Using #hrtech to keep your employees (distantly) engaged.

Whilst lockdown restrictions are being eased and more people are returning to work, many businesses have realised that having employee’s work from home whether it be full time or one or two days per week is more than viable. If managed properly home working can increase productivity and reduce overheads within the organisation whilst maintaining employee engagement.

One of the keys to achieving this is to improve and maximise communication between HR and employees. It is essential that employees still feel fully involved with the organisation and are still part of the team even if they are not working in the same office every day.

Additionally,  keeping employees informed and engaged can not only enhance performance and improve productivity (and therefore profitability) it will have the added benefit of improving employee well-being especially where employees spend more time working from home.

Lockdown has proven for many that #hrtech makes it possible for employees to work from home through online meetings. In some cases, the entire recruitment and onboarding process has been done remotely with great success proving that times have indeed changed.

For HR, managing employee information and maintaining communication has never been more important. In order to achieve this it is essential to have a system in place that can retain your employees information centrally and securely that enables you to streamline your processes and procedures to make it as easy as possible for employees to keep up to date and carryout tasks such as booking holidays and recording sickness absence via Employee Self Service.

All employee information should be recorded within the system against each employee such as their employment history, Salary history, key contact details, company vehicles or other asset details, training and development records, and any documentation relating to the employee.

The system then needs to provide different levels of access depending on the role of the employee (HR, Manager, Employee) to not only enable users to allow users to access information and perform tasks that is relevant to their role but also to comply with GDPR.

Additionally the system needs to provide functionality that is designed specifically to provide information and processes to keep employees informed and engaged. This includes:

• Online Holiday Booking and Sickness Absence reporting with built in processes.
• Quick access Absence Planner to enable Managers and Employees keep a visual track of their holiday and absence days.
• Centralised company documents directory to provide access to all company policy documents which tracks when an employee has read a document
• Configurable Letter template tool, enabling HR to send employees letters such as Pay Rise Letters (and more recently Furlough Letters) to individual employees or a selection of employees.
• Employee Surveys to facilitate a two way communication with your employees to ensure they feel engaged with the added benefit of collecting vital information and data to help you analyse the current ‘mood’ of your workforce.
• A Company News section to keep employees up-to-date with the latest company information whether it be informing them of a new employee or the latest updates on current events such as Coronavirus updates.
• Intelligent Employee Directory for quick access to employee work contact details across departments

Implementing a #hrtech system that can provide this functionality will not only improve communication and make your processes and procedures more efficient and effective, it will also result in added benefits for the company such as increased performance and productivity and cut operational overheads.