The soft skills of HR employees are valuable, but some challenges remain difficult to overcome without use of advanced technology.
In response to growing demand for high quality HR solutions, there is a whole class of software designed to solve some of the most common issues in human resource management.
Challenge #1: Reducing costs and time needed for IT support
A major trend in the IT support niche is adoption of integrated technologies that are less time consuming and complex to manage than systems where every department needs to take care of its own technology needs.
Company-wide systems for attendance control and time tracking can be deployed with very little additional hardware, while their impact affects practically every team and project.
Challenge #2: Regulatory compliance issues
In many countries, governments demand tight reporting on employee salaries and other statistics related to the workforce.
If those reports were compiled manually, companies would have to dedicate their best people to the task or face the possibility of a costly error.
Modern software tools allow for creation of automated queries that generate custom reports with minimal human involvement, making regulatory compliance a routine task.
Challenge #3: Data availability
Collecting large amounts relevant data about workers is worth very little if the management has to spend a lot of time digging out key bits of information from local databases. Instant and effortless data retrieval is one of the greatest benefits of HR software tools of the latest generation, since all the data is centralized and accessible from anywhere.
It’s even possible to set up automatic updates that reflect recent changes in the status of the selected worker or team.
Challenge #4: Vendor management
It’s very common for a company to use a variety of software products, which may come from different vendors and include incompatible features.
Such incompatibility can be a problem, which is why system integration is an essential need for large companies.
In some cases, this can be avoided by purchasing a suite of software solutions from the same vendor, unifying time and attendance control with payroll management and employee assessment under the same umbrella.
Challenge #5: Platform integration
A variety of IT platforms are used for business purposes today, with mobile frameworks gaining traction lately. That’s why HR departments are increasingly updating their solutions to facilitate easy access from any device and any operational system.
Wireless sharing of relevant data can go very smoothly when the system is set up in such a way to support access from mobile phones and laptops, eliminating the need for physical presence in the office in order to participate.
Challenge #6: Data storage security
Loss of data or unauthorized access to confidential information can present a significant threat, motivating the companies to centralize data storage and implement robust defensive measures.
It’s far easier to mount effective defenses and control who can access the employee data when there is only one central database to protect. Security in the cloud is another hot topic at the moment, with top providers guaranteeing the integrity of uploaded information.
Fortunately, modern HR suites feature a range of advanced software tools that can be utilized to simultaneously address multiple challenges from this list.
Exact choice of tools and modes of deployment is unique for each company, but the overall strategy should be similar.
Integrating individual systems (including HR data) into a wider, more flexible framework will certainly return positive results, regardless of the structure of the company and its data collection methods.
About the Author: Jocelyn Pick
