Kalosoft Small business software author team decided to take on this topic after
getting feedback from one the prospective client. Let me give you an insight of
the scenario. This may be the case with your organization or business. The prospective
client wanted to automate the work of its HR department. Presently, they are handling
their offices at multiple locations, each of which has its own HR department and
people. They asked me to implement the HRIS software in HR departments of their
five divisions of company and all these software must be integrated or work in connection
with each other.
Over the above requirement, we generated an analysis report that defines requirement,
probable origin of the requirement and a conclusive suggestion. I have already defined
the requirement in the first paragraph; let us move on the other heads of the analysis
report.
As far as functions of HR are concerned, more or less, every domain performs the
similar tasks. If I list, then some of them are
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Managing employee database with each and every necessary detail about employee like
the language they speak or write, allergies and ailments they are suffering from,
passport and other identity details, etc.
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Recording and archiving the details of all the awards earned by the employee during
the course of employment within the company, in the form of appreciation letter,
bonus points, performance bonus.
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Handling grievance by noting down the reason of clash or grievance, who was at mistake and how was the
situation came under control.
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Keeping safe all the documents of each employee, whether they were submitted by
employee to the organization or were offered to the employee by the organization.
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Archiving the history of all the changes made in designation and department of an
employee with specifying the reason for the same.
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Keeping details of all the training activities that runs in the company along with
keeping details of which training was given to which employee.
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Generating reports of different aspects like complete list of company’s employees,
performance report based on different parameters, and many other specific reports.
These were some basic functions of HR. A simple HRIS software provides you the above
mentioned functions. If you need to handle more advance tasks like management of
payroll and employee leaves or daily worksheet of employees, then some offer these
as separate software which works in integration with the basic version of their
HRIS software while few others give you these features within the same software.
I started this paragraph to discuss what was the probable origin of the requirement,
of an integrated HRIS, by one of our prospective client. The major reason behind
such requirement is the nature of our prospective client’s business i.e. Multi-location
offices; though this is not the only reason.
There might be following tasks to be performed (in relation to HR tasks) if you
have business offices in different locations around the globe:
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Relocation or circulation of employees within different locations –
your company might be in culture to relocate the employees working at one location
of your business, to work in some other location of your same business. At such
relocation time, the HR or management of destination office can access the integrated
HRIS to know the details of qualified employee for the post by accessing their experience,
medical history (in order to know whether they are fit for the relocated environment),
their personal attitude (by looking at their grievance section) and other similar
traits.
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Centralizing functions of HR – centralization of functions
of HR lets a senior HR or manager to keep flow of HR processes at every location
like you can restrict the process of issuing of appointment letters from head office
only. This would require the data about the employee from the HR of branch office.
Instead of having it via mail, the integrated HRIS can be useful.
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Creation of virtual offices – virtual office concept is followed
by some growing businesses where the cost is being saved by running business in
multiple locations with minimum human and architectural resources. They may appoint
a person or two who work from their home place and are given an HR task to manage
a team of employees, who all are also working from their home. Thus, creating a
structure which is a virtual office which needs to perform its HR functions. But
due to this scattered nature of work, there is an utmost requirement of an integrated
HRIS so that no loophole is observed while managing employees.
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Giving access of HR activities to management – HR position
is very responsible position since many confidential matters are recorded with HR
of the company. But sometimes management wants to monitor the HR as well just to
know whether the human resource department is on correct track of performing its
responsibilities or there is any need of their intervention. For such situations,
by logging as management in the integrated HR software, you can view the data and
reports of all locations of your business.
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Sharing reports and case studies among various offices –
your business may be scattered and located in various regions and countries, but
for calculating profit and loss, the data is expected in concatenation from all
these offices. To analyze whether your overall business is doing fine, you may access
various reports as in report on employee performance in various offices, their attendance,
cases of disputes that originated and their solutions, and many other such reports
or case studies.
So I can conclude that the main origin of the need of integrated HR software is
the expansion of your business and fear of diminishing control over each office
separately. If you think you cannot manage the personal visits to each and every
office often, and you cannot always rely on others to send you the reports on mail
everytime you need them, and if you feel that every employee needs your personal
and expert supervision, then go ahead with HRIS software that works in the integrated
manner. Although, please take care that such software should not decrease the power
of your business execution by increasing the task supervision.
You can try with our standalone HRIS software to know how does the software work, before going into an integrated one. Download from here.