In a recent survey, conducted by HR.com and Paycom, over 700 HR professionals from companies large and small weighed in on how they use employee self-service software, where they see the benefits it offers and the room for improvement.
Minimize Reliance on Email and Paper
Relying on paper for transmitting sensitive information can make your business vulnerable in the event of fire, theft or water damage. Missing documents, like Form I-9, can result in financial penalties for your business down the line. Submitting completed forms via email can alleviate some of that uncertainty, but there’s always a chance that important emails will get buried if, for example, all of your employees send HR their updated benefits enrollment information at the same time of the year.
One way to minimize your reliance on both email and paper for submitting information is to have employees enter the information in one self-service software platform. In our research, we found that employees will use paper and email forms less often when a self-service option exists.
Benefits enrollment and address changes are tasks that see the greatest reduction in email and paper use when a self-service option is available.
Save Hours Each Week
While the amount of time saved due to employee self-service will vary based on the size of your business and how robust your self-service software is, we have found that self-service software saves HR departments significant time each week.
Naturally, larger companies stand to save more hours by implementing employee self-service software than smaller companies do. Our research shows that companies with 100-250 employees reported saving about five hours per week on average, while larger organizations saved at least seven hours per week. Nearly half of the large companies we surveyed (5,000 or more employees) saved 10 or more hours each week because of self-service technology!
As reported by HR professionals, the areas with the greatest time-saving potential are accessing payroll information, managing and enrolling in benefits, tracking time, updating contact information and requesting time off.
Reduce Duplication of Work
In addition to the increased potential of loss, forms that are submitted via paper and email may be subject to duplication of entries and errors from copying from one format to another.
HR departments in companies with robust employee self-service systems can save time by not having to enter or transfer forms, thereby minimizing duplicated work and wasted time. They also can minimize errors because they are not having to rekey sensitive data; in fact, over 80% of the HR professionals we surveyed believed that having employees enter their own information into self-service software improved employee accountability for that information, which may reduce compliance risk.