Human Resource Information System or HRIS or sometimes commonly known as a human resource management system, is an HR software used to aid the human resources department in an institution. The software is a tool that manages HR activities and helps monitor it. The HR software helps manage accounting, management, payroll and plan out HR costs more efficiently. HRIS is designed to accelerate efficient decision making by HR by having features such as infographics. Decisions based on HRIS improve their quality. HRIS helps manage efficiently without allocating many resources towards a task and helps improves the productivity of the employees. Here are the 10 biggest benefits of HRIS software system;
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Improving HR Productivity
The HRIS system is carefully designed to benefit the organization and one of the advantages that HRIS offers is to improve the productivity of the human resource department. HRIS is carefully tailored to speed up and improve the decisions made by HR employees.
One of the prime examples would be managing the resumes, reviewing the profiles of applicants and other such details. The productivity of financial management can also be improved through HRIS such as the benefit or bonus administration and the payroll.
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Mitigating Errors
Errors made by the HR department can be cumbersome for the company as it can lead to many legal issues and financial loss for the organization, which can also lead to the negative image of the company. One such example would be not reviewing resumes in a fair or just manner during the process of hiring and can result in legal pursue by the applicants. The HRIS system is carefully planned to review each and resume fairly and provides additional guidance to avoid such issues. The human oversight by the HR employees is an error that often occurs which the HRIS helps avoids it.
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Analysis
One of the key features of HR is to analyze or the metrics of the employees of the companies. The HR department is responsible to take many decisions related to financial management – hiring cost is one such example. The HRIS allows the HR employees to carry out many relevant calculations with efficiency. The HRIS even manages and stores data that HR employees collect which can be further analyzed through the help of the software. There is some HRIS software that even creates automatic reports or gives a statistical analysis of the previous and the current data which is one of the salient features of HRIS.
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Training
Training is an integral part to increase the value of your employees and their skillset. The purpose of HR is to provide the necessary training to other employees so they may increase their skill set and other capabilities. The HRIS system helps manage all the information regarding various training programs and for the employees who qualify for such programs. The HRIS system also keeps a track of the performance during the training programs and who has taken it before so they do not take it again. The HRIS even keeps track of the feedback of the employees taking the trainees to help HR evaluate the true benefits and cons of a training program.
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Payroll Factors
HRIS has been previously mentioned several times to increase the efficiency in the financial management –therefore it helps HR and the payroll management of the employees by keeping track of the days of their paid and unpaid off days to help manage how much their pay is going to be deducted. Moreover, the HRIS also keeps tracks of the benefits that the employees qualify for therefore making it easier to manage the payroll factors.
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Exchange Information
When there is important information that needs to circulate among the employees which can be a memo or an important report that needs to be discussed. The HRIS helps circulate important information without the use of paper, as it provided a single platform to announce and circulate important information. The platform is carefully designed to reduce redundancy and improve efficiency in the flow of information throughout the organization, such as external web links, employee handbooks, procedures, warnings, company policies, safety guidelines, and announcements. Some HRIS system is even designed to conduct surveys amongst the employees which helps HR keeps track of the effects of any changed policies.
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Benefits
Other than payrolls there are many benefits offered by the companies, for example, bonuses, discounts or health insurance. The HRIS system helps keep track of the benefits, who have reimbursed their benefits and who qualifies for it as the HRIS system even keeps track of all the metrics of employees. If an organization offers a pension then the HRIS system can be very helpful to keep track of their retirement investment or deductions. The HRIS even provides a one-stop shopping platform for all the data management information required by the HR employees.
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E-Signatures
Forms and documents are the salient materials needed for one department to communicate or report to another, to verify these documents signatures or acknowledgment is highly crucial which used to be done through a simple pen. However, the use of the HRIS system has reduced unnecessary paperwork, which has made documentation digital and keeps a track of different e-signatures. Tracking different signatures can be a cumbersome task, therefore, the HRIS system has an e-signature feature that increases the efficiency of approving documentation without losing these important documents.
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Time-Off Management
The HR employees always keep a track of time-off management manually through an excel sheet to keep track of all the employees and their vacation time, hence it becomes time-consuming and hectic for the HR employees to keep track of all the information and enter every data. Moreover, on average an employee takes an average of three PTO days which is unreported off each year with the help of HRIS system the cost pertinent to unreported PTO days is reduced helping HR employees to keep track of the employee’s absentees which according to statistics causes business 6 % of annual payrolls.
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Employee Self Service
One of the time-consuming tasks of HR employees is to answer all the questions of employees whether it is about the announcement that was just made earlier or the documentation, or benefits and policies the HR employees need to answer all such questions. The HRIS is a platform for employee self-service as well where the employees can look for the answers themselves and keep a track of their pay-scale or payroll information. This mitigates the time consumed in providing service to employees hence reducing the time it takes to administrate by about 40 to 60 percent which reduces 2 hours per day.
Conclusion
These benefits to introducing an HRIS system in an organization for the aid of the HR department not only improves the quality of management but the time spent on trivial cumbersome tasks can be reduced to focus on important aspects of the organization – such as decision making, recruiting and crafting new policies. The HRIS system mitigates the burden shared by HR employees and these ten biggest advantages of HRIS are only the salient features that are mentioned, there are also many other features of HRIS which can not only benefit the HR department but all the employees.