Self-service managers
Once you hire an applicant, there's plenty of routine benefits paperwork to handle. Additionally, HR managers spend a lot of time addressing individual employee requests. Human resources management systems and employee self-service portals cut down on these administrative tasks.
"Time is shifting from handling paperwork to getting data, and having it available to be analyzed as to what that data means for the organization," says the University of Maryland's Bartol, referring to the benefits of these solutions.
NuView Systems' MyHRIS handles almost every sector of HR management, with the ultimate goal of reducing timewasters like forms processing and managing employee data. This comprehensive system is like a control panel for HR directors, letting them oversee everything from staff history and training to job postings and self-service benefits information that employees can access themselves.
Smaller companies that may not even have a full-time HR staff can rely on simpler Web-based alternatives like Simpata. It starts at just $10 per employee for setup and an average of $5 per employee per month after that.
Tracy Decker, human resources director for 75-person advertising service eLetter, enlisted Simpata to help her organize a chaotic new HR department. "There was an Excel spreadsheet," she says about the state of human resources management when she came aboard. "When you get to a certain size, that doesn't really work all that effectively."
Ultimately, the next step is to fully integrate these HR portals with the company intranet, making HR a key part of a company's workspace. Unfortunately, it's an elaborate solution that's still too complicated for many companies to put into place.
"The No. 1 trend from a technology perspective is the evolution of intranets into full-fledged portals," explains John Ryder, head of the technology group for the Society for Human Resource Management. "Anything you can wrap under that corporate portal is a way of tying a lot of disparate technologies together, and giving employees access to a lot of things that are now different icons on their desktops."
Companies like Abilizer are in the business of helping you do just that. Abilizer got its start offering a product called the Abilizer Life Network, a portal that lets employers offer workers perks like discount programs and internal community bulletin boards. The program's cost varies, but a 10,000-person company will pay around $12 per employee per month. Now Abilizer is branching out by selling its base program as the foundation for customised company portals. While this option is far pricier, starting at $250,000 for the basic technology, it can make the entire organisationââ,¬"not just HRââ,¬"sleeker and more effective.
