Public sector HR departments can save time and money by adopting HR employee self-service software that allows employees to change their own information.
Article Highlights
- Problem: Lack of Employee Self-Service
- Solution: Employee Self-Service Software
- Benefits of Employee Enablement
HR professionals in the public sector often have to manage the information and data for hundreds, if not thousands, of employees and contractors. You not only oversee the rules and policies for running the department, but you manage each employee's PII (personally identifiable information), payment information, direct deposit information, and taxes. You track PTO and sick time requests and provide reports on all of that information to managers and executives.
Overseeing that information also means managing it. That means making changes and updates every time an employee's address, phone number, direct deposit account, etc. changes.
Why should HR personnel deal with those small tasks instead of focusing on bigger issues like training and development, creating new policies, tracking licensing/certifications, hiring, and onboarding new employees? Which is more valuable to the organization – onboarding several new employees or making small changes to employees' addresses and phone numbers?
HR employee self-service software allows employees to manage their own information in their own records, making changes without taking time out of a busy HR manager's day.
This article will discuss the problems that a lack of employee enablement creates for the HR department, how employee self-service software can help, and the benefits of giving employees direct access to their own workforce portal.
Problem: Lack of Employee Self-Service
Many HR professionals are bogged down with tasks that employees could be doing themselves. Someone changes their address, so they send in a change of address request, which is then given to an HR professional to log the change. Someone else changes banks and needs their direct deposit information updated.
These are simple changes, and employees can presumably be trusted to change this information themselves.
For example, HR spends a lot of time answering employees' simple questions: How much PTO do I have accrued? How much sick leave do I have? Who did I list as my beneficiaries?
Your employees could easily answer these questions themselves if they had access to a self-service portal. They could find their information – contact, benefits, PTO, compensation, etc. – and answer their own questions without creating extra work for HR.
Most employees don’t want to bother HR, preferring to make the changes themselves. Unfortunately, a lack of employee enablement can communicate a lack of trust.
Siloed HR systems only exacerbate the issue, making it difficult for managers to approve different employee requests like paid time off, sick leave, and FMLA. Do your employees request time off via email or verbal request? Where are those approvals stored? Who's keeping track of them or ensuring a department has adequate staffing during a high vacation period?
A modern HRIS self-service portal with HR approval workflows can help.
In fact, it can overcome most of the problems described above, leading to higher employee satisfaction and retention.
Solution: Employee Self-Service Software
NEOGOV's HRIS offers the employee self-service feature, which lets employees access their pay stubs and W2 records. They can update contact information, change tax deductions, view benefits information, and even request time-off – all through the employee portal. No more forms, no more lost email requests, no more in-person meetings for simple updates.
Our HRIS also includes HR approval workflows. When an employee updates their contact information, direct deposit accounts, beneficiaries, etc. it triggers approvals for their managers and HR staff. This creates transparency for managers and HR, as well as for the employees.
NEOGOV's HRIS is an employee enablement tool, providing real-time information to end-users and equipping them to manage their own data, request time-off, and find answers to their questions.
Benefits of Employee Enablement
Employee enablement empowers your staff to manage their own tasks and information without taking up valuable HR time. With approval workflows, HR and managers can still review and approve critical requests or updates in a fraction of the time it takes with outdated, manual processes.
Increased employee engagement can lead to higher employee satisfaction and retention as employees feel more trusted and valued in their roles.
Providing accurate, up-to-date information about employees also helps ensure compliance with different regulatory and legal requirements. And rather than asking one or two HR employees to oversee all changes, employees can manage their own information and ensure it’s up to date.
HR staff can also run various reports for different data types with employee self-service software. Rather than pulling this data from different systems and compiling it all on a single spreadsheet, you can run comprehensive reports on numerous data points.
Final Thoughts
Government agencies can reduce costly errors, save time, and provide a better employee experience by offering centralized access to important employee data and records.
Employee self-service software takes a lot of small and repetitive tasks off your HR team's shoulders so they can focus on other projects. Sign up for a friendly, no-obligation demo today to learn more about our HR employee self-service software. We'll be happy to answer any questions for you.
