*Please note: This content was published during the COVID-19 pandemic
School HR staff are known to wear many hats, with responsibilities spanning the creation and implementation of an HR strategy, developing and delivering HR policies, organising staff training, supporting employee relations and overseeing employee recruitment, onboarding and induction amongst a plethora of other duties. Where do HR self-service solutions fit in to the future of HR?
Alongside these high-level responsibilities, however, HR staff often find themselves bogged down with time-consuming, manual administrative tasks such as maintaining employee records, distributing payslips and answering HR-related queries.
Thankfully, the rise of self-service HR systems in schools means staff can access tools that strip away repetitive admin and help HR staff and teachers alike to focus on their most important duties. Here are a few of the benefits of self-service HR systems:
- Communicate quickly and efficiently
- Give staff control over their employee details
- Manage absences and organise teaching cover
- Instant, in-depth reporting
- Keep track of key metrics in real-time
Communicate quickly and efficiently
Using a self-service HR system, HR staff can improve communication between HR, heads of departments, teachers and other staff by sending key messages and requests to dashboards or using a mail-merged broadcast email feature.
Communication tools within HR systems reduce the amount of time HR staff usually spend sending and responding to individual queries or requests.
Our HR solution enables HR staff to add important messages as a pop up when staff log in to the self-service dashboard. This feature can be used to provide information on a wide variety of topics including Covid-19 vaccine updates, expenses deadlines and new training courses, helping to streamline communications throughout the school community.
Give staff control over their employee details
Self-service HR dashboards – particularly those accessible via a mobile app – give teachers and other staff a convenient way to view their employment terms and benefits, school handbook and payslips as well as manage their holiday, sick leave requests and employee documents.
With staff able to access their payslips via a dashboard, HR staff can save time spent on emailing payslips out to individual staff members. The ability to view employment terms or school handbooks means less communication is required for individual queries, as staff know where to look for key information.
The upshot of staff and managers being able to log and monitor absences is greater accuracy of data, which has proved incredibly important over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure the management of long term absences and providing wellbeing support to affected staff.
Manage absences and organise cover
Self-service HR systems enable staff to manage their own absences, including requesting holidays or self-certifying illnesses. Our HR solution contains a dedicated absence section for administrators to keep track of – and approve – pending absence requests, with the ability to push this information into our Cover Manager module. This ensures the relevant staff are notified of an absence and are able to make cover arrangements quickly and efficiently.
Instant, in-depth reporting
Another benefit of self-service HR systems such as iSAMS HR is the ability to run in-depth reports on crucial metrics such as absences at the click of a button. As staff are able to request and record their own absences, administrators have all the information they need in the system to run a report without having to input the data manually.
Reports can be broken down by various parameters, such as department or job role, meaning HR staff can easily provide detailed updates to senior management on any number of topics. In the case of absences, the report will display the duration of absence, the type and reason and even the cost.
Keep track of key metrics in real-time
Self-service HR solutions provide administrative staff with an interactive dashboard that gives an overview of key tasks and data, such as pending employee requests, absence duration and costs, employee headcount and more.
Our HR solution dashboard can be customised to give staff oversight of key reports in real-time, such as how many staff are furloughed, self-isolating due to Covid-19 or working from home. As staff can enter their details via the app, these details are collated and updated automatically.
If you find yourself inundated with time-consuming, administrative tasks, it might be time to consider an HR solution that helps create a more efficient working environment, streamlines employee requests and communication and offers a centralised space for HR staff and other employees to manage their details.