Speaker 1: As we approach the end of the year, it's time to think about what you can do to set up your team for success in 2021. To maximize the value you're creating for your organization, human resources professionals need tools that increase connectivity between employees, enhance communication, and streamline administrative stuff. In this episode of HR Party of One, I'll talk about the importance of software and which tools you should consider adopting for next year, including how HR software helps make your role more strategic, what to look for in a great HRIS, and additional HR software tools to consider adopting for 2021 beyond the HRIS. Let's get started. Adding strategic value to HR's role is a theme we return to time and time again. As traditional HR functions move towards full automation, this technology gives you the room to focus extra time and energy on people and skills, and less time handling the tasks that, while critical, can be handled by software. Specifically, HR software can save you time by streamlining the following tasks. Online benefits administration. HRIS platforms allow employees to make benefits selections on their computers, meaning HR spends less time reviewing forms and inputting data during each open enrollment or special enrollment period throughout the year. Onboarding. Using onboarding features, HR can administer forms like I-9s, W-4s, and custom employer documents, such as a culture guide, with employees before their first day. The result is that employees have a great first day. They hit the ground running and have all the necessary compliance forms filled out before the new hire even begins. Reporting. With all employee data and records in a single place, you can more easily report data ranging from benefits deductions to turnover rates. Time and attendance. An HRIS allows you to precisely track employee hours without paperwork, which is especially helpful for teams with hourly workers. Additionally, you can review staff hours to make your team more productive. Applicant tracking. Easily manage candidate pipelines, help hiring managers and influencers collaborate, and seamlessly transition new hires into onboarding so their documents are completed before their first day. Payroll. Payroll accounts for a significant amount of an organization's expenses. Reputable payroll software can help your company avoid costly errors. PTO tracking. Paid time off tracking helps HR and employees by decluttering time off management. A quality PTO tracking system will remove the need for spreadsheets, increase efficiency, reduce user error, and make employees happier across the board. Pricing for HR software often depends on the size of your organization and the number of users. Some software is just more expensive. However, what's certain is that this investment, almost always saves organizations a lot in the long run. A human resource information system, an HRIS, is a software tool that combines different systems and processes to simplify HR management. With the right HR software, you can efficiently and effectively centralize, organize, and improve your day-to-day processes. You better manage your tasks. This is invaluable for the strategic growth of your role. Using a robust HRIS means you have additional time to spend planning and overseeing more specialized tasks, like improving onboarding, improving your approach to PTO, or any of the other things that we've covered in past episodes. If you don't have an HRIS yet, or if maybe you're looking to switch for 2021, there are a few different indicators of excellence. These are things about robust systems that you need to know. ESS systems are online tools that allow employees to view and edit personal information. Your employees can solve small day-to-day problems without HR assistance. And this could be as simple as an employee wanting to know what benefits they elected for the year. On our team, I avoid spending all afternoon searching through files because my employees can simply log into their Bernie Portal account and review their benefits elections, including how much each cost per pay period. It's a huge time-saver for me and for them, because they're not waiting on me for an answer. Single point of data entry. HRIS platforms remember specific pieces of data and automatically populate all fields using that same piece of data. How many times have you spent hours pulling employee demographic data from an applicant tracking software system into your onboarding system or into payroll? A single point of data can save you this headache. Centralized data and documentation. Quality HR software will organize employee data for you in a single accessible location that clearly and concisely documents important information and employee data. Keep it all in one place. One way to think about this is with Form I-9 compliance. Employers aren't always audited, but sometimes they are. And it's incredibly helpful to have employees' files easily available. So centralizing your data can make this easier. Comprehensive tools. Great HRIS platforms have reporting tools that eliminate many transactional administrative tasks. For payroll, these tasks typically include wage reporting, like W-2s and W-4s. Benefits can mean 1095 reporting for ACA compliance and more. By handling these necessary but simple tasks that take up lots of valuable time, HR professionals can focus on more specialized responsibilities and elevate your role. User experience, or UX. User experience is how people use their software, and it's determined by design, structure, and simplicity. We often hear that users love Bernie Portal because they can easily navigate through their benefit options during open enrollment. An intuitive UX means you can prep for benefits administration without unnecessary hurdles and without making your employees struggle through the process. Dedicated support. When deciding between HRIS solutions, HR should know they have a team of experts available to help them when they need it. Look for a software provider that provides full service implementation and ongoing support in case issues come up. And sometimes they come up. An HRIS platform is a great starting point when considering HR software solutions. It's the anchor and the foundation. But there are other options that can further enhance your role for next year. For example, our HR team adopted Help Desk software for our HR inbox. Zoho Desk is a customer service software that helps us organize and address any email that arrives in a general HR inbox. We've used the platform's reporting features to get a better understanding of our response time and the types of employee requests coming in. When employees send HR an email, our platform opens a ticket, and we categorize those tickets so we can measure what we're spending our time on. For example, what percentage of our employee requests, aka tickets, are related to office management tasks, like ordering supplies? And what percentage are related to benefits questions, like 401k questions? Sometimes we see opportunities to update our culture guide with more clear instructions or guidance. And that prevents us from having to answer the same questions over and over again. All that said, the software you decide to adopt for 2021 should depend on what your company needs to be successful. Tools we've recently had really great success with include things like applicant tracking software. As mentioned earlier, an applicant tracking system, or an ATS, is an HR software feature that streamlines the recruiting process. It makes it easier. Typical applicant tracking systems allow you to post jobs, communicate with candidates, collaborate internally, and even make an offer, an onboard. As a result, HR can increase efficiencies within your recruitment process. And as I mentioned earlier, this can help you find the right candidates for the right positions. The impact can be long lasting, especially when it comes to boosting retention rates and reducing your company's hiring expenses. In some cases, like Bernie Portal, for example, an ATS is part of the HRIS platform and also integrated with job boards, like Indeed. This is even more preferable because the combination provides a completely connected experience for candidates all the way into onboarding. And it eliminates double or triple data entry, for you. Performance software. Performance management software helps track the growth and development goals of an employee. Important stuff. And it tracks how their efforts align with the strategic objectives of your organization. This process is often facilitated by one-on-one meetings. These meetings provide a regular ongoing opportunity for growth-centric conversations and high quality regular feedback between managers and their team members. The results? Better employee performance, engagement, development, and retention. For HR, this is a way to help hold your leadership team accountable and ensure employees are getting the guidance and coaching they need to improve. There's a lot more to say about this and we'll cover one-on-one meetings in full detail in a new episode later this month. Remote monitoring. As we discussed in a previous episode, remote monitoring software can help your work-from-home team remain compliant and on task. Our team uses Hubstaff, which tracks a combination of keystrokes, mouse movements, and desktop screenshots to determine employee productivity, leading to a more engaged staff and better productivity overall. For example, if Bernie Portal employees have productivity issues, managers can review Hubstaff metrics to identify problem areas and ways employees can improve how they're managing their time. It's also helpful to think of this software as an additional compliance check. If you have hourly employees, you can more easily track their time throughout the week. And for salaried employees, remote monitoring software helps bolster data security. Engaging intranets. Bernie Portal uses an internal social networking platform called Zoho Connect as a space to collaborate and communicate in a quick and formal way. Zoho Connect is even included in our culture guide as one of the primary ways we communicate with each other. Generally speaking, platforms like Zoho Connect, Workplace by Facebook, and Slack can make it easier for communicates to connect, especially during extended periods of remote work. Some, like Slack, are even free for small teams. We've also found that Zoho Connect fosters collaboration and crowdsourcing among employees. Recently, a Bernie Portal teammate posted on Connect that she had a client who was looking for a reliable background check service. She wanted to know if anyone had suggestions. Within 10 minutes, I responded with the provider that we use, saving several back and forth emails between the entire company and giving us a quick win with our client. As you're reviewing your budget for next year, ask yourself, how can I make my role more valuable? Software solutions can help you answer that question. From robust HRIS platforms to HR help desks and remote monitoring apps, I encourage you to review the different tools we just discussed. We know that HR software can save you time and energy, especially on routine maintenance and routine processes. What leads to success in identifying which tools can help you the most in the new year? Not only will your solutions streamline more basic but necessary human resources tasks, but they'll make your role more strategic by freeing up your time to improve your organization in ways that matter. Remember, your job is as strategic as you make it.