Transition From Traditional To Strategic HR Part 2
In the previous article, we looked at transitioning from traditional to strategic HR with the help of quality HR software. I coved a few areas in which HR software can really save time for the HR team, freeing them up for more strategic roles. In this post, we’ll look at a few more areas and features that can help take your HR department to the next level and make your entire company more productive.
So let’s dive right into the area of time off tracking. In traditional HR departments, tracking employee time off can be a time-consuming task. But with Bamboo HR, you can simplify the entire process, from requesting to approving. Once you’ve got the software in place, employees can easily enter requests for time off into the system. In fact, they can even make the request directly from their mobile device via the app. These requests are then sent to the appropriate manager who can access the company calendar to see which other employees may be scheduled for time off on certain dates. They can then approve or deny the request and the employee will be notified through the system. Everything is done quickly and easily! And this of course goes for both sick and vacation days.
Another nice convenience for your employees is the time off calculator that can show them how much time they are set to accrue by a certain date. So for instance, one can easily calculate if they’ll have enough time for a future vacation. They’ll also get a record of time off taken and time remaining.
Last, easy and automatic time-off reports help track things like unplanned absences in a specific department, or employees that are overdue to take a vacation. Then your HR department can take steps to make sure that no employee is overworked or overly absent.
One great thing about HR software is how it can make employee record keeping more efficient, more organized, and more accurate. Imagine a scenario in which an employee gets married and they want to update their marital status. In a traditional HR department, the process might look something like this: the employee calls HR to ask how to update the statue. HR then tells them they need to fill out a request form which they have to pick up. The employee physically walks to the HR department, and then fills out the form which gets past from desk to desk for a week until the appropriate HR team member manually updates the info. Then, of course, comes all the changes to the benefits package which could take ages to finish.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. With BambooHR employees can actually manage some data, like marital status, by themselves. All they have to do is log in to the system, and with a few clicks, it all done. HR doesn’t even have to be involved! Think of all the man-hours saved.
With BambooHR, employee records are organized, accurate and easy to access. Using BambooHR’s system is actually both easier, and more accurate than using simple spreadsheets. With it, you can store all your employee data and have it organized into fields such as: contact info, benefits package details, full time or part time status, electronically signed documents, and paper files that have been uploaded to the system. You can even add custom fields as you need.
Now let’s turn to reporting, which has traditionally been a time-consuming process for HR. But no surprise, good HR software can turn the whole reporting process around, with many reports ready in just mere minutes. BambooHR features many premade reports that should be relevant for just about any company out there. And of course, you can make your own custom reports which can include any custom fields you may have added.
Once reports are ready, easily export them in a wide range of file types. You can also email reports directly from the software, or grant access to specific team members to view reports directly in the software. Reporting is a critical component of strategic HR. BambooHR really helps streamline the process and takes your HR reporting to the next level.
Sometimes we really do save the best for last. In this case, it may be what used to be the worst, but with BambooHR we’re going to turn it around and make it the best. What am I hinting at here? None other than the dreaded performance review.
The thing with performance reviews is, they seem to be mutually hated by all parties involved: by both reviewer and reviewee. They’re uncomfortable for everyone, stressful for employees, and time-consuming for management. Worst of all, they’re not very useful! But what if you could give your company’s performance reviews a radical overhaul? With BambooHR, it’s a breeze.
The first step to this is to make the actual review take place in the software—not in some empty conference room with two people staring each other down across a desk. This way, the employee and reviewing manager are free to complete the review at a time convenient for them. These new types of performance reviews only contain a few questions that get right to the heart of the matter—no small talk, no beating around the bush. And they can be completed in just a few minutes. This means you can actually have more frequent reviews, that are less objective, less of a hassle for all involved, and provide more valuable information. Win-win!
In these two articles, we’ve looked at so many ways in which quality HR software can change your company’s HR department and help it make the change from its traditional role to a more strategic one. From recruiting and hiring, self onboarding, time-off tracking, reporting, record management, and even new and improved performance reviews, it seems that with BambooHR you'll be giving you HR department the fresh start it’s been waiting for.
So why not give it a try? BambooHR offers a free trial, so you have nothing to lose. Get started today—you, and your entire team will be glad that you did.
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