How you can prove the HR contribution to the increase of the business performance: use an all-in-one HR software
Are you one of the HR directors who has set out to build or strengthen the position of the HR department as a reliable Business Partner? Well, fortunately, in the last few years, there have appeared more and more tools that can help you with this approach.
Thanks to today’s HR platforms and to increasingly diversified applications, as an HR Manager today, more than ever, you have the necessary tools to prove the HR department’s contribution to increasing the company’s business performance, just as the Financial, Sales or Marketing Managers.
Most likely, at the department level, you already use a number of software or applications for recruiting, payroll, or timing processes. But how much can you use the information generated by them to quantify the impact of the entire HR department activity at the company level? It is often considered that the role of the HR department is only to help implement the business strategy, but with the right data, HR can also decisively contribute to shaping this strategy.
An all-in-one HR software gives you whenever you need real-time access to centralised situations on each HR vertical – for each department or company level. Quick access to relevant, correlated, detailed data helps you to contribute with valuable information to decision-making in top management debates or in any context where HR is called upon to help.
Benefits brought by an all-in-one HR software
One of the problems of HR departments when it comes to proving their contribution to increasing the company’s performance is that they do not have enough data to quantify their activity.
Using a single-purpose software solution (e.g. recruitment software) is a step forward in automating that process, increasing the efficiency of the HR department. On the other hand, this piecemeal approach does not provide an overview of the entire department’s work and of its interaction with the rest of the organisation – which it serves. Depending on the size of the company, in terms of costs and time to adjust, investments in disparate solutions may be quite high, and over time, the complexity of their separate management can compete with the initial benefits.
A good way to get access to figures and quantify the department’s contribution to improving the company’s entire business is to opt for an all-in-one HR software. It provides you with centralised data and allows you to consistently assess all of your department’s activities. The benefits are reflected in increasing the efficiency of the HR department in itself through automation or cost reductions and in increasing the strategic contribution that HR can come up with to the company’s activities.
The automation increases the productivity and efficiency of the HR department
An HR software allows you to automate many of the processes and flows that take place between managers or employees and the HR department. Also, the time spent with repetitive operational tasks drops considerably. You really know how much time is spent with manually inserting CVs in a database! Time savings can be seen both within HR teams and in relation to other departments – for example, you can quickly launch in the system recruitment and vacation applications to validate different forms or update hundreds of employment contracts simultaneously.
Moreover, when you are an internal provider of services and everyone is asking for something ASAP, it is useful to be able to track the communication status at any time, for example when a manager asks you for a short list of candidates for a particular vacancy.
The access to a single database ensures a clearer image of the department’s activities
As an HR manager, it is extremely important to have a complete picture of all the activities taking place at the department level. Having all the data generated by your teams saved in a single database in the same system, the comparison or correlation of information coming from different parts of the department becomes relevant.
The organisational transparency increases the employees’ motivation
Your department is making great efforts on the sourcing and recruitment side – it must permanently find new candidates, improve its selection, attract top pros and valuable people. All this effort is lost if, after hiring, there are no conditions for the employees to be happy and motivated. An important role here is played by internal communication.
An internal communication portal integrated into an all-in-one HR software provides benefits to every employee. For example, using the self-service, it has direct and fast access to all important personal documents such as the employment contract, days off, the goal plan, performance score sheets, etc. – eliminating the frustrations caused by the difficulty of accessing them by means of someone in the HR, maybe overwhelmed. An internal communication portal can provide extensive information – for example the company’s entire organisation chart, contributing to increased transparency and to a better knowledge of the organisation as a whole.
The HR analyses and the use of performance indicators enhance the HR position as a reliable Business Partner
Top level debates are based a lot on data – to support a position you need figures, concrete information, analyses, performance indicators, trends. For a long time, the HR department was perceived in the shadow of the other departments because it did not have access to sufficient data. Sometimes it is assimilated to those “soft skills” needed in working with people, but which do not, however, represent his only contribution to the company’s activity.
Instead, by using an all-in-one HR software and a centralised database, you have the prerequisites for expanded access to information, being able to make various HR analyses and reports. Depending on the level of interest, you can analyse:
- The improvement of the performance of your own department by tracking the KPIs, such as the efficiency of recruiting sources or costs of recruiting sources;
- Enhanced workflow at company level between HR as an internal service provider and managers and employees as internal clients. The input that the HR department receives from the rest of the organisation in order to be able to perform its tasks can be optimised by analysing, for example, the speed at which the HR receives the feedback from a recruiting manager on the shortlist proposed by the HR.
Performance indicators and reports generated by an all-in-one HR software
Information is power, and the amount of data collected and processed by means of such HR solutions is a source of information in many areas. This helps you make daily decisions in defining your strategy or in presenting the results obtained before the top management. Here are some types of indicators you can track and reports you can generate:
Statistics and trends based on aggregate data
- What percentage of the total number of candidates is from BestJobs source;
- How much has increased the performance of a particular department (based on the performance targets set) from one year to another or between different departments.
The recruitment process
- Efficiency of recruiting sources by comparing the number of candidates versus source costs, resulting in the impact on the total HR budget; you can also take into account the quality and relevance of the source for the type of candidate you are seeking (production workers or “white collars” on LinkedIn);
- The closure speed of role-based recruitment projects, in conjunction with the difficulty of finding a suitable candidate for the job, in order to highlight the impact on the development strategy.
Performance management
- Real-time goal achievement tracking, which can be aggregated at different levels, either at the department or at the company level;
- Monitoring the performance evaluation process at the level of the entire company – the HR is here only the one that sets the framework and must track the involvement of others in the process; on-going on the process, you know at any time, in real time, the stage of things: who is involved, who set the goals, who has already done the evaluations, where there are bottlenecks, etc .;
- Comparative analyses by departments.
Trainings
- Training costs versus performance evolution;
Internal communication
- The time saved by HR by the employees’ using the self-service functionalities (access to the employment contract, days off, goal plan, performance evaluation sheets, available trainings, organisational chart, information on colleagues) vs. “live” interruptions of HR people;
- Proving that there is a direct link between increasing organisational transparency (facilitating access to information) and increasing employees’ engagement.
Other important strategic analyses for the company that you can make include the comparison between Staffing performance indicators (such as time to fill a position, cost per hire, recruiting conversion rate) resulting from actions under the direct control of HR, versus Retention indicators, which depend on managers’ behaviour and the entire motivation and performance management system (what we do to keep productivity and motivation for employees after we brought them in the company).
If your job-related priority list also contains the strengthening of the HR department position as a vital partner in the company’s success, then please consider the benefits of an all-in-one HR software as an essential part of your plans – besides day-to-day operational benefits.
When looking for such a solution, please make sure that it will provide you with the necessary support for implementation, that it offers already established and tested HR procedures, or that you get a turnkey solution that can be customised where needed.