Human resources (HR) is responsible for managing the entire employee lifecycle – recruitment, onboarding, payroll, benefits administration, employee relations and so on. But how does HR really spend their time?
According to an infographic published by totaljobs, the largest proportion of HR’s time (around 21.8%) is spent meeting with senior staff and business partners. Administrative and operational matters constitute a total of 17% of HR time and recruitment and employee relations make up the bulk of HR’s time. This leaves a small fraction of time (around 12.5%) for HR to focus on strategic matters.
While there are many day-to-day tasks that HR focuses on, there are many expectations and pressures that the modern HR team faces today. This demands innovative methods and information technology to manage the administrative and mundane aspects of HR in order for them to focus on designing HR strategies to adapt to the increasingly complex and mobile talent pool today.
With the plethora of HR tools and software available in the market today, each designed to enhance a specific vertical within HR, it is not surprising for the HR department to immediately jump on the bandwagon. There are no doubt plenty of benefits that technology tools can bring about to HR processes – cost savings, automation, increased efficiency, and shorter turnaround time of employees requests. Aside from the operational efficiencies, information technology acts as a bridge to link HR with other business functions such as Finance and Employee Relations. This helps to further boost the overall business management across various business functions.
The most common type of HR technology that organisations invest in is Human Resource Information System (HRIS). Reason being is that the HRIS often acts as the central data repository where key employee and payroll records are stored, feeding key details into other platform modules such as payroll, leave management, and even recruitment. Whether you are a new startup looking to deployed a new HRIS or doing an annual review of your existing HRIS, here are 3 must-have features in your HRIS – also known as the eHR bundle:
eTimesheet
eTimesheet allows employees to key in their daily working hours into the HR system without having to fill in hardcopy timesheets. This is particularly handy for organisations with large headcounts of hourly-paid or temporary personnel. Online attendance tracking via eTimesheets means that employers, supervisors, and HR do not have to worry about losing hardcopy timesheets or inaccurate attendance tracking. Proper timesheet record management also means that HR is able to compute employees’ salaries accurately and ensure timely disbursement.
eLeave
Similar to eTimesheets, online leave applications make it extremely convenient for employees to submit their leave applications anywhere, anytime. This allows HR and supervisors to easily manage and track employees’ leave applications and balances with minimal administration and paperwork. Leave applications submitted by employees will also automatically be routed to their supervisors for approval, ensuring quick turnaround. With the ease of leave applications and oversight on leave applications that HR and supervisors have, this allows managers to effectively plan their resource allocation, particularly for projects or urgent work tasks.
eClaim
Manual claims submissions and reimbursement have traditionally been a messy and administrative affair. Paper receipts or submitted claim forms tend to get lost in the mountain of paperwork, resulting in missing or inaccurate reimbursement to employees. With an online claims platform, employees can easily submit their claims by uploading a photo for approval. Upon approval by either HR, their direct manager or both, the claim submission automatically gets routed into the current payday cycle. This ensures that claims are quickly reimbursed to employees without the long waiting times of approval and payment. Concurrently, most claims platforms also allow employees to classify the type of claims submitted, which helps HR identify claims that are taxable or not.
On top of the streamlined processes and efficiency that a bundled eHR brings about, it also brings about effective management practices. With a standardised, institutionalised and process-based business operation platform, this can be easily integrated into any other enterprise platform, such as employee self-service portal or accounting systems. With this network of platforms to connect key employee information together, it helps to boost the business management needs of HR while driving high employee engagement levels.
Based in Singapore, i-Admin offers world-class, easy-to-use payroll solutions using technology and systems infrastructure that exceed industry standards. Our proprietary technology platform provides a singular web-based service that delivers electronic payslips and other e-Services to our clients. We offer payroll services to companies of all types and industries across 15 countries in Asia.
As a leading regional provider of cloud-based SaaS payroll and HR management solutions, we achieve uncompromised efficiency, security and service quality to our clients’ organisations and employees, further helping our clients’ to save on large financial technological investments.