How to Identify What You Want in an ESS

1/18/2019

How to Identify What You Want in an ESS

Requiring employees to learn new workflows can be a considerable challenge, so it’s important to ensure the employee self-service (ESS) solution an organization adopts is easy to learn, intuitive and user friendly. When looking to adopt or review existing ESS tools, HR professionals first must ask themselves two questions: 

In the first step to evaluating what business processes should be automated, HR needs to meet with the ESS provider to understand what functionality the ESS provides, and what can be customized. Once HR has a grasp of what the ESS can do, the HR department should look at the features of the software and evaluate how these capabilities are currently getting done. It’s a good idea to automate any function that requires data entry from paper forms. In the end, this will lessen the workload on HR and help the department avoid clerical/data entry errors, which can have a negative effect on employees.  

Performance Solutions

Once HR has considered the software and the technology competency skills of their workforce, the department needs to decide how comprehensive the ESS tool should be. If the company’s employees are not very computer savvy, HR may want to go with a very basic system, at least to start, to get employees familiar with the process. Additional functions can always be added at a later date, and in some situations, it may be wise to stagger the introduction of new tools.

Things to keep in mind:

Getting the most from an ESS solution requires a thorough knowledge of what functionalities both employees and HR would welcome. By identifying these features early in the process of reviewing an ESS, HR is more likely to find success with this tool.

 

 



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