Employees are the most important resource in any organization. If they are engaged, working well, and productive, there's a great chance that your company is also doing well. If they aren't, the results are disheartening.
So, how can you optimize the performance of your employees and manage them effectively? Invest in an employee management software. Don't know what it is and how it can help?
Here's a comprehensive guide that will help you understand what an employee management system is and how it can be beneficial to your business. We also go over the key features to look for in employee management software.
What according to you lies at the core of every successful business? It’s an efficiently managed team. Employee management is a thorough approach to managing, supervising, and guiding team members with the intention of helping them attain their optimal potential and contribute positively to the business objectives and vision.
It includes an array of processes, be it hiring, training, or up-skilling, to performance assessment, development, or conflict resolution. Employee management is the pillar that ensures the seamless operations of an organization, fostering both individual and business success.
For effective employee management, you should also consider the diverse requirements of employees while keeping in mind their unique skill sets, strengths, and development areas. Additionally, by ensuring to creation of an inclusive learning environment, employee management promotes job satisfaction.
An employee management software (EMS) is a technology stack that is designed to streamline, track, and assess employee performance. Companies use employee management software to automate a lot of HR, scheduling, and project planning tasks. The software also provides valuable insight into employee productivity and efficiency.
All departments and company types can benefit from resource management software
The key features of the system you should look out for include:
Comprehensive and centralized employee database
Ease of use and intuitive interface
Attendance and work time tracking
Overtime and leave management
Data reporting
Financial metrics
Automation of HR functions like onboarding, recruitment, payroll, and benefits
Drag and drop employee scheduling
Visual project flow
Comprehensive reports
Visual dashboards
Performance management
Having an employee management system in your organization will keep all the employee and project data in one centralized place. Let's delve a bit deeper into the benefits.
Looking to save costs and increase productivity while keeping all employees happy and satisfied?
You can do this all (and much more) with an employee management software. Resource scheduling software will give you the following advantages.
An employee scheduling software will save time and increase productivity because it automates a lot of the time-consuming HR and project management processes.
For example, tracking attendance, payroll calculations, leave requests, and scheduling. This automation frees up both the employee and HR team so they can focus their energies on more strategic and important tasks.
Through a centralized employee database that enables document storage and stores all employee information, businesses have a safe and secure place to house all data including experience, skill set, billing rate, long-term and short-term availability, and work preferences of their staff.
A manager can search the database to find the right talent for a task and schedule them using a simple drag-and-drop. This will save the manager from endless phone calls and email chains to find an employee for a job. The employees on the other hand can check their allocations, project schedules, and be on the same page with such a tool.
The centralized database of employee scheduling systems provides the visibility to managers about all the resources at their disposal, so they can truly find the best fit for the job even if the resource is based in a different location.
This eases task management for them and they can allocate the most suitable people for their projects. It also helps team members in different locations to be on the same page as they all check the same plan, status, and reports and dashboards uploaded on the tool.
Staff management software allows project managers to track resources available for projects at hand and allocate them appropriately.
A manager can identify if a resource is assigned several tasks concurrently and reassign some of their responsibilities to avoid over-utilization and burnout. Likewise, if they notice a resource is sitting idle, they can be assigned to an appropriate role.
By monitoring resource utilization rates, the manager can ensure the company has enough resources at hand to avoid last-minute costly hires for upcoming projects.
The tool also provides managers with insight into high-priority tasks vs. low-priority ones. They can realign the scheduling to ensure that the majority of the workforce is working on billable and urgent requirements than non-billable tasks.
A staff management system can be accessed by all managers and team members, and it serves as a great medium to promote communication and collaboration. Employees can see who else is working on the same project and who might have expertise in a certain area.
They can also set their availability, request schedule changes and certain projects, and notify a manager of an issue instantaneously.
For managers, the system can give an insight into how their employees are doing. If an employee is taking longer on a task than the allocated time, they can step in to understand the issue.
Also, they can take the employee's work preferences into account while scheduling them, which leads to higher employee satisfaction. This way the employees also feel that their career goals are equally important to the organization.
Managers can also gain visibility into employee availability, their core strengths, allocations, and leave plans. This helps to create accurate schedules and resource allocation plans.
With staff management software, project managers can also collaborate across departments and boost employee engagement. Just like other top scheduling tools, staff management software helps employees to share data and large files safely and easily.
If you want to review something, share sensitive employee data, or check the project or resource plan, an employee management system helps to collaborate with remote employees based in different geographies as well.
This helps to maximize resource utilization, simplifies team management and reduce costs.
A staff management software comes with a lot of employee data that can be easily accessed from anywhere and by almost anyone in the organization.
HR teams can set approvals for who gets to see which data points as per their roles and responsibilities ensuring data accuracy. This data can be used in real-time to speed up the decision-making process. One no longer has to spend time gathering the data and then analyzing it.
With an employee management software, all data like resource utilization and capacity, employee performance, actual project cost vs. projected cost, and actual time taken vs estimated time taken, is available in real-time. One can even select how to view the data with reporting tools like GANTT charts, excel sheets, or a visual workflow.
Insights on employee engagement, turnover, productivity, and much more can be derived from these data sets. Managers are equipped with all the tools they need to remain on top of how their employees and the projects within the company are doing.
Employee management systems replace the need for multiple HR systems and processes. The centralized EMS manage payments and maintains employee records and automatically calculates a resource's pay and benefits based on the time captured.
It reduces the chance of human error and delays. As all the data is stored in one place and can be easily referenced, you are putting yourself in a position to minimize any compliance risks.
When you are able to accurately assign work to the right employees and monitor it well by providing timely feedback, you are setting your organization up for better employee engagement and job satisfaction.
Both these factors impact your company's work culture and environment leading to better staff management and employee experience.
It is also important for staff management software to have built-in capabilities for time-tracking to track hours worked. Employees can log into the tool to enter the time spent on various tasks and activities throughout the day, and managers can pull up reports and dashboards to analyze that data for performance management.
Such data also helps in billing and payroll processing in the case of freelance or contractual employees. Therefore, choosing a tool with time-tracking features is the best bet.
When resources are utilized to their optimal capacity, they are provided tasks and projects that comfortably challenge them, and they can see a scope for professional growth.
This helps them position themselves in a way that they become champions and not only serve the clients well but also spread positive messaging about working within the company. This will help the firm hire and retain the brightest minds and benefits administration.
Let’s now understand what the various types of employee management software are available.
It’s important for business leaders and project managers of medium-sized businesses or large organizations to monitor the productivity of their team members to track how they are performing. This is where productivity and time management tools step in. These solutions are crafted to:
Measure productive or billable and non-productive hours
Task management
Track the projects each resource is working on
Check any possible red flags or signs of time wastage/p>
Monitor any other factors affecting resource efficiency
Such solutions provide insight into what specific periods in a week, month, or year are busiest for each team or department and allow project managers to identify when a team member should be more productive.
An important element in efficient employee management is the HR management solution. These HR tools save all the key employee information like contact details such as contact information, list employee benefits, and structure human resources operations to improve the decision-making process.
These systems offer a comprehensive solution for a business’s human resources activities and processes, be it onboarding new employees, offering a learning management system, storing important employee documentation, integrating with payroll software, etc.
Additionally, there are many manual compliance-related tasks under HR processes that could be time-consuming and expensive. However, implementing such a tool could make this process simpler and enable managers to save time and money by storing all HR documentation in this software and leveraging it as a communication tool.
Effective and open communication channels are a pre-requisite for the team to succeed. With team collaboration software, employees can access the tool from anywhere and at any given time and remain connected to be able to collaborate easily and effectively.
Cloud-based software act as a centralized online platform where any team member can log in from anywhere in the world and access the required data.
This helps each employee’s queries to be resolved and, therefore, successful and timely task completion. With such tools, it’s also very easy for team members across various locations to exchange data seamlessly, Get their work reviewed, and get feedback, thus enhancing employee engagement and fostering employee feedback.
Choosing the best-suited employee management solution for your business incorporates carefully analyzing your company’s requirements, key objectives, and short- and long-term priorities.
You should keep in mind the following points while looking for employee management software:
Begin by evaluating your organization’s needs and identifying the critical factors of employee management that impact your business. This could include performance management, time tracking, resource scheduling, utilization rate tracking, leave management, etc.
You need to start by drafting a list of all the features that are most critical to your organizational requirements.
Then, determine a budget as to how much your company is ready to shell out in employee management apps. For medium-sized businesses, start-ups, or large organizations, initial upfront costs are the key factor when making this investment. The right tool also helps save time for a small business, eliminates errors, and leads to an encouraging return on investment or ROI.
However, you must also remember to add any ongoing costs, like maintenance support or subscription fees. Having said that, if you are a business owner of a professional services company that is just setting up, do try various tools that offer a free plan.
After you have determined your business’s requirements and budget, you should start reviewing various employee management software available in the market.
Try to shortlist systems offering the features and functionalities you need. It’s good to research by reading reviews, and case studies to know the experiences of other people.
When you’re ready to make a final decision, sign up for free trials and demos of the shortlisted employee management apps on your list. This enables you to test the system firsthand, assess its features, its ease of use, and which one offers superior customer support. Only after doing so, should you decide the one that complies with your organization’s needs.
It’s also a good idea to take feedback from resources who will use the tool regularly in the future. Also, check which tool offers a customer support team, free plan, and free support services.
Additionally, reading up on reviews and opinions of experts and checking the ratings of your shortlisted tools on independent websites help to gauge the pros and cons of each tool along with its reasons. Customer stories and other case studies help to gain valuable insights and assess various options.
Businesses and their human resource function face a different challenge these days. Wondering what is that? With a lot of organizations embracing varied demographics of team members, they need to stay connected and quickly respond to employees who may possess different skill levels, may be located in different geographies, or could be from different age groups, experience levels, and may have unique career goals.
Consequently, there has been a huge rise in demand for cloud-based, user-friendly, and easy-to-understand solutions for managing talent in a business. Hence, choosing the best employee management software becomes important.
Let’s see the features that employee management software should have, which could facilitate human resources departments in improving their hiring process and resource and talent management.
By implementing a robust HR strategy, businesses can make sure that their onboarding process for new hires is streamlined, easy, and yet impactful.
A cloud-based online platform that can help new employees understand the processes, company culture, and key organizational goals can be a boon. Such a tool helps new joinees to quickly feel informed and understand their expectations of them. They will feel at ease if they can virtually get familiar with the job, their role, and responsibilities, or other important details about the organization before they sign in to work on the first day.
As compared to earlier times when a solution only included annual reviews, these days the performance management process includes a constant feedback loop and has a 360-degree approach. This has a huge benefit. It helps both the staff and the managers to give regular feedback and suggestions to each other.
Performance monitoring software tracks the tasks that each resource is working on and the time spent on each activity or project, which further aids in calculating their productivity. Automated staff management software prompts a department or a manager to share feedback or review an employee’s performance.
Organizations need to master the art of tailoring learnability and instruction to maximize success. Feedback loops and sharing relevant data can enable the evaluation of a learner’s current competency levels and interests and then map those skills with individual preferences and organizational goals. With the right staff management software, you can manage human resources, create forms, track course completion, create surveys, and foster talent development.
This is an important consideration when opting for the right tool. Its ability to integrate with any other tools that your business is using currently, like payroll, recruitment, benefits administration, etc., can streamline processes and offer a smooth experience.
Small businesses need to have smooth integration with any other existing communication and collaboration systems to improve teamwork and gain higher productivity in the company.
It is important for any tool to have customization options so that it aligns with the company’s specific requirements and processes. The software’s capability to tailor the solution to fit your unique needs, such as customizing forms, filters, workflows, or reporting, can hugely influence the tools’s effectiveness and value.
To identify the best-suited tool for your organization, always keep in mind the size of your business and team. A large-scale business should choose an approach that helps to monitor performance and productivity.
However, a small business that depends on highly skilled employees could choose staff management software and a management strategy aimed at fostering creativity and collaboration and go for a free plan first.
In any way, you must always deliberate on the pros and cons of whichever employee management app you choose and get a buy-in from some team members or managers to get an opinion.
An effective and comprehensive employee scheduling software will enable you to monitor and maximize resources. The platform also promotes collaboration, communication, engagement, and satisfaction for the entire team. So why not let employee management software bring you more accuracy, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness? This staff management software also eases performance management and improves employee engagement.
If you are looking for the best employee management systems, eResource Scheduler is surely your best bet. Be it small businesses, medium-sized businesses, or large multinational organizations, this tool helps manage your employees effectively and easily. You will not only be able to see all information about your employees in one place visually you will also get real-time insights about what they are working on, their billing rate, and their availability.
An award-winning cloud-based tool offered by Enbraun Technologies, eResource Scheduler is a staff management software that helps to raise your utilization rate between 18 to a whopping 30%. Can't believe it? Yes, and not only that, the tool also handles time tracking and workforce management while offering valuable insights leading to data-driven decisions.
An integrated solution that enables you to easily create tasks for remote teams and efficiently manage HR processes by offering detailed analytics, eResource Scheduler is the best employee management software. Go for a free trial to find out how it brings benefits to your organization.
Also read:
Project resource management: an ultimate guide on how to master it
12 jobs that robots (AI) will replace in the future, and 12 that won’t
What is employee performance management and why it is important
What is the full-time equivalent (fte) and when should you use it?
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