Keeping Your Employees in the Loop With Employee Self Services
How Employee Self Services Keep Your Team Happy and Informed
Employee self-services plans allow workers to check their pay and benefits without having to go through someone in management or human resources. In certain cases, these programs allow employees to make changes to their tax reporting and savings plans, request to use vacation hours or conveniently handle other tasks from their cell phone or computer. Design a customized employee self-service plan to get the most from your man hours and keep your workers well-informed.
Provide Employees with a Guidebook
The best services available won’t help anyone unless they know how to use them. Create a simple training guide to walk your workers through their new self service programs. Explain how they can access services, what tasks they can complete and give them a chance to provide feedback. Also specify things you don’t want to have happen, such as employees accessing these services while they’re on the clock.
You may even reserve an hour or two when the new system is unveiled for employees to get used to it. Once your team is familiar with their new tools, they’ll happily use them. Once using them, you will find your human resource staff has less busy work and all of your workers wind up more engaged on the job.
Tailor Communication Methods to Your Staff
According to the Gartner research firm, communication is one of the top issues surrounding ESS today. Unless every member of your staff has been outfitted with the same brand of smart phone to use with your new self-service options, you’re going to have a wide range of user experiences to consider. Is your system easy to navigate over computer, tablet and popular cell phone models? Can texting features or email be integrated into your system? It’s essential for your employees to easily access these systems in order for their benefits to be fully realized.
Consider Social Integration
HR departments are getting surprisingly more social, with LinkedIn, Twitter and even Facebook engaging new potential clients and customers every day online. Social integration is becoming very popular especially in recruitment, learning and performance, according to HRlab.com.
HR covers many tasks related to your employee base. It makes sense for potential newcomers to be indoctrinated to your ESS immediately, and social media makes this easy. Pre-qualifying for positions online saves an invaluable amount of time and helps determine if someone is a potential candidate or should be culled from applicants right away. Likewise, there are self-directed aspects of continuing education and job performance your company can integrate with social media developments.
It’s important, however, for our company to thoroughly assess and articulate to your staff the limits of social media use for your business. Encouraging LinkedIn learning sessions and then assuming employees won’t mention them to contacts when doing so would violate company policy is one potential oversight with uncomfortable ramifications. Keeping reminders in place can help avoid these problems.
Employee self-service portals have been popular for over ten years now, and they’re evolving every year to provide more benefits to business owners and staffers alike. You can use barebones applications or highly technical developments capable of tapping into your other business software. The key is finding someone to help show you how to put these tools to best use and then passing those lessons along to your workforce.
Email your employee self-service questions to our knowledgeable and talented sales team at Einstein HR.
