Want to revolutionize your Human Resources function? Improving your technological capabilities may be a solution. Many companies still manage their workforce with a haphazard system of spreadsheets, hand-written documents and paper files, and post-it notes. If you’ve got more than a few dozen employees HR administration can become a nightmare if you rely solely on a paper-based or a single-user system. By relying on these types of systems to keep track of employee data, you end up creating information silos. Security of your data is one thing, but what happens if there’s a fire or a flood and you can’t access your computer or files? Will people still get paid if all your payroll information is stored on-site? Of course, you need to take into consideration the sensitivity and security of your employee information, but if you keep all of it in a filing cabinet or computer, how secure is that? Certainly, storing information on a computer provides more security, but unless you back-up the information daily, there’s a huge risk from viruses, hacking, or even a disk failure.

Human Resources software today affords companies a competitive edge by eliminating the labor-intensive functions of the past. A flexible software program can help you manage employee records, navigate personnel information, track payroll data and benefits, maintain training records and certifications, and many other functions. In addition, select information can be available to managers, employees, and operational departments to make informed decisions. Most HR systems will incorporate disaster recovery features such as being hosted on mirrored servers and keeping database backups at secure separate locations enabling the system to be restored extremely quickly even in the most calamitous disasters, and most contemporary software can be tailored to meet any organization’s unique needs.

Cost Savings.

Aside from the less tangible costs such as efficiency or productivity, a good HR system will save you real money. Human error can result in serious complications both financially and legally. A misplaced decimal point can result in serious issues, but HR software reduces the amount of error to a bare minimum. Automating some or most common HR processes such as recruiting, payroll, TWIC & License renewal, performance reviews can result in huge savings and keep everything working properly.

HR software’s combination of efficiency and effectiveness, is a key reason many companies are now implementing HR software in their workplace. Innovative HR software can integrate numerous administrative tasks including recruiting, payroll, benefits, crewing & attendance, performance management, claims management, and much more. In addition, a good system can serve as a source of analytical data for competent HR professionals to generate reports on a variety of subjects quickly and easily. Collecting this type of data opens opportunities that assist managers in making informed operational decisions. For example, you might discover that a department has a particularly high employee turnover rate. Questions concerning employee turnover like: Did those who left all work for the same Captain? Who is that Captain? Do they need training? Who are your top performers? What are their characteristics? Were they all recruited from the same place? Do they work for the same Port Captain or Port Engineer? Have they all attended a particular training course? If you collect this type of data, you can then analyze it to make informed decisions. The effort required in getting the same insight using a paper-based system simply makes this type of analysis unfeasible.

Efficiencies.

As mentioned above, errors can cost you.  Large, small, and mid-sized companies must all comply with a number of state and federal laws and managing the information of your employees can be tricky.  HR software provides easy methods for managing all aspects of your business including compliance related information.  Put simply, HR software can keep you on the right side of the law. HR software that can handle automatic benefits administration allows your HR workers to not just move on to other issues, but also gives your non-HR employees the ability to manage their own benefits. This feeling that they’re in control can help provide a boost of morale throughout your company and is a vital part of a good HR software system.

By doing so, you free up your HR workers to focus on other issues like attracting new hires and employee training strategies. All the various departments work together, allowing people to make good use of the data you hold. Since HR affects every other department in your business, HR software can help all the various parts of your company work better as well.
Businesses must constantly review information and devise strategies based on their own operations and their competition.  By utilizing HR software in your business you’re giving yourself numerous tools that can be used to improve your competitive advantage. HR software usually includes HR metrics tools that allow you to accurately gauge issues such as turnover rate and hiring costs.

Most HR systems will include an employee directory. While employees tend to work with the same people and, therefore, have their contact information, often times their job requires reaching out to colleagues outside of their immediate department. If all this contact information is stored in a filing cabinet it slows down communication massively.HR systems provide access through mobile devices or dedicated apps that allow a mobile workforce to access information through hand-held devices.

In the event of a legal dispute, how can you prove that an employee was made aware of a policy or trained on how to use a piece of equipment? Email communication is fine but it is not unheard of someone denying seeing an email. Many of today’s HR systems offer a read and accept facility that provides a paper trail not only showing that an employee was sent a particular message but that they also have accepted the contents of the communication.

Security.

With modern HR systems, the information is extremely secure. These systems are equipped with the state-of-the-art software firewalls. Think bank-level security. This is not to say these systems are impervious to hacking, they are extremely well protected, but no system today is fool-proof. That’s why these providers also carry comprehensive insurance coverage for such data breaches.
Another security feature of today’s HR systems is that of disaster recovery. In the event of a fire, flood, or any other catastrophic event, your data and information are protected because the data isn’t located where the event occurred. Today’s systems are regularly backed-up to protect you from such types of events.
You want a system that is robust, which means it does several things, is flexible, but also easy to use. You need to identify what you need and how the solution will advance your organization and build your competitiveness. If you need assistance finding software, we can help. Contact Inland Rivers HR at (270)-709-3135.