The HR department is a common department in almost all the companies irrespective of the industry they work in.
HR or human resources is an inseparable part of any business ranging from small to big corporations. The procedure of managing and acquiring skillful employees has improved in a prominent way over the years. Nowadays, due to the complexity of this department, it has been divided into several subcategories too. These mainly include recruitment, onboarding, and employee retention.
Each purpose is served by different kinds of people in this department. There are recruiters who take out the best employees for several departments. The main function of the retention managers includes the creation of a healthy working environment in every organization. Other than that there are training and development managers who help the employees to develop their skills. Additionally, there are HR generalists who help with everything that is happening in the HR department.
There are a number of processes that may prove to be very complex. In this scenario, every organization needs software that can help to simplify the HR-related processes. But for that, there are several things that one needs to know.
Types of HR Software:
Nowadays there are many products in the market made by a CRM development company that can help HR management. The HR software can help enterprises all over the world in tracking and reporting almost all kinds of processes, from employees onboarding to management of their performance. There are mainly three categories in which the HR software can be categorized as of now. They are categorized based on their functionality. First one is HRIS (Human Resource Information System), the second one is HCM (Human Capital Management), and the third one is HRMS (Human Resource Management Systems). All of these have different functions and purposes. CRM development services have changed the way HR departments worked.
- The complex data that is related to the process of recruitment, performance management, benefits administration, and payroll is tracked by HRIS. Two of the most popular and important HRIS software solutions are BambooHR and the open-source software OrangeHRM.
- The HR department can use the HCM systems to acquire the employees and then invest in their overall development through the quality onboarding process, tracking of performances, and planning the salaries. For the evaluation and management of the staff performance, there is an application named Zugata that offers advanced solutions.
- The functionality of the HRMS systems is similar to the HCM system. Mainly, the HRMS systems deal with tasks like payroll, time, and the management of the labor. There are some solutions like Zenefits that provide their users with some advanced features like onboarding and offboarding of employees and also alerts that are automated.
All these three might have some different types of features in them but at their core, they offer the same functionality their users. If we look at it from a general sense then HRIS is the parent type that includes both HCM and HRMS systems in itself. When an enterprise is deciding about the right kind of HR software that has to be used, the type of the software and the name of the software doesn't really matter, what really matters are the features that are offered by it.
The companies may hire a custom software development company to get the features that it wants in its own HR application. Software development services are now advanced enough to cater to all the needs of the enterprises.
Understanding the working of Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS):
It has been stated in the article before that HRIS has the most functionality among all the three categories of the HR software because it has the functions and features of both the other two types, now it is time to know about it in detail. This type of software is sometimes also called the “talent management” software as they are able to manage the full circle of the employees, the steps of it are going to be outlined further in the article.
1. Recruitment:
The process of recruitment is very complex, there are many tasks have to be managed very nicely otherwise there might be issues with the quality. The tasks in the recruitment process are gathering the requirements for a potential candidate for the position, placing a vacancy of the job on the job boards, then taking the interviews of the shortlisted candidates and finally deciding which candidate is the best and should be hired.
So to understand how the HR software can help the HR managers in the process of recruitment here is an example. Within an enterprise named Zenefits, The HR managers can fill the information for the posts of the job and then push these job posts on to some popular employment/job search website. There is an application named Workable that makes the hiring process very easy by providing the recruiter with an option to track the hiring status, schedule the interviews, evaluate the candidates with their mark sheets and then creating reports for the purpose of future considerations. The software development services have made HR operations very manageable.
2. Onboarding:
The process of onboarding is very important and delicate, the employees who join a company freshly might face some problems in adjusting to the work environment. The process of onboarding has a well-defined set of procedures that are aimed at handling some common issues that may occur when the new employee is adapting to the new environment. Nowadays this process is not just bound in rules, it has become much more creative than it ever was. The employees in the HR department have to struggle to make the onboarding process fun and also welcoming by organizing some informal events like the lunches and dinners, first Friday nights with their colleagues, etc.
There are HR tools like Hibob that can realize the features of onboarding by creating and developing tasks that are then assigned to the responsible employees. The employees can choose to confirm or reject these assignments/tasks within their system, they can also mark them as completed, and can also receive notifications about the tasks that are pending and about the newly lined-up tasks.
3. Tracking of the performance:
Tracking the performance of the employees is very important to modern companies. It is one of the most important factors that help them in their overall development process. Every company wants to improve themselves and also their individual employees. Tracking the performance of every individual employee may help the company figure out a strategy that can help them increase the efficiency of the employees and the organization as well.
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Monitoring or tracking the performance of the employees can also help in motivating them. The HR department can develop a system in which they provide an appraisal to the employees who perform well in a specific period of time. This system can increase the overall production or services of the organization. There are personal development plans to track the performance of the employees in an organization, this is according to the rules of that organization. Achievement lists and personal interviews are also used and the aim of doing all this is evaluating the development or the progress of every individual employee.
The modern organizations have started using new tools for the purpose of tracking the performances of their employees. They might implement features like personal dashboards which will show the visual overview of the progress, notifications about the submission of the reports, and checkboxes. All this can help in monitoring the progress of an employee. There are applications like Namely that allow the employees to set goals for themselves. The employees can, later on, mark them as completed when they finish it. These modern applications also offer the HR departments access to the dashboards of the employees so they can analyze their performance.
4. Management of the benefits:
Benefits are the compensations provided to the employees indirectly, and they are different across all the companies. Some of the benefits that are given to the employees are because of the law, like the holiday packages, sick leaves, and maternity leave. Mostly the companies provide benefits to their employees because they want to boost retention. They want to offer competitive packages to the employees who they think have the potential that they need. If an example of a medical benefits package is to be taken, there are benefits that include dental and vision care. Also, insurance for any accidental disability and some fitness-related benefits are included in it.
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The HR software that is used by the companies tries to automate the benefits as much as possible. This is done by developing a benefit plan and assigning these plans to the employees. This is the method that is used by the HR management software Zenefits to streamline the benefits management, this also eliminates the need for a complex spreadsheet.
5. Training:
Training and teaching the employees’ new skills is very important in today’s time. The trends change very rapidly, the technologies too. The employees need to improve themselves and also learn about anything new that is related to their area of work. The organizations provide training to their employees about the things that they feel are important for them. This might improve the efficiency of the individual employee and eventually will improve the efficiency of the organization. The responsibility of the HR manager here is to organize training events for the employees. Managing the training process can also become challenging sometimes. The companies have specialists and they may need different educational strategies. This makes the job of HR to organize the training event a bit complex.
Just like the Benefits Management with cloud computing services, here also the HR software streamlines the training processes. It is done by making them automatic processes instead of planning them into a spreadsheet. For example, the HR managers have to develop training events and invite the employees for them. They have to send notifications about an upcoming milestone. They also have to evaluate the progress of the employees throughout the training process.
6. Payroll:
Most of the people think that the tasks related to payroll are all handled by the finance department. There still are some tasks related to the payroll that is handled by the HR department. HR managers still have to manage issues like tracking the information about the salaries of the employees, the number of vacations they have gone on to, the number of sick leaves, etc.
The payroll features that are there in the HR software store the information about all the benefits and compensations. It can also generate a report about the earnings of an employee in a specific period of time. There are applications like Gusto that offer its users with the notifications about their upcoming payroll. It also has a dashboard that shows the employees the number of hours they have worked and rates. This allows the HR managers to add up bonuses, commissions, and reimbursements to the payroll.
Issues happening with HR tools:
The existing tools of HR departments provide a massive amount of useful features. But still, there are a few drawbacks that need to be discussed
1. Numerous Tools:
No HR tool can do all the things that are needed to be done by the HR department. An organization will need many HR tools to make all the processes of the HR department automatic. For example, the company will need an application that can take care of onboarding and offboarding, then they will need another app that can take care of benefits, payroll and training, and this way they will need many tools to make the process fully automatic. Using these many tools at the same time can increase the confusion and may also be frustrating.
There still are some application that acts like a swiss knife for the HR departments. Some applications can cover the full cycle of talent management, from the recruiting process to onboarding and retention. These applications are quite effective for organizations. A custom software development company can make a personalized application for the organizations. This way they won’t have to use many tools.
2. All HR tools cannot engage the employees with the HR manager:
This is one of the biggest drawbacks of using HR software. There is some HR software that cannot really connect the employees with the HR managers and that creates a communication gap. Nowadays there are some HR applications that are able to engage not only the specialists in the HR department but also the finance managers and the employees. The question might arise that why is it important to engage the employees in the HR software?
Firstly, the majority of the new employees are millennials and they demonstrate an advanced approach to the work process. These new employees are not just interested in getting paid, they also want to learn new skills and want to be important for their organizations. Secondly, the internet and social networking sites have made it very easy for people to gain knowledge about anything they want. This is the reason why the CRM Development Company should focus on developing a product that can allow both employees and the HR managers to engage.
3. Bad User Interface:
Mostly the User Interface and the user experience of this software are badly designed. The users find it very difficult to use the features available and they often get lost. The structure of the application is complex and that’s why users are not able to access all the features of the application. This is the reason why most of the users are disappointed by the HR software. There are applications that still don’t work smoothly on mobile devices. There is some software that doesn’t even have a mobile version. In this modern era, companies need an HR application that has its mobile version. The CRM development services need to stay updated with the latest technologies. Outdated technologies will not provide any benefits to businesses in today’s time.
The cost involved to build an HR application
There are many factors involved that decide the costing of any application related to the human resource department. The features that affect the cost are:
- Recruitment module: Expected Cost is $25,900-$2900
- Onboarding module: Expected Cost is $22,700-$25,200
- Tracking of performance: Expected Cost is $11,600-$13,000
- Management of benefits: Expected Cost is $11,600-$13,000
- Training module: Expected Cost is $13,000-$14,400
- Payroll module: Expected Cost is $23,300-$25900
Final words
The HR software can help organizations to achieve great success. The organizations can also consider SaaS application development for their HR application. SaaS application development can help organizations in more ways than a native platform based application. Cloud Computing Services are improving at a very rapid pace. Small organizations who cannot afford a personalized application can use the cloud HR applications for their operations by paying them the subscription charges. HR software takes a lot of time and money to be developed. So, small organizations should prefer cloud computing services.