Businesses big and small rely heavily on technology to help them minimize financial expenditure while creating a more efficient and effective business model. At the center of all of this and one of the essential departments responsible for business success in the long term is, of course, HR. The Human Resources department has evolved over the decades to become much more than a team of people who monitor employees and settle workplace disputes – nowadays HR experts are tasked with numerous mission-critical tasks. 

From making your employees feel valued, to building a better company culture, all the way to improving the onboarding process and establishing a better communication strategy, your HR experts are invaluable to your success. So, it’s only natural that you should provide them with the right tech tools to help them do a better job without burning out. That’s why today we’ll be taking a closer look at the best HR software and apps you should integrate into your HR processes to run and grow your small business more efficiently. 

Utilizing a better onboarding tool

The last thing you want to waste is time, especially in such a troubling time and rapidly-shifting circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. If you want to stay on your feet and preserve your cash flow, you need new employees to start contributing to your success from day one, which is why improving and expediting the onboarding process should be one of your top priorities. Now, there are many ways you can do this, including:

  • Positive encouragement before the employee’s first day.
  • Providing ample reading material before day one.
  • Staying in touch until they start work.
  • Welcoming them into a collaborative environment.
  • Eliminating stress and pressure.

These are all sound tactics, but there’s nothing quite like providing your HR experts with an automated onboarding tool that they can use to make the entire onboarding experience more rewarding for new employees. Complemented by the aforementioned tactics, this tool can help them get acquainted with their new position quickly, which will allow them to become productive members of your company from day one.

Managing and growing your company culture

Creating, building, and improving your company’s culture is one of the most important elements of long-term growth nowadays, simply because you can’t retain the best of the best if all you have to offer is a big fat paycheck. Sure, money does matter in the eyes of the millennial and Gen-Z employees, but not as much as the culture you nurture within your walls. Given the fact that the HR experts are often tasked with devising and nurturing this culture until it permeates the entire organization, it only makes sense to integrate a tool that will allow them to measure the company’s culture effectively and obtain valuable insights.

The data they collect about the employees, remote teams, and the organization as a whole will allow them to create a better approach to long-term employee satisfaction by knowing exactly what the employees need, how they perceive the company, and how they communicate with their colleagues in the workplace. Be sure to get a comprehensive tool with plenty of features in order to empower your HR staff to achieve better results and create a better culture than ever before.

Leveraging a VoIP communication system

We mentioned communication a couple of times today, and it’s important that we address a persistent problem that many businesses around the world face – inefficient and ineffective communication, as you might have guessed. Oftentimes, the problem is not the communication strategy, it’s the technology your HR staff uses to communicate with applicants, remote employees, and in-house staff. Simply put, it’s a worthwhile investment to upgrade to a VoIP phone system if you want to elevate communication in your company.

In fact, you can even find a good VoIP phone service on the cheap nowadays and make this transition affordable while giving your HR staff a bunch of handy digital features they can use to maintain efficient and effective communication with all employees. As VoIP is often a business-wide solution, you can easily use it to run a remote or fully-digital operation from anywhere in the world without skyrocketing your phone bill.

Managing your people efficiently and effectively

Managing in-house employees is a challenge, but managing several remote teams in a time of crisis is a completely different, and much scarier, beast. Aside from communicating with your team members regularly, you also need to integrate a reliable monitoring and management tool that will help you keep a close eye on all of your employees. Whatever tool you choose, it should allow you to monitor their performance, satisfaction, hours, and all other metrics that can help you uncover individual pain-points so that you can take a personalized approach to employee development and happiness.

Optimizing payroll processes

Lastly, it’s always a good idea to automate the payroll process. After all, payroll is not just about handing out paychecks, it’s about careful employee management and it entails many processes that will affect their earnings. With that in mind, be sure that the tool provides you with payroll processing and management, automated direct deposit, tax filing automation, compensation management, and employee self-service so that they can always have access to their personal payroll data.

Wrapping up

HR covers a wide array of processes, and it’s simply unsustainable to try and run an HR department without the right tech at your side. If you integrate these tools and apps, you can expect your HR experts to achieve better results, and your business to achieve its key objectives faster.

By Raul Harman