Employee Self-Service (ESS) is a feature that allows employees to take care of different HR- and job-related tasks that would otherwise need to be completed by human resources or management. Among other benefits, Employee Self-Service can help employers save labor hours and increase efficiency. So what is it?
ESS is a self-service portal that all your employees have access to–not just HR professionals. Employees can access their payroll, timesheet, and demographic information, make updates to their personal details, and more.
Why ESS?
When successfully implemented, Employee Self-Service leads to immediate increases in productivity and efficiency. Additionally, managers and human resources personnel may save labor hours and frustration on a daily basis when not faced with working through time-off requests and other payroll-related questions.
Moreover, entry errors and the liability of making other mistakes may be avoided by allowing employees to enter their own information. By adding recruiting and onboarding technology directly into the self-service portal, you can prevent entry errors as early as the application phase.
By eliminating the need for double entry and allowing employees to evaluate their own information, the chances of inaccurate information may be greatly decreased.
California Legal Compliance
California Labor Code Section 226(a) requires employers to include nine specific items on pay stubs, and the Healthy Workplace Healthy Family Act added paid-sick-leave accruals to the list. However, even if employers comply with all 10 elements, they can still find themselves in legal trouble if they don’t make it easy for workers to access and print copies.
In addition to easy-access to wage statements, California mandated Harassment Prevention Training modules can be also be loaded into employee portals. That means you can easily manage both Supervisor and Non-Supervisory employee trainings to ensure all legal requirements are met.
Accessible Anywhere at Any Time
Because self-service portals are typically cloud-based, employees can access the portal from anywhere. (For example, from home, on a mobile device, or in another office building.)
Additionally, your employees can access their information at any time. They don’t have to wait for work hours or for a member of your HR staff to be available. Employees can get answers to their questions or update their information as soon as they need to.
Improving HR Functionality
Human resources departments can also greatly improve their productivity by adding ESS. HR managers can completely focus on issues that require a human touch. That means no more wasting time on data entry or researching simple inquiries for employees.
More Employee Empowerment
Self-service allows employees to access and make changes to their own personal information. For example, some of the information that employees can access via ESS includes:
- Sick leave hours
- Vacation hours
- Pay rate information
- Performance appraisals
- Requests for time off
- Address and personal information changes
More engaged employees tend to be more loyal to their company as well as more productive.
Share and Highlight Company Policies
Whenever a policy change occurs, it can be tough to alert all employees using manual methods. Employees are generally more likely to throw out handouts then to read them. However, with ESS, sharing policy changes – or even simply highlighting existing policies that are relevant to recent occurrences – is as simple as cutting and pasting text into a message and sharing it with your team.
Streamline Time-off Request Processes
Time off processes can be messy when they are handled using paper and scheduling books. Requests may be lost, managers or HR professionals may forget to put requests in, and approvals or denials may not be communicated in a timely manner. With ESS, employees and managers can interact over a request in seconds from any location, severely decreasing the likelihood that the request will be overlooked.
What Do You Think?
Want to give Employee Self-Service a try? Then let’s talk! Call our office at 866.946.2032 or contact us online to request a demo or a quote for ESS.
For more HR tips and support, be sure to log on to SDP’s HR Support Center. (Free for all clients!) There, you can access our entire library of laws, articles, policies, and trainings on HR topics affecting all states and municipalities. And don’t forget to follow us out on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for even more business tips & tricks!
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