Steps

Employee self service is a cutting edge system that allows your employees faster access to any payroll information they may need as well as providing them with the ability to change their tax withholdings, personal details and bank information all without the need to contact HR.

If you are reading this then you may already have an idea of what employee self service (ESS) does, but if you are lost, we will give a quick explanation of what employee self service can do. When your employees use ESS they can have faster access to any payroll information they may need, including previous cheque stubs and tax statements. Additionally, employee self service allows employees to change their tax withholdings, mailing address, or direct deposit information without needing to contact Human Resources Department. Employees also have access to their personal information, schedules, documents, and company messages. That is a basic overview of what ESS can do for your employees. Once you have decided that employee self service sounds like a fit for your company and you want to implement this new technology, here are a few steps that will make ESS easier to use.

Common Goals

Are all the various departments in your business working towards the same goal? The goal should be to improve your employees’ happiness, increase production and increase profits. Employee self service software will free up your finance department and human resources department to focus on other aspects of operation, not need to search for every little piece of information an employee may need, or to always be changing personal information. Additionally, ESS opens up straightforward lines of communication for all your employees to work together, send invoices and set up meetings.

Daily Activities

Employees are more likely to use ESS on a regular basis if they have full access to all the capabilities it offers. You can set it up so that employees can easily clock in and out from work, view their schedule, and apply for paid time off; all of these actions can be done from anywhere. You can set up a shared schedule so that employees can easily have others cover for them in case of emergency, or appointments, so that you never need to worry about if you have a certain position covered. Employee self service can also allow access to all handbooks, documents, and OSHA policies, leading to a safer and more experienced workplace. Moreover, with ESS, messages can be sent to all employees and departments at the same time.

Train Employees

As fast as technology changes, there are still people out there that do not understand how to work new programs right away. Take the time to train all your employees how to use ESS to their advantage. Your software company should offer some type of hands on training and educational tools to increase everyone’s understanding of all the features offered by employee self service.

Taking these simple steps and doing the research beforehand to make sure your software is user friendly will make it easier for all your employees to adapt to the new programs and make full use of all the benefits it offers. Contact us to find out more about employee self service and other tips and tricks of putting it into operation.

FAQs About Human Resource Software

When it comes to implementing a human resource system there are often many issues that need to be considered. At ELF Productivity we have over 30 years experience within the industry and we’ve heard most, if not all of them. Listed below are just a few of the questions and answers we’ve heard.

Just like other business decisions you make, there are many issues to consider when you evaluate Human Resource Software and other employee related software.

At ELF Productivity Limited we have seen many software companies come and go over the years. We are pleased to present some of the Questions and Answers we have heard in our over 30 years in the industry.

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Human Resource Software Can Save Your Company Time and Money

Whether you have a current computerised HR system or still do it the old fashion way, if your system isn’t working correctly then your loosing money. Having a fully functioning computerized human resource system at your disposal has many benefits.

You may have a current computerized Human Resource system in place, that just isn’t working for your company, or you still may be doing it the old fashioned way but are looking for a simpler way. There are many benefits, to having a good computerized Human Resources system at your disposal.

A software program can help you in all areas of your business. For example you can easily create reports and presentations,and this can be done without days of preparation. Searching for staff is made easier, as a good HR program may have the ability to search through hundreds of resumes, and match the specific criteria you have set for certain positions. Areas such as employee leave and benefits can also be viewed and processed proficiently.

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Keeping Employee Training Current with Human Resource Management Software

Employee training and development is an important aspect of any successful business as the roles within each industry sector are forever changing. Organising and managing employee training and development often falls upon the shoulders of human resources who are not always able to keep track of who’s completed what as they are backlogged with more pressing tasks. Implementing a human resource management system can help manage your employees training by alerting human resources to training days employees may need and by notifying them when there are training sessions coming up.

Continuous employee training and development is one of the important aspects of a successful enterprise. Often the responsibility of determining staff training and developmental needs falls on the shoulders of individuals within the Human Resource Department. Unfortunately, keeping track of employee training and development can fall to the wayside due to the HR’s department’s need to keep up with other important daily business operation processes.

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