Benefits of an Integrated Payroll/HRIS

Do you feel as if your human resource department has turned into a mess of administrative work? Is senior management questioning how HR adds value to the organization? Is it becoming harder to get additional budget assigned to your department? If “yes” is the answer to any of these questions, it may be time to look at getting out of the “paper pushing” business so that you can focus more time on “Strategic HR”, such as recruiting, training/development, quality employee retention and succession planning. These are the functions of HR that are core to making the most of human capital. Improving in these areas can be a reality if your department deploys the right technology that will minimize administrative work, easily ensure compliance, and allow access and reporting capabilities to meaningful data points across the entire organization.

Putting an HRIS in place with employee and manager self-service may prove to be the answer to your administrative challenges. Since payroll is the most accurate data in any organization, it only makes sense to build an HR database off of this data. To enjoy further benefits of automation, I suggest utilizing a fully integrated payroll/HRIS system in order to ensure utmost data integrity. With most systems on the market today, role based security is deployed. This means that certain employees including managers, employees, and non-HR executives have access rights to certain data points that are central to their role. The system becomes a universal tool that benefits the entire workforce, not just HR.

The main key benefits that an HRIS is designed to improve are:

• Improved responsiveness to employees and management with a workflow process that streamlines HR record-keeping and maintains proper audit trails
• Maintain a competitive workforce by simplifying and speeding up hiring, training and retention programs with an accessible, integrated database
• Gain greater control real time payroll processing by eliminating the need to transfer files back and forth, reduce errors and payroll corrections
• Ensure government and payroll tax compliance with automatic updates that keep you up-to-date on the latest regulations
• Plan for talent succession by identifying top talent and key positions for keeping the business fluid and healthy
• Increased employee retention by deployment of self-service tools that keep employees involved with the employment life cycle
• Enhance your reporting capabilities with workforce decision data that helps you lower benefit costs, spot organizational trends and take clear action
• Containment of costs including insurance premiums, controlled labor expenses such as overtime, Travel and Expense, IT and disparate system related costs
• Improved employee communications through centralized intranet portals and employee survey capabilities
• Create and leverage a standardized infrastructure that will enable executives to better analyze costs associated with their organizational structure for budgeting and forecasting purposes

Technology is the framework behind the success of a well-functioning HR department. The advancements that have been made with functionality delivered in a Software as a Service model are making these types of systems more affordable and more customized than ever before.