It is difficult to anticipate the benefits of taking your payroll online. This was a challenge faced by one of our recent customers where the HR department found it challenging to estimate the ROI derived from implementation of an integrated Payroll software.

This article describes some of the benefits analyzed and presented to the senior management such that critical purchase dollars were allocated for the procurement.

The exercise which started as a small initiative actually helped me dive deeper into how a CFO or CEO perceive their human resources department and what are their expectations from an HR platform.

What I will share here is a small part of the study in how organizations are managing their human capital assets and the challenges being faced versus what are the best practices. In this, I will share what are the different metrics and how can organizations save costs in this critical area.

Elements of ROI

To determine the ROI, we had to first understand how the payroll process works in a manual environment. Our interactions revealed that there are three distinct steps in the successful processing of a payroll which are:

1. Data gathering
2. Processing
3. Disbursement and Reporting

For each of these steps above, there are multiple sub-processes which may take substantial effort and time.

To understand the complexities involved in payroll processing and gaining deeper insights into challenges being faced, we further analyzed many other companies across multiple industry verticals, different employee types (blue collared, white collared, management) and found a median effort for each of the sub-processes. Some of these sub-processes on which we could identify the metrics are:

1. General

a. Number of FTE (Full Time Employees) required

2. Data Gathering

a. Number of time records processed in one year
b. Number of Employee Validation Errors seen during the year for time records which will require corrections and authorizations at multiple employee levels.
c. Time for adding a new employee to the system with salary structures and all other required data
d. Time for removing a terminated employee from the payroll system.

3. Processing of Payroll

a. Number of payroll transactions processed
b. Cycle time for audit of payroll prior to disbursement
c. Number of manual checks disbursed.

4.Disbursement and Reporting

a. Number of payroll related queries
b. No of payment errors
c. Cycle time to process a payroll error
d. Time for creation of reports which are submitted on a monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and annually per employee

Once these metrics were identified, we studied the impact of these metrics in manual processing vs processing using web-based, integrated software such as EmpXtrack.

The example below refers to the results for a mid-sized organization with approximately 1,000 employees across multiple locations. The results are the total time spent in one year for processing monthly payrolls.

The analysis of the above data gave an unimaginable saving of costs to the tune of $150,000 per year which is much higher than the cost of acquisition of a software such as EmpXtrack.

The following image graphically illustrates the impact of some of the parameters in the chart above:

We further analyzed the intangible benefits (some of which had cost implications as well) of using our web-based software. Some of these are:

1. No need to print payslips. Employees can view their payslips online and these are emailed automatically as well for their records.
2. Minimum payroll related queries post processing. Allows the accounts/HR to complete many more important tasks.
3. Minimum impact when salaries change. Update at a single place is reflected automatically. This avoids reprocessing of payroll.
4. Low impact when new employees are added. For example - for a multi-locational organization with distributed hiring, it becomes difficult to process payroll for new employees.
5. Minimum impact when employees quit.
6. Integration with time reporting systems saves costly mistakes and reprocessing time.
7. Automatic updates to tax tables when the need arises.
8. Archiving of Payroll data for statistical analysis in respect of different employee types.

To analyze the ROI for your company, please fill in the attached form and contact us. We will be happy to analyze your processes, at no obligations, and suggest areas where improvements can be carried out.

Mindtree has grown from 0 to 3500 people and crossed $ 102 Million in revenue, all in six years, making it one of the highest performing companies in India.

Based on Subroto’s personal experiences, the book is all about entrepreneurship and how an organization can achieve high growth. Being involved in development and implementation of Performance Management Systems, one paragraph caught my attention.

Under chapter “Getting Good People and Keeping Them”, Subroto says’ “I can never overstate the importance of five things in managing high performance professionals: setup a performance management system that everyone understands, communicate with people with evangelical regularity, listen to the voice of your people through forums and regular perception surveys that are conducted by an outside agency, focus on development of leadership and finally create a support network for your leaders. If an organization knows how to do these five things right, it can scale without breaking up.”

He further tells about the processes at Mindtree, “The annual business plan of the company flows from the vision and in turn, determines the allocation of the resources. Individual objectives then flow out of the annual plan and people get their performance evaluation done at the end of the year, based on these objectives.”

We at Saigun always reiterated that a good performance management system in an absolute necessity for any organization to improve performance of its people. It is good to see that our thoughts are in conciliation with that of great business leaders like Baghchi. Unless business leaders set SMART goals for their key people and guide them to achieve them, it is difficult for company to become a high-performance organization.

A positive and fair measure of performance is a great motivator to employees. On other hand poorly handled appraisals in any organization leads to de-motivation and attrition.

Easier said than done, managing performance of the employees requires meticulous planning and execution. There are mainly two tasks at hand – managing the content for performance management system and managing the process. One needs to have written job descriptions, well define organizational goals, set of competencies and skills required for employees etc., which help employees understand the requirements of performance.

On the other hand, HR have to manage the processes like objectives setting/ appraisal, continuously track the progress of performance management system, collect data, and create reports for further decisions like increments, promotions, training and development of employees.

EmpXtrack Performance Management Software has helped many companies to improve their performance management process. EmpXtrack has inbuilt job descriptions, competency and skills library, sample appraisal forms, predefined workflows etc. to help you quickly design and implement the Performance Management System for your organization.

If you want your organization to become a high-performance organization by putting a performance management system in place, feel free to fill the following form and one of our consultants will get back to you to discuss your needs.

In turn, educational institutions are continually striving for improving their output both in terms of numbers and the quality of talent offered for varying jobs in different types of organizations. The excellence of output from an educational institution depends on the quality of their faculty, support services and infrastructure. To achieve higher levels of excellence, institutions need to set high performance goals for their academic and non-academic staff. These goals should be effectively measured at frequent intervals to bridge performance gaps, if any. Institutions which can effectively manage the performance of their faculty and other employees can leave their mark on industry.

Thus, having the best of class performance management software is not only a need of the hour but an enabler of excellence in an educational institution.

EmpXtrack team has published a case study on Performance Management System for Educational Institutions.

Downlaod Case Study: Fill this form to download the case study:

A survey about SaaS conducted in August 2009 by Business Week Research Services found that four out of five managers and senior executives in North America are either interested in, or in the process of, adopting the Software as a Service approach to information technology. In fact, roughly a third of the 326 respondents’ companies have already fully or partially adopted the SaaS approach for at least one application. Read more …

What is in SaaS that is enticing senior executives from all streams of management (IT, finance, HR or S&M), apart from cost benefits?  Talent Junction explores eight key features of SaaS applications that are usually missing in traditional ERP software.

1. Usability: Web 2.0 SaaS software cares much more for usability than its older cousin ERP did. Vendors have understood the value of usability to end-users and are committing more budgets in analyzing the user behavior while working with the software.

Using this analysis, developers continually re-engineer the design to make it more usable. Menu structures, buttons, messages, user interface, and even application colors are chosen keeping web conventions in mind.

Read more about usability from expert Jacob Neilson.

2. Intuitive Graphic User Interface: SaaS and Web 2.0 applications are far more intuitive than legacy ERP systems. The actions, buttons, messages, etc. communicate to users in a way that most can understand what to do next. Graphics, images, and icons all are designed to convey meaningful and user-friendly messages.

The intuitive interface of SaaS application significantly reduces training needs. Thus, for large organizations, where training multiple teams requires big budgets, SaaS applications are a money-saver.

I would love to share a comment from a happy customer who uses SaaS application for Performance Management “We made the decision to roll this out without any training. Our employees took to it without any effort. We did so without any special training for employees. They all found it easy to manage and intuitive. We’re very happy with the end result.” Read the complete comment here…

3. Collaboration: With the advent of social media and its impact on businesses, collaboration is seen as a tool to develop social learning within the organization. Web 2.0 and SaaS software is significantly advanced in terms of facilitating collaboration among the user community. These applications allow users to share insights, comments, notes, references, and documents within the user groups. The use of such applications not only improves employee productivity but also enhances social learning within the organization. 

4. Global Accessibility: With the rising culture of working from home, flexible working hours, etc., the need for anywhere-access to productivity applications is really pressing. SaaS software has made this a reality. As most SaaS-based applications are accessible via Internet, the access to application is global. Anyone who has access to Internet connection can use the application and be productive. Then, why wouldn’t executives and leaders love SaaS?

Note for Security paranoids: A SaaS application can also be installed on a secured server (with https:// access) and for companies who need high security levels, the access to employees can be routed via virtual network.

5. Configuration Outbids Customization: Another novel feature that SaaS model brings to business applications is its ability to configure the application instead of customization (which requires a software programmer to change).

A configurable SaaS software allows users and administrators to set their own preferences, enable or disable a feature, change the user interface look and feel, etc., thus significantly reducing the need for customization. This is achieved by stuffing more and more features into the application (often more than what a single customer can think of and use) and allowing the client to use or discontinue a feature by merely toggling a check box . Now customers have better control on the application that was non-existent even in big ERPS.

6. Feature /Technology Mass Upgrades: SaaS overcomes one of the biggest handicaps of the legacy systems – features and technology upgrades for mass users.

Most SaaS applications use a common base architecture (except a few pieces that are used for individual configurations). SaaS vendors are engaged in continuous R&D on the base application. New features and functions are added to the base application. As base upgrades for all customers, everyone can start using new features and functions (if they desire to do so). And there is no need to worry about the impact of configuration settings as configuration settings are managed in separate pieces.

This mass upgrade also helps vendors to offer new features at comparatively low cost. To exist in the market, the vendors of SaaS applications have to continuously innovate & provide to the client not only new features but better services. Thus quality improvement is an unending process in the SaaS environment.

7. Zero IT Hassles for Clients: The biggest beneficiaries of SaaS are the IT managers.

In ERP systems, vendors developed the application for clients and IT managers were primarily responsible for maintaining and troubleshooting the systems, with vendor providing technical support on the basis of SLA. This had exposed IT managers to many challenges – mainly due to lack of technical expertise on a particular ERP system. They heavily depended on vendors for simplest of troubleshooting.

SaaS, on the other hand, has relieved IT managers of the application maintenance burden, as the application is maintained by the same vendor who developed it and has ample qualified resources available for troubleshooting. The improvement in application uptime significantly improves the end-user productivity.

8. Higher Security Levels: Unlike legacy ERP, SaaS applications share resources (hardware, servers, and security solutions) for multiple customers. This enables the SaaS vendors to acquire high efficiency and high-security platforms to host applications, something which is not financially feasible for single customer (if they are not a billion-dollar company). Thus, even small and medium businesses enjoy the features that so far only big businesses could afford. This makes SaaS software a natural choice for enterprise management.

What Next: If you are looking for a usable, intuitive, configurable, collaborative, and highly secure Web 2.0 SaaS application for your human resource department, I would invite you for a demo of EmpXtrack. The founders of EmpXtrack have consistently worked on these features since the inception of the software, by involving researchers and experts to enhance SaaS factors.

After a year or so the news on recession is taking a U-turn (not a V-turn though). Officially, analysts are reporting that recession is over, including Google CEO. While it will take some time for recession to pave the way for prosperity and growth for business in general, the prosperity is already on its way to certain economies such as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

HR May be Caught Off Guard

Although this is good news for business operations, including marketing and sales, it poses new challenges for human capital. Businesses would no longer run on the old rules, but new out-of-the-box solutions, more comprehensive efforts, innovative thinking, and new skills and competencies would be required to grow and prosper. Needless to say, the demand for both the quantity and the quality of talented employees will grow worldwide. Companies that have fired employees in the past are already feeling the pinch, as they do not have enough bandwidth to execute.

Bloggers like Jon Ingham, who champion the cause of Human Capital Management, are being invited to speak on performance management. The need for performance management is pressing.

Talent Scenario During Recession

The law of demand and supply mercilessly applies to human resources, also. During the economic downturn, companies were able to downsize by getting rid of redundant work force and dead wood. They also restructured the employee compensation (mostly by decreasing) to stave off financial losses. Only those employees were retained who proved their worth. The employees had to accept all kinds of compensation-related compromises while maintaining the same or even higher level of efficiency and productivity. They could thus survive the financial tsunami.

These survivors got the opportunity to handle a variety of tasks that further sharpened their skills and made them multi-skilled. Thus, overall quality of talent has increased. At the same time, those who were out of job lost this opportunity to hone their skills in a new challenging environment. Adding to our woes, slashing of training and development budgets has led to a depletion of the number of skilled employees within the companies.

And a Difficult Road Ahead

Such steps from companies have created an altogether tricky scenario: The quality of talent within the companies has increased (raising the bar of the talent), while the quality of skills available in job market has dwindled. Now, recruiters can hire the required quality talent not from outside but from inside their competitors’ workplace. 

While many have forgotten the term “War for Talent”, the phenomenon is slowly re-emerging. “A study by Accenture has found that more than two-thirds of executives are now deeply concerned about not being able to recruit and retain the best talent. In today’s global and highly competitive economy, the war for talent is now global, not local. The survey of more than 850 top executives from the U.S, UK, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and China found worries about talent management were growing, with 67 per cent this year putting it second only behind competition as the key threat, up from 60 per cent last year.” Read more.

It may be worth noting that great companies such as Infosys, responded to the downturn by investing more in training. Instead of fearing of financial losses, these corporates focused on improving the quality of their employees’ skills. And the effect is visible in their financial results. Member of Infosys’ board of directors and head of HRD and Education and Research, T V Mohandas Pai said, “In response to the economic crisis, we had stepped up our investment in training. This has made us more competitive in fulfilling clients’ needs today.”

The demand for talent in the market will never cease. Retention will always be a challenge.

New Definition of Talent

While war for talent continues, the bar for talent also goes up. Old skills and competencies may not work.  Companies now need salesman who does not sell products but does sell solutions; production managers no longer control the operations, they are expected to innovate and improve productivity; and quality managers need to study competitive products with more zeal and help develop better products and services. The employer’s expectations have changed and are set to grow:

1. Highly Productive: The talented employees needs to be highly productive. They should deliver much more than they are compensated for. If that happens, employers are willing to give larger share to them.
2. Multi-Skilled: Companies have discovered that one way to decrease recruitment cost is to have multi-skilled employees. Multi-skilled employees help reduce manpower dependence, and the overall sum of all the multi-skilled employees is greater than the same number of equal number of specialist.
3. Self-Managed and Self-Motivated: Self-managed and self-motivated employees reduce managerial efforts. This helps organizations to have less number of managers.
4. Innovative and Out-of-the-Box thinkers: As the rules of the business change and competition increases, the existing solutions no longer work. Companies need employees who constantly infuse new ideas and provide out-of-the-box solutions to meet customer needs that seems to have no end.

The Key to Retain Talent Lies in HR Policies and Practices

As organizations increase their expectations from employees, employers too have to significantly change the way they manage the talent. Talented employees continuously need new challenges and goals they can achieve, and a continuous supply of information and resources they can use to solve business problems. And needless to say, they will in return demand more lucrative and effective compensations, a great work culture and friendly HR policies.

“Even during the recession, companies are reviewing and revising their leadership development programs. Survey after survey indicates that people who quit their jobs do so because of their relationship with the boss, not because of dissatisfaction with their job. A recession is a perfect time to take a hard look at leadership style and training to increase employee satisfaction with management.” Read more.

Five Important Talent Retention Factors

Lets us consider five factors that can help organizations retain talent to meet the client and business requirements in post-recession era:

1. Clear Goals, Targets and Expectations: You need to tell them what exactly you expect from employees and what should they do to meet these expectations. A talented mind without a direction is most likely to pull the plug than a mediocre or a dead wood.
2. Balanced Work Environment: Talented employees have huge positive energy and they exhaust this energy to meet the deadlines. But often they need time to re-energize themselves. Organizations that want to retain talented employees need to provide a positive environment that allows them to re-energize themselves more often.
3. Track Performance Goals and Provide Analysis: Innovators and hard workers need constant motivation to perform better. They need to know whether they are producing desired results. Any suggestion of not being able to deliver throws them in doldrums. One way to let them know about their performance (whether improving or declining) is to point toward specific results, achievements or failures (which they can fix before it is tool late).
4. Fair Evaluation of Performance: At the end of the day, the high fliers want to get acknowledged for their work. The first acknowledgment of the hard work is a fair and formal appraisal of their performance. They should be specifically told where they met expectations and where they did not.
5. Compensation to Maintain a Decent Lifestyle: Employees who deliver quantity with quality also expect from employers fair compensation that is compatible with the market. If not first, compensation remains the second most important cause of brain-drain from organizations.

What Next: EmpXtrack Performance Management is a powerful package of tools to help you set SMART goals and targets, track goal achievement, evaluate performance at quarterly, half-yearly and annual intervals, and decide decent compensation for your talented workforce.

Here is a comparison chart:

Decision to fire an employee is never welcomed, however, there are some acceptable reasons for terminating an employee:

• For poor performance at work or low productivity.
• Being indisciplined or showing unethical behavior at work.
• Not conforming to the company policy.

Above reasons are well accepted by other employees, business community and also by the legal framework of the country and states for growth of business.

Unfortunately, we also witness incidents of “unethical and unacceptable” terminations. These are neither acceptable by the communities nor by the legal framework. It is needless to mention that law has reprimanded such actions of the employers severely, whether they were intentional or unintentional.

It is unethical and legally unacceptable to terminate an employee -

• On basis of sex, race, color, ethnicity;
• On basis of medical disability;
• On basis of religious faith;
• On basis of pregnancy;
• On base of age, etc.

The law says says that it is “illegal to discriminate in any aspect of employment, including hiring and firing”. Read more information on Unethical Discriminatory Practices.

Firing employees also exposes the organization to potential risks ranging from motivational to legal. Here are some of the common risks:

1. Loss of Productivity: Whenever you fire an employee you risk the loss productivity of the organization. While it is possible to replace employees, there can be temporary decline in the organizational or departmental productivity. This amount of risk increases if the fired employee held a critical skill or competency required for a business process or project.
2. Team De-motivation: Whenever an employee is fired or terminated, it is liable to cause distress at workplace at least within the team he worked. Terminations also raise unnecessary rumors at the water cooler.
3. Cost of Rehiring: Whenever you fire an employee (unless for financial reasons or downsizing your organization), you need to rehire a replacement. Rehiring and training a replacement employee to reach the desired level of performance needs both time and money.
4. Litigation Risks: Whenever an employee is fired, it is possible that she/he seeks legal advise. Thousands of employees every year seek legal protection in court for employment related discrimination. A simple google research can connect an employee to attorneys who are willing to provide free opinion on such cases.

Whosoever initiates it, employee termination is HR’s responsibility

While line managers are responsible for work and performance related issues, terminating an employee is primarily a responsibility of Human Resource Department. Whenever a manager or supervisor requests for termination of an employee, HR should critically analyze the case and find if it is a performance related issue, a discipline related issues or something else which is “undesirable” by law.

Checklist to ensure before a performance related termination.

• Is performance of the employee evaluated according to company’s policy and procedures?
• Is employee’s performance below his peers with similar capacity?
• Has employee been notified about the poor performance in past and given enough time to improve performance?
• Is the performance low because of some medical disability? Refer ADA Act for more information on Disability Rights.

Checklist to ensure before a discipline related termination.

• Is the issue a discipline issue according to HR policy that leads to termination of employment?
• Is there enough evidence for the act of indiscipline?
• Has the indiscipline being recorded in employee file?
• Was employee issued multiple warning letters for his act of indiscipline?
• In addition, has the employee requested Time-off?

If the answer to above questions are NO, please reconsider the termination.

Studies reveal that some of the termination that lead to litigation were not intentional, but because of lack of information about the issue with HR. However, law rarely accepts the lack of knowledge as an excuse for violation.

Employee Data: A safeguard to HR

If you maintain proper employee data like Job Descriptions, Performance Appraisal records, Employee Goal Sheet, Warning Letters, Incident Reports etc. that proves that you exhausted all efforts before taking a termination decision, you have created a firewall against potential litigation. Joseph Cleary, assistant legal counsel for the EEOC says that “Employers get into difficulties because they do not document performance-related problems. Then they get to the point where an employee’s performance becomes intolerable.”

Objective, data-based and process driven termination of an employee, arising because of business needs or disciplinary issues, not only saves your organization from internal embarrassment but also acts as a strong evidence if a disgruntled employee seeks legal counseling.

Collecting and maintaining employee data requires a significant investment in HR technology and time. An organization must start collecting employee data right from the day when employee applies for a job with the organization and maintain it as long as 7 years after the employee’s separation.

What Next: A good HR Software that can ease your employee data management challenges by providing a user friendly tools to record data, and easily retrieve it back, when needed. Whenever you have slightest doubts of violation of a law during a termination, you should retrieve and refer to employee records.

Fill this form to know more about EmpXtrack HR software that captures comprehensive employee data and helps in evaluating employee performance at regular intervals.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is an act in United States that provides certain employees of an organization with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year. It also requires that employers maintain the group health benefits to the employees during the leave period. FMLA is designed to help employees balance their work and family responsibilities by allowing them to take reasonable unpaid leave for certain family and medical reasons.

More information on the act can be found at Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) but broadly the act requires that covered employers must grant an eligible employee up to a total of 12 work-weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period for one or more of the following reasons:

1. for the birth and care of the newborn child of the employee;
2. for placement with the employee of a son or daughter for adoption or foster care;
3. to care for an immediate family member (spouse, child, or parent) with a serious health condition;
4. or to take medical leave when the employee is unable to work because of a serious health condition.

Additionally the final rule extends the coverage for eligible specified family members,

1. Up to 12 weeks of leave for certain qualifying exigencies arising out of a covered military member’s active duty status, or notification of an impending call or order to active duty status, in support of a contingency operation, and
2. Up to 26 weeks of leave in a single 12-month period to care for a covered service member recovering from a serious injury or illness incurred in the line of duty on active duty. Eligible employees are entitled to a combined total of up to 26 weeks of all types of FMLA leave during the single 12-month period.

The other general conditions that makes an employee eligible for FMLA are:

• If they have worked for their employer for at least 12 months, and have worked for at least 1,250 hours over the previous 12 months,
• and work at a location where at least 50 employees are employed by the employer within 75 miles.

There are several requirements to be fulfilled by the employee / employer for FMLA. For more information visit US Department of Labor website http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/fmla/.
The biggest cause of worry for employers is that FMLA has long been a source of litigations.

Employers have lost millions of dollars in FMLA violations.

Not only FMLA mandates employers to grant family and medical leave to eligible employees, it also prohibits an employer from firing, denying a promotion to, or demoting an employee because the employee requested or has taken family medical leave. Potential remedies include reinstatement and payment of lost wages, employment benefits, or any other loss sustained as a result of the employer’s violation of the FMLA.

Meeting FMLA compliance

While most HR professionals are aware of FMLA (because not being aware of FMLA further aggravates the case), their biggest challenge lies in deciding whether an employee is eligible for FMLA.

The eligibility of an employee can be decided only if the HR department has complete information available in the records. While FMLA asks that employer keep employee information for three years for the purpose of FMLA, various other compliance acts needs employers to keep the employment related record up to 7 years.

So what to do when an employee applies for leave/ FMLA. Here are some steps suggested for HR Professionals to avoid pitfalls of FMLA violation.

1. HR should look at the reason for the leave.
2. If the reason is related to self or family sickness, check for employee’s eligibility for FMLA.
3. Check the job history of employee: For instance has the employee been employed previously with the company in past 7 years.
4. Check the Joining Date of the employee to know the duration they have worked for.
5. Check the time sheet / attendance sheet whether employee has worked for 1250 hours in past 12 months.
6. Check if employee has taken any FMLA (regular/ intermittent) leave in past 12 Months.
7. HR Should also check whether an employee is a key employee, as there are different compliances for key employees.
8. If employee is eligible for FMA, and even if they have not applied for it, notify them in written that they are eligible for FMLA.
9. Whenever initiating a disciplinary action against an employee, review their FMLA records for any link between the reason of discipline and their FMLA leave.
10. In certain cases, employees may apply for leave to their managers which may have been denied leading to the same compliance issues. This will discussed in my next article in how Self Services can help in compliance.

Is it easy to check the eligibility of FMLA for an employee?

I would say NO if you have a manual system of records or maintain employee data in multiple spreadsheets.

But I would say YES if you have an electronic system of record-keeping or a web based HRIS (Human Resources Information System) that understands these compliance requirements.

Even The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993; Final Rule references that the “use of electronic record keeping will minimize the burden on employers”. FMLA has a complete section for employers to maintain related records (Refer “Subpart E—Record-keeping Requirements § 825.500 Record-keeping requirements”).

A good Human Resource Information System can help you to maintain these records and when needed provide quick access for immediate answers.

A Human Resources Information System (HRIS) / System of Records is very useful when HR needs to take compliance decisions, not only for FMLA but also for other compliance related matters.

HRIS has sections related to

• Employment Records,
• Personal Records,
• Leave, Attendance and Travel records,
• Performance, Training, Rewards and Discipline records and
• Financial records of employees
• and can provide consolidated information like the number of employees at a specific location.

These can help HR manager to take critical decisions quickly.

What Next: Human Resource Information System can help you capture necessary information needed for compliance. Please fill the form below to know more about how electronic record-keeping software works and can record & retrieve important employee information quickly.

Disclaimer: The content on this blog/ post is a general information and do not under any circumstances constitute a legal advice. You should not act or refrain from acting based on these materials without first obtaining the advice of professional legal counsel. This blog/ post also contains links to third-party websites. We are not responsible for, and make no representations or endorsements with respect to, third-party websites, or with respect to any information, products or services that may be provided by or through such websites.

It was during an EmpXtrack training session for one of our clients in India, when their HR Director asked that we provide extensive HR dashboards to their CEO. While these reports were available for the HR Managers, I wasn’t sure if it could benefit the CEO in any way and hence I resisted.

Since the HR Director seemed to be a nice & patient gentleman, I thought of arguing a little and also better understand why he believed that the CEO would want to look at all this data. There were over 25 crucial dashboards already available for the CEO and what could be the benefits of having access to 100s of additional reports. Many questions came in my mind like –

• Will the CEO have time to go through the reports,
• What will be the implication of training him in using these?
• What if one of the reports doesn’t work correctly? (It does happen!!!)
• Was the CEO from an HR background or believed in Jack Welch’s theory of HR Management etc. etc.

The HR Director was obliging and I got some deep insights into how CEOs think and work. This also helped me better understand the needs of an effective HR department – especially for a company that has global ambitions and aggressive growth plans.

The HR Director said that they are into a Knowledge Intensive Business Services and their core strength lies in the quality of their people. While meeting potential investors and even large customers, our CEO is often asked following questions:

1. What is it about your management team / people that makes them uniquely capable of executing on this business plan?

AND/OR

2. Do you have the Right Leadership?

AND/OR

3. Does the team have passion for the business? Have they done it before: experience; market experience; intimate contact with potential customers, partners, and suppliers; etc.

A typical answer to these may not be based on facts and figures – what the investors typically love. On the basis of this feedback I did a web research. Not surprised, I found lot of web references and blog posts that said, the question of team capability (read strength of Human Resources) is an important question in all investor interviews. Here are references useful for entrepreneurs preparing for a VC meeting:

1.http://www.toptechnology.co.uk/Twenty%20Questions.pdf
2. http://www.ventureden.com/Blogs/2009/05/15/5-questions-you-should-ask-yourself-before-you-approach-vcs/
3.http://www.venlogic.com/vl2/downloads/white_papers/Top_VC_Questions.pdf

This reminded me of an earlier post on Talent Junction by Saigun’s President Tushar Bhatia “Evolution of HR Function” where he says:

“Around 5 years later, we were asked a similar question where another customer evaluated our HR practices at a significant level of detail to gauge our competence.

In subsequent discussions, I have found that the question on HR maturity is being asked frequently by potential customers, investors and even prospective employees. The answers indicate maturity, stability, long term sustainability and delivery capabilities of your organization and hence are very important.”
Many companies quote phrases like “People are our strength” in their mission statement or value statement. When people are the strength, no wonder investors would like to measure it. And obviously, without detailed HR information available in hand, the CEO would have a hard time answering the questions accurately and in a timely manner.

Based on this feedback, I sat with EmpXtrack Project Managers to help them add relevant HR reports and provide them in CEO’s Dashboard. I am sure this will help other aspiring CEOs to quickly find the relevant data about their employees which would not only help them pitch appropriately to investors but also help realize their dream of a successful enterprise.

What Next?

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