How HR Software Can Help Scale Your Business - The Washington Independent
Take a closer look at some of the ways that HR software can help to scale your business.
Aug 27, 202276 Shares1K Views
How HR Software Can Help Scale Your Business
The HR function plays a vital role in scaling a business, so if your organisation has an eye on growth, it’s essential to invest in the right HR software to ensure the business can scale efficiently, quickly and successfully. With robust and effective HR technology in place, organisations can save time and money, improve recruitment and retention, monitor key data and boost the employee experience – all of which are crucial elements in a growing business.
Here, we take a closer look at some of the ways that HR software can help to scale your business.
Enhancing employee onboarding
HR software can help to create a great impression from day one by ensuring the employee onboarding process is engaging and efficient.
“Initially, software can automatically make contact with the new joiner and walk them through all of the paperwork and data that the organisation needs,” comments Philippa Barnes, director at ReThink HR Ltd. “At the same time, having an efficient onboarding process gives a great impression to an incoming employee as their lives are made easier by being able to manage so much themselves and in their own time.”
Helen Armstrong, CEO and founder of Silver Cloud HR, adds: “Businesses preparing to scale will need slick processes in place to help manage the rapid onboarding of new employees and to ensure their data is safe and secure. HR systems allow for onboarding tasks to be automated, which is essential to ensure that the experience is a good one and that steps are not missed.”
Improving employee engagement
An effective HR system can play an important role in boosting engagement by empowering employees, encouraging collaboration and ensuring they have the tools they need to perform in their role.
“By making your HR system a central resource for documents and policies, and building processes to replace forms, employees can find what they need and even enter data directly themselves, which is great for them but also saves time for the HR team. If your HR system also has functionality around building connections within the team – personal bios, sharing of interests, shout outs for success, ability to give ad hoc feedback – this adds to the value for the team and engagement with their colleagues. In a scaling business where lots of people are new, and moving around is common, anything that can help orientate and build relationships will help to keep the team engaged and committed to their roles.”
Your employees’ first impression of the business is the most important one and will help them decide whether to stay, adds Helen Armstrong. “Using paper-based processes is not the first impression you want to give of a scaling business. They need to know the business is geared up for the future. HR systems can also help manage employee engagement through quick pulse surveys. You cannot scale if engagement is low, and people want to leave.”
Automating processes to make it easy to scale your business quickly
Automating processes is the ‘holy grail’ for enabling HR teams to spend time on higher-value-add activities, remarks Philippa Barnes. “The time that would have been spent on simple but routine tasks can then be spent on improving off-line processes, face-to-face activities or analysing data to make recommendations for future improvements.”
If you aren’t automating your processes, your competitors will be, warns Helen Armstrong. “If tasks are manual, you will need to add headcount to manage them. Having well-configured HR systems in place reduces the need to spend money on support roles, and that headcount can sit within a revenue-generating team instead.”
Making HR more efficient
HR teams demand efficiency, states Helen Armstrong. “HR team members will leave if they feel they are working in a manual and paper-based way, especially if they have joined you from an automated business. Scaling businesses need HR support and guidance, not admin. HR systems can take care of the mundane tasks to allow HR to focus on future growth.”
In a fast-moving business which is scaling fast, high-volume recruitment and regular HR-related changes are a given, adds Philippa Barnes. “By having one central place to manage data or automate processes, HR teams can be confident that things will not be missed, and activities can be undertaken in an efficient way.”
Ensuring accurate reporting on employee performance and ROI
If your business is scaling, it’s crucial that you have access to accurate data to ensure employees are performing well and value is being added.
“A scaling business will need to know they are scaling in the right way,” comments Helen Armstrong. “How can you measure this if you cannot measure employee productivity or return on investment? HR system data alone will not help with this but combined with business performance data, you can be left with something very powerful. Managers will need to keep a check on the performance of their teams and need tools to do this.”
Stefano Mclaughlin
Reviewer
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