Is your business still muddling along with a prehistoric HR system? Do staff book holidays by getting first dibs on their chosen bit of the calendar stuck to the wall? Do you risk pulling a muscle every time you reference someone’s personal files? Amazingly even in these modern, digitally connected, permanently-on times, there are still those who like to keep things nice and complicated when it comes to managing their employees’ affairs.

But it doesn’t need to be like this. Solutions exist for SMEs that will free up hours of time that are wasted every week on trivial HR tasks. And they probably cost a fraction of what you’d expect.

Need convincing? Here are our top seven reasons why you should consider an online solution to ease the strain of your HR department or office manager.

Save and retrieve the information you need … quickly

Paper systems need to be kept perfectly in order and up to date if they are to run at maximum efficiency – and even then any reference to them will still take ten times longer to complete than an online HR solution. By harnessing the web to access your HR – through a browser or mobile device app – you can drill down to the information using simple categories or simple searches – and get all you need in an instant.

Security peace of mind

You may have a filing cabinet and a key, and yes it’s probably a relatively secure (if cumbersome) way of keeping all your employees’ personal details safe. However you might regret this system in the case of a fire, flood or serious criminal action, and although it’ll probably be the least of your worries, you’ll begin to regret it more as time goes by and you realise the importance of a good set of records. And there’s also the chance that a rogue employee could get access to the files and find out personal information that you’ve been entrusted with.
An online HR solution with solid security in place will make sure only authorised people have access to sensitive or critical information.

Let employees take some of the strain

Putting in a request for a holiday usually involves an employee personally contacting a line manager or HR representative, requesting the dates and waiting for a response. But why not let the staff simply book the holidays themselves online? That’s what HR software does.

Once they have a personal login, employees can see how many holidays they have remaining, look at holidays requested and already granted, and book new ones. All it then requires is for a person with relevant authority to say yea or nay – and they’ll be able to make the judgement by quickly making sure the holiday wouldn’t cause staff shortages, miss important training sessions or sales pitches or such like.

Analyse statistics from within the software

An online HR solution stores information about staff absences, timekeeping, disciplinary records, overtime etc. in a database, so it’s possible to create quick, precise reports. These can show up trends and patterns that you can act upon to improve productivity and discipline, and even look for the tell-tale signs of work-related stress.

Store all essential documents

All employers have contracts, certificates, company rules and employer handbooks that need to be accessed by all the relevant employers and partners. Nowadays it’s simple for them to be digitised and stored online so that anyone with permission can get access to them. They can even contain digital signatures that prove a member of staff has read and understood a document, which can help eliminate claims of ignorance and reduce disputes.

Round-the-clock accessibility

Do you have to get into your company building to access an employee’s files or some other essential document? This is often impossible or highly inconvenient – and access could be needed at any time, night or day. Of course with a cloud-based HR solution this isn’t a problem. You can get at any file 24/7 from anywhere with an internet connections (i.e. pretty much anywhere in the civilised world).

Manage absence

When all absences are carefully logged, it’s easy to build up a profile of an employee and see if they have a record that’s worse than average (the results can often be surprising one way or the other). You might notice that they are regularly missing the same days of the week or take more time off during summer or Christmas. This could trigger disciplinary action – or help with a particularly bad case of hay-fever. But without the data to hand you’ll probably be unaware of it even happening.

Inconvenient jobs have a habit of being put on the back burner, and for many busy companies, there are elements of HR that fall into this category. That’s why we created hronline: it takes the hassle out of personnel management and even passes some of the tasks to the employees themselves. If you’re still just 99% convinced, sign up to a free trial today!