A good HRIS software will help you manage these 10 functions:
1. Centralized Information Storage
HRIS collects employee information at the time of recruitment and provides a central repository of employee information to managers, HR professionals, IT team, Admins, and everyone else who needs it. The information stored on the employee database includes:
- General Employee Information: Name, contact information, dependant details, data of joining, etc.
- Organizational Information: Manager, business vertical, etc.
- Time off details: PTO availed, remaining balance.
- Payroll information.
- Performance score.
2. Onboarding Workflow
HRIS can take a lot of workload away from the HR team by automating the onboarding workflow. This means, the team can automate emails, track candidate status, keep management informed about the onboarding status, and connect new employees with hiring managers.
The new employee will also have a good experience will all the processes streamlined. They will get a complete picture in terms of organizational hierarchy and HR policies. Plus, they will know whom to reach out to get answers to their questions. This means the onboarding coordinator is not bombarded with questions ranging from documentation to saving plans, the responsible authority will get those questions directly.
3. Job Training
Do you want to provide a specific set of training modules to each employee based on their job role? HRIS can help you with that. It can integrate with your learning module and streamline the training journey for each employee. It can also track the progress and remind employees of approaching deadlines. An HRIS can also send you an email notification if employees miss a training session or are behind schedule.
4. Time Off Management
An HRIS software can help you assign time offs to employees based on your time off policy and keep a track of it. One of the main functions of HRIS is to help managers keep a track how much time off each employee has availed and the balance left. The employee too have this information handy.
Additionally, employees can quickly request for time offs and managers get a notification immediately, thus avoiding a mail chain or a series of zoom calls. The whole workflow is managed though a click of a few buttons. This way, HRIS promotes self-service where employees can manage their data without involvement of an HR personnel.
5. Performance Management
Performance management is an important feature of HRIS, you can setup a framework for setting goals for the employees and a mechanism for managers to give their ratings. The software allows separate workflows for when the employees are planning deliverables and when they are submitting for the annual appraisal process.
Additionally, HRIS helps you set up surveys and forms to capture information required for ad-hoc purposes. For instance, if you want to send out goodies to employees, you can get their preferences and relevant details through forms.
6. Employee Benefits
Be it life insurance details, medical insurance, information on dependents, or data related to any other employee benefit, HRIS facilitates storage of everything. You can setup a workflow where employees key in relevant information only at a specific time-period after which the window closes.
With this level of automation, your employees shoulder the responsibility of entering details in time to avoid a lockout. You HR team does not need to send individual follow-up emails to get the details.
7. HR Analytics & Reporting
You need to analyze numbers related to HR before you plan any organizational change that impact. An HRIS makes it very easy. For example, if you plan to reorganize your development team under product managers, you need to know how many developers works for you, what's their specialization, and which product managers should they be aligned to.
You can find all the data in HR reports dashboard. You can also analyze how your employees use time offs, scope to save on costs, etc.
8. Payroll Management
Payroll is a critical feature of a Human Resource Information System. Payroll can be useful to have in a human resources information system as it offers end-to-end management assistance to the HR personnel.
Compensation on an hourly/ weekly/ monthly basis is all provided in HRIS. Employee Information like Bank Details, Role, and Appraisal, Time off are provided by the HRIS system which enables payment of compensation easier, error-free, and fair.
9. Employee Offboarding
You need to manage employee experience during the offboarding process to ensure they become advocates of the company. An HRIS can help you automate offboarding and communicate with your employees during their exit, and even after that.
A smooth offboarding makes the employee feel valued. HRIS comes with the feature to help you create a positive experience which may result in employee returning to the organization in the future.
10. Workflow Automation
One of the main features of HRIS is automation of workflow across all HR functions. We discussed how automation can reduce HR teams workload during the recruitment, onboarding, payroll, and the offboarding processes, but it goes beyond that.
HR team can automate internal communication workflows related to company policy updates, organizations announcement, all hands calls, etc. With an HRIS, the team can target employees effectively with lists and send relevant communication.
11. Mobile HRIS
Almost all HRIS systems now come with a Mobile App supporting both Android and iOS. This feature makes all the above functions available in your pocket, with few exceptions, thus enabling on-the-go productivity.
12. Applicant Tracking System
Applicant tracking is one of those highlighting features of an HRIS. Ironically, not all products that call themselves HRIS comes with Applicant Tracking. ATS helps you bring your whole hiring process to one place.
From posting a job to sourcing candidates from different channels like Email, Job Boards, interviewing, and executing the hiring process to rolling out an offer, and moving the candidate to an employee, an HRIS with ATS can be really useful to help you bring in talents seamlessly.
Other common features of an ATS is to set a cooling period to avoid a repetition of candidates, archiving good talents to the talent pool, etc.