Many HR managers are facing a dilemma. They want to help find ways to save on workforce-related costs, find and hire better talent, and improve existing talent through training and development. But most days, routine administration drains away most of their available time.

If you recognize this dilemma, then this three-part blog is for you. In it we will consider the challenges facing HR professionals, what a fully functioning HRMS looks like, and how to quantify the benefits of implementing an HR product.

In this, our second post, we consider what a fully functioning HRMS looks like.

Core HR administration. Implementing an HRMS eliminates much of the routine paperwork associated with running the HR function. Without an HRMS, HR managers are often reliant on paper to manage employee processes. They are left struggling to track employee information using a combination of homegrown spreadsheets and office file cabinets. Information such as payroll records, benefit plan elections, and training certifications can end up in different locations, leading to avoidable errors. In this situation, it becomes at the very least tedious, if not impossible, to create timely reports and analysis.

HRMS automation frees up valuable time while improving accuracy. It ensures you can keep every piece of employee data in one place. Standardizing many HR administrative processes - including hiring, promoting, disciplining, transferring, or terminating an employee – it can also track family and medical leave and leave of absence, assign, or change benefits, change the salary or grade details for employees, and carry out safety reporting amongst many other functions.

With all your HR data one place, you can create timely, comprehensive reports for the business. Security features, such as audit trails, allow you to control and monitor who has access to sensitive employee data or who has changed data in the system.

Benefits management Routine benefits administration takes up a lot of HR professionals’ time, particularly when their company offers multiple benefits. By using benefits management functionality, the whole process is simplified from benefits setup to administration and enrolment, improving efficiency and accuracy.

Once setup, you can track & monitor employee elections and calculate contributions for benefits. And, when employees leave your company, you can track COBRA enrolments, coverage details, and payment history, and issue HIPAA certificates of coverage.

Time-off management Accurate attendance information is essential to managing costs and processing payroll accurately. With built-in analysis capabilities, you can pinpoint trends in absences and identify improvement areas. You can set up any number of employee attendance and time-off plans and report across multiple dimensions, allowing you to analyze reasons & identify opportunities to improve attendance levels.

Payroll processing Paying people consistently and correctly is vital to employee satisfaction. An HRMS with integrated payroll functionality offers many advantages - from automating payroll processing to remaining compliant with government regulations for taxes. With payroll and HR data stored together, errors are reduced and the need for duplicate entry of information is eliminated.

Compliance reporting Government regulations form an increasingly burdensome and complex compliance environment for most employers. Many regulations involve significant information tracking and reporting requirements. Mistakes can lead to penalties, as well as expose your company to the risk of lawsuits. An HRMS will track the necessary information to comply with requirements, while generating reports in the required formats. Regular legislative and compliance updates from Sage will also help to ensure your organization complies with changing tax and employment laws.

To learn more about Sage HRMS, take a look at a range of Quick Feature Demonstrations on the Sage Customer Support and Training YouTube channel as well as all the other resources available on the Sage City Community.

Next time: The impact of a well-planned HRMS to the bottom line