What is Employee self-service?

The word employee self-service is self-explanatory. The meaning is as simple as the word. Do it yourself is what the word self-service indicates. No jargons, no big terms with a heavy meaning attached to the word.

I will narrate a true scenario which I witnessed where I worked sometime back. In that organization, the salaries of the employees would be credited to the respective bank accounts’ of the employees. There was one employee who switched to another bank and wanted to get his bank details updated before the payroll got generated so that he doesn’t miss out on his pay for that particular month. When he approached the respective Human Resource Manager in this account he found that the person was on leave and would continue to be on leave for the next couple of days. The employee was confused and felt helpless. What do you think might have happened? Forget about not getting timely payment (he was given a cheque) the employee got very frustrated at the end of this exercise. He was totally miffed with the HR, the policies and the organization as a whole.

The employees strive a lot to help the organization improve its productivity, business and reputation. Is it not your responsibility to give them a better and tension free experiences? Are you not creating a negative impression in the minds of the employees that the organization is not employee friendly?

What is the HR solution?

The best way to give the employees a better experience of the processes in your organization is by switching to employee self-service which is a web based application.

There are many basic details and modifications which the employees themselves can do. The details can be related to personal records which involve change of address, bank details, contact details, emergency numbers etc., In fact, it is always advisable to get those details filled by them. We usually pay more attention and interest when it involves our details and moreover disputes and resentments arising out of improper or wrong filling of information by another person, most likely HR can be avoided.

Have you ever come across a situation when you needed documents like your proof of employment or payslips etc., for say getting a phone connection, or a loan. With self-service you can get them processed yourself. The letter is issued by the system in your name with the authorised signature in place. Don’t you feel the self-service makes yours’ and your employees’ job and life less complicated? Through this self-service, you can even nominate yourself for a training program and if you are the manager you can nominate somebody for the program in just a click. Employee referrals too can be done.

To add on, you can even keep track of your knowledge and skills development as also your manager and HR. This keeps them posted about your upskills which in turn might improve chances of your growth in the organization owing to your ability to keep pace with the changing trends and demands.

What are additional benefits of employee self-service?

Apart from the above listed points, there are some more added benefits to self-service which are:

• Cumbersome and error prone paperwork can be avoided. Files are both difficult to store and handle. This way you can contribute in your own way towards the reduction of paper usage which in turn makes difference to the eco-system be it big or small.
• You will be empowering your employees by enabling them to take charge of their learning and development. We all feel good to write about their achievements and learning. This can be an effective and efficient way of keeping track of the employees development which can be utilised during deployment for projects and appraisals too.
• This reduces our dependency on the HR resulting in the reduction of personnel handling these tasks manually  which in turn helps you to get the required work done more effectively and efficiently by cutting down on the overheads.

The benefits are plenitude. You name the area and self-service is there to serve you.

By adopting the web based application of self-service you are doing a great service to yourself and to the employees.  The self-service enables employees to serve themselves better.