Self-service portals can increase employee autonomy, making employees feel empowered and saving managers and HR professionals time. Self-service options may take time to set up, but the time spent can be worth it if it helps to improve engagement with the system and streamline the way your team communicates. The following are few tips that can help your company use self service optimally.
1. Introduce Self Service Early
Some HRIS software allows you to set up onboarding through self service portals. Introducing self service at this early stage will make it a part of life for new employees, especially if they must use the software for more tasks immediately after onboarding. Allowing employees to acclimate themselves to the company using this option encourages them to take charge of their own career within your company and helps foster user adoption.
2. Consistently Encourage Employees to Use Self Service
Some companies offer self service options, but still take written time off requests and don’t mind if employees call HR to change their information. While these can remain available options, encouraging employees to use self service features whenever possible will save time and help your company get the highest return from the investment in the functionality.
3. Offer a Wide Range of Self Service Options
Self service portals should be rich with options. Some offerings within self service portals include schedules, time off requests, pay history, social feeds, peer-to-peer messaging, company information libraries, benefits, and personal information change requests. By offering as many of these options as possible, you increase the value of self service for your employees and encourage them to be even more autonomous.
4. Make It Social
Social media is fun to use, so employees may be drawn to this option if you offer it. Using company social feeds can help bring your team together and make it easier to communicate company wide news instantly. It may also encourage brainstorming and collaboration.
5. Assign Tasks within Self Service
If it makes sense for your company, you may wish to assign job tasks within self service portals. This is an easy way for you to keep track of employees’ accomplishments, while allowing them to view and update their own progress. Simply delegating and holding employees accountable may not be reasonable, however, make sure it’s possible for two-way communication so that employees feel free to ask questions and request assistance.
6. Make Sure the System is Up to Par
While you can offer many options and use self service portals in many ways, none of it will be worth the effort if the system is lagging or is frustrating for employees to use. Test drive the system so that you can see exactly what employees will experience and fix glitches as soon as possible. If your system is outdated or requires too much work to update, it may be worth it to invest in new software.
