Efficient HR: How Employee Self-Service Saves Time

There are few things people dislike as much as busywork. When my daughter comes home from school with homework I know she’s done so many times it makes her head spin, my head starts spinning. Why would teachers do that to our kids? Likewise, why would we keep doing HR busywork if we don’t have to? Enter employee self-service. BambooHR saves you time by allowing employees to check and update certain things for themselves.

Sometimes you feel the need to guard HR data with your life. But no need to worry, you’ll only be letting employees see things they already know—like their own personal information, such as address and emergency contacts—or things that pertain specifically to them, like their own time-off accruals. They’ll see just enough information. No more, no less.

The beauty part is that while some of the employee self-service options will save HR a lot of time, your employees will also benefit by being more efficient as they can simply check things for themselves, then get right back to their own work.

BambooHR offers the following employee self-service options you can allow your employees to access, which can be offered little by little or all at once:

 · An employee’s own information. With self-service, employees can check to make sure their own personal information (address and phone numbers, emergency contact and family dependents) is current. You can choose whether to allow employees to edit this information themselves or edit with administrative approval. Either way, employees enter their new address or phone number when they move to a new apartment or if they need to adjust their emergency contact information.
 · Paid time off (PTO). Employees can keep an eye on how much PTO they’ve accrued instead of having to ask you if they have earned enough time to take that trip. In addition, employees can request time off directly from BambooHR (which sends you an email alert) and HR can either accept or deny that request. Employees can also see their time-off history.
 · Links to benefits. You won’t have to hear, “Now who’s our dental insurance through?” or “Where’s the number to our 401K guy?” anymore. You can set up links to your company’s benefit providers so employees can check these things for themselves.
 · Who’s Out? and Celebrations lists. The Who’s Out? list lets employees know who’s out sick or on vacation, while the Celebrations list includes co-worker’s birthdays and work anniversaries. So your employees can always be in-the-know, and you’re not the one spending your time getting them there.
 · Company Directory. Employees can have each of their co-worker’s contact information right there in the company directory, as if they had a stack of business cards sitting on their desks. The company directory includes the name, photo, job description, and contact information for everyone at work (and working from home). This tool is especially helpful for new employees to get to know their new co-workers.

Allowing employees to check things or update their own information themselves frees much of your time from busywork, so you can focus your efforts where you can make the biggest difference—finding and keeping great employees, building tomorrow’s leaders and creating a cool company culture.

Want to click around for yourself and try out employee self-service options? Click here for a free trial.