Why You Should Sell the Idea of HR Software to Your Boss Today: 4 Ways in Which You & Your Company Are Being Affected

Ron was frustrated.

The year was 2014 and I was trying to cheer up my co-worker. Given the fact that we were a distributed team, the task was pretty onerous.

You may not be interested in knowing why my ex colleague wanted to give up selling HR software but if you are connected to Human Resource programs or employee onboarding in any way possible, you should read on.

Ron had been nurturing a lead for a while. Not the decision maker. But this prospect was the sentinel who stood guard at the door of the CIO’s office.

After a couple of weeks of reluctant conversation, she said it. She told Ron,

“HR solutions are not really a priority right now. They are expensive and tell you what they change iterations so fast that we are waiting for a version that won’t become obsolete for a good many years”

I am not sure what Ron is doing right now. He may have left HR for good.

But that little story kind of stuck with me. Because it puts the spotlight on a problem that is plaguing companies all over the world.

I like to call it the “Oblivious Suffering Syndrome”.

Yes it is fascinating.

Suffers without a HR Solution but Thinks Implementation Will be a Pain

There are three types of people in a company with stakes in HR departments.

1. The Head Honchos:

These are the C Suite executives who like to see the big picture in everything. Yes they are concerned about nurturing and retaining talent but they view the company as an interconnected, living creature. They want to know how any enhancement made to the HR department will impact the operation of the business as a whole. And of course they want the numbers – the ROI.

 2. The HR Heroes:

The bona fide HR department employees who live and breathe performance reviews, strategy and churn. Their concern is around soft targets like strengthening the company culture, building the best possible team and getting ahead of competitors. They can afford to obsess about maintaining holistic, 360 degree supervision over the several moving elements that constitute the human resource sector. It is their only job.

3. The Harassed Humans:

These are the people who are stuck in the middle. They bridge the rest of the company to the HR department. They facilitate the implementation of the policies and protocols defined by the HR Heroes so that the Head Honchos can smile when they see the quarterly performance reports. These are the individuals in the fray, wrestling with the innate tendency employees have of not being compliant. They bear the brunt of the manual labor and the back and forth. They are the ones drowning in the spreadsheets and grappling with leave requests. It’s neither pretty nor glorifying. No one acknowledges their contributions much.

This article speaks directly to the Harassed Humans.

You need to rally around the idea of using a quality small business software solution in your HR department because the Head Honchos need all the convincing they can get.

The more you have to rely on separate calendars and spreadsheets, the more difficult the going will get.

HR Heroes are researching trends right now. And soon they will have more rules to improve compliance. You will need to track several data sets to keep your databases updated. And the empowered employees will expect faster responses when they apply for those leaves.

Don’t think that deploying a HR solution will add to your overcrowded plate and give you more to do. It is a one-time effort that will make your life better.

And if you feel HR platforms are just for employees and strategists, think again. They bring several grass root level benefits to the people who handle the administrative side of things.

4 Reasons Why You Should Sell the Idea of HR Software to Your Boss:

Reason #1: Low Productivity

You generally leave the office at the end of the day feeling tired and overworked. Right? You can nod a yes. It’s true.

But do you know that in a work week, you spend close to 9.3 hours or one whole day searching for the information needed to get the job done!

Further the Harris Poll has found that only 45% of the time of an employee contributes value to the organization.

The remaining 55% is squandered checking emails and doing administrative tasks that are not considered “primary duty” by the bosses. Can’t you see it?

You are somehow set up for failure. If you don’t give your best to the mountains of paperwork generated by HR protocols, you could end up making costly mistakes. We will cover this later.

And if you do pour your heart and soul into checking the accuracy of data and getting things in optimal shape, you are not really counted as a star performer.

Doesn’t seem fair!

The right human resource program balances the situation.

It maximizes your productivity so that you can make yourself seen and heard by brainstorming ideas and allowing your thinking to place you on the corporate map of importance.

HR solutions with features like:

• Automated vacation pay calculations

• Easily generated overviews of time-off balance

• Employee self-service functionalities

• A comprehensive history of all possible data changes for effortless tracking of who has updated what

• Email notifications intimating stakeholders of acceptance or rejection of leaves and other requests

• Quick download of custom insight reports from any device

Ensure that you are always updated of how workflows progress and the back and forth around arranging meetings and procuring relevant information is cut back.

You get to use all 9 hours of your day for constructive work that gets the raises, leads to perks and makes “early days” with quality family time possible.

Reason #2: Human Error

History will always remember 6^th May 2010 for all the wrong reasons.

On this fated afternoon someone typed a ‘B’ instead of an ‘M’ and wiped out trillions of dollars in savings across the US market.

This extreme anecdote is a reminder that the factor of human error can wreak havoc where integrity of data is concerned.

Even though on a day-to-day basis an error of oversight may look more like a miscalculated performance bonus or two key employees going on vacation together during peak season, the repercussions are unpleasant to say the least.

Neither talent dissatisfaction nor stalled work paints a bright picture of your competence.

Do you really want to keep functioning under this kind of stress?

HR software solutions rely on automation. They can quickly and effortlessly propagate changes made in one document or profile field to all related assets that use the particular bit of information.

There is no lag that might lead to discrepancies. Further they boast permission customization.

With this feature you can access only that which is relevant to your work. You find records faster and your responsibility shrinks to certain data sets that you can manipulate.

Instances of human errors – especially errors that might be traced back to you – are reduced. And every one can breathe easier.

Reason #3: Lack of Self Service

Gartner says that by 2020 80% of a customer’s interactions with a company will be concluded through self-service portals.

And the concept of self-service can save brands over 4 dollars per touch point.

This however isn’t a trend that is restricted to buyers. Human beings in general prefer to solve their problems independently.

Only if they can’t find a solution is the collective intelligence of a community handy.

By 2020 80% of a customer’s interactions with a company will be concluded through self-service portals

So why don’t you root for self-service in the HR department?

Employees should be able to perform tasks like applying for sick leaves, reviewing rewards and compensation and filling out surveys on their own without requiring your intervention.

A HR software solution makes this possible.

With modules handling absence management, reward management and collaboration it gives workers a direct line of contact to those who regulate their operations (their bosses) and their assets; offering you – the middle men – much needed respite.

Reason #4: Lack of Consolidation & Integration

Most companies have some sort of cobbled together HR solution. They work with discrete tools like spreadsheets and databases to make sense of the inputs coming their way.

But they fall short of leveraging integrations and Big Data.

They can’t detect patterns and trends from the actions taken by employees. They can’t predict disengagement or potential quits.

They waste the gold mine of insights contained in stand-alone silos.

The result? Employee turnover.

While this isn’t your territory, churn hurts a company. In fact studies show that a business can lose up to 60% of the annual salary of a worker in onboarding, training and reduced productivity when it takes on a new hire.

And the preparations to bring an employee up to speed do add complications to your life.

• If the company suffers losses, it doesn’t auger well for anybody

• Training and onboarding translate into more paperwork for you and your peers

• Low productivity of employees is another way of describing lack of compliance and increased frequency of errors

These scenarios are undesirable to say the least.

HR department solutions – especially the SaaS variants – allow organizations to stay one step ahead of possible disruptions.

Visualization engines and analytics models dive deep into data and make sense of the random chaos. This is good news for you!

Don’t be a Harassed Human who compounds her misery by believing that the implementation of a HR solution will add to the problems in her life. Modern SaaS solutions with their pay as you go model are up and running in no time at all.

It’s essential that you understand “why” HR software is needed and when possible work in collaboration with HR managers to lend your unique perspective to the case for software deployment.

You will be doing yourself and your company a good turn.

Trina.

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Trina M is a part of the CakeHR content team. She is a marketing funnel creator who has worked with 5 reputed HR SaaS startups and established ventures over the past several years.  She has experience understanding how HR software optimizes employee potential and uses persuasion based strategies to generate results.