In the second of this four part blog series, Roger Moore, Managing Director of Bond HR & Payroll Software, looks at how the role of HR is changing. But how many HR departments are successfully making the transition?
Under pressure
HR is under increasing pressure to undertake far more strategic activity, from succession planning and management training to tracking trends in staff absence and improving employee wellbeing. It supports an increasingly dispersed employee base with the growth in flexible and remote working.
Yet as recent research undertaken by Redshift Research on behalf of Bond HR & Payroll Software reveals, HR is still overloaded with basic, day to day administration and employee queries.
Employee support
Error, delay and lack of available information is resulting in more employees than ever relying on HR departments to rectify simple problems – and undermining the core role as a result. Payslip queries still dominate employee contact with HR (43% of all queries) and despite the fact that remote and home working is now common place, only 5% of employees have anytime access to HR and payroll information.
Employees are clearly failing to get access to the information required from HR – in either a timely or complete fashion. Our research showed that two thirds of employees felt that HR departments were not giving them sufficient information based on their requests.
In fact, 42% of employees do not know about their individual employee benefits or have had to research the topic themselves to understand their entitlement. Employees also state that they have had to wait too long for the HR team to respond to enquiries; 43% have waited for two days or longer to discover the information – which when looking for advice on a payslip for a weekly paid employee is just not acceptable.
Access to information
One of the problems is the way in which employees can access information. Over 70% of employees have limited or onsite only access to HR information – including paper based. And even when self-service portals are available, the majority of individuals can only access the portal when in the office or on work devices, a model that clearly does not support the growing number of part time, remote, home and flexible workers employed by most organisations.
Conclusion
Organisations need to recognise the value of enabling employees to both access and submit important personal data to support both HR and Payroll activity. Those organisations that have such a process in place will not only minimise unnecessary delays and confusion, but also free up HR to concentrate on strategic requirements and, as a result, gain engaged and knowledgeable employees.
