Employee Management System: Why and How to Start Using One

Implementing an employee management system can be challenging, especially in remote teams.

However, the benefits can’t be denied. Better performance as a team and an easier way to manage admin tasks are just a couple of positive outcomes from using employee management systems.

But first, it’s important to know what these systems and software are.

What is an employee management system?

An employee management system is designed to streamline HR and other business department duties. Most key operations — from employee timesheets and time off requests to staff geo-location during work hours — can be handled by a system like this.

The key is to find a system that not only works well for your team, but one that also saves you time, headaches, and money. Any employee management system should cover essential HR features.

One of the most common ways of managing teams, especially remote workers, is regular reporting via email. However, this method is cumbersome and messy.

The key to optimizing your team’s performance is taking the time-consuming admin tasks out of the picture, so you can all focus on accomplishing more.

This article will outline the benefits of management systems, and the best apps and tools you can use to improve your team’s efficiency.

What can you do with an employee management system?

As mentioned, a web-based employee management system helps you be more efficient with your time, and reduces the time your team spends on repetitive, administrative tasks.

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Take employee management to the next level

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Time optimization and employee engagement

Tracking the time spent on a task will provide you with information you can use to optimize all working hours inside your organization.

For example, the amount of time to create a specific document may be largely different between two employees. If one employee needs double the amount of time as the other one to create the same document, your employee management system can give you insight into the reason.

For instance, Hubstaff has screenshot and activity monitoring features that let you see what your team is doing, and how they are working. Of course, employee engagement cannot be at 90-100% all the time. It depends on various factors like the type of work employees have, the time of day, and how employees spend their resting time.

With the necessary information about how your team spends their work hours, you can assist them in organizing their time more efficiently, while keeping an eye on their health and well-being.

Payment tracking, invoicing, and other administrative tasks

When adopting a performance management system like Hubstaff, you are able to track the time spent on tasks. This means that you and your clients can precisely determine the time spent on certain projects and agree on budgets with more certainty.

Integration with other applications and platforms

Integrations enable your management systems to work together so you get all the functionality you need to operate at peak capacity. Whether you’re using Asana or other project management tools such as Hubstaff Tasks, you should be able to integrate seamlessly.

Sticking with one platform might save you the trouble of integrating and importing tasks, projects, and other information. But integration makes it so that you can use multiple tools simultaneously with little effort.

The benefits of using employee management software

Having an employee management system in place means you can access all the essential information about your team, projects, and clients from a single dashboard.

This centralized insight is what every good employee management system should offer. Plus, you should also look for a system that provides:

• Optimized workload and streamlined admin tasks
• Data security
• Increased employee engagement

Let’s take a look at each one.

Optimized workload and streamlined administrative tasks

Finding an employee management system is first and foremost about finding efficiencies.

Being able to automate and digitize manual data entry is one of the key strengths of good employee management systems.

Do you want to know if your employees have been putting enough time into an important project? Want to know how long your employees have been working on a project that’s approaching the deadline? Your employee management system can tell you.

Workload optimization can make all the difference in the world. You can spare your team wasted time on administrative tasks and automate things like timesheets and payroll.

Once your team gets their time back, they will be free to focus on growing your business, fine-tuning strategies, and more.

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Data security

Handling a business means you’ll be constantly dealing with thousands of files.

There are times when important documents get lost and never make it to the client.

There are also times when the files you need to complete a project get buried under other files, or are impossible to find. You can help your company avoid this by keeping every document protected against data loss in the cloud.

Using the right project management software can help you keep track of files and tasks in one central location. Relevant documents can be linked or referenced so that when it comes time to hand off a project, everything is there for you.

Increased employee engagement

Employee management systems have special features that let you communicate and maintain good relationships with your team. They allow you to create surveys designed to help you connect with your employees on a more personal level, or they make managing time off much easier, or they can even ensure culture is an active part of your organization.

This makes them feel that they are valued in the team. It is also a good opportunity for them to speak their mind if they have any ideas that can contribute to increased performance.

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Having a strong sense of camaraderie in your team goes a long way. One of its greatest benefits is keeping your team motivated to do their best, and having an HR management system in place helps achieve that.

Types of employee management software

Employee management software can be categorized into different groups based on the area of your business they are specifically designed for.

Time management software

The main function of time management software is to know who is working when, which projects are getting completed, where budgets are being spent, and how productive teams are. Those who can accomplish more with fewer roadblocks or disruptions in less time are generally regarded as productive.

Top time management software also incorporates payroll and invoicing so you can pay team members directly for hours worked. Bonus features include location tracking, PTO balances, and more.

Hubstaff

At Hubstaff’s core is time tracking, but it’s more than just that. Hubstaff is a complete time management software that’s designed to aid teams in utilizing their hours efficiently.

It helps your team reach higher levels of productivity and identify tasks that are wasting time.

Hubstaff provides you with valuable information about your team that you can use to revise your strategies and make informed hiring and growth decisions. Here are its key features:

• Accurate time tracking from lightweight desktop, web, and mobile apps that record every second worked by your team
• Optional screenshot capturing and activity monitoring that allows you to easily see the progress made and trends in productivity
• App and URL tracking to identify where your team spent their time
• Automated payroll that allows you to enter pay rates for each person and send payments automatically
• GPS location tracking and geofences for monitoring the sites visited and worked at by mobile or field service teams
• An attendance management system that lets you create schedules and notifies you of late and missed shifts
• Time off and vacation tracking that allows teams to easily request time off, view balances, and get approval
• In-depth reporting that shows you how your team has performed for the week

Hubstaff lets you view your team’s work from one, complete dashboard. You can easily view their total number of hours, the task they are doing, and where they are currently operating without the need to ask them yourself. This gives you back a lot of precious time you would otherwise have spent on doing these tasks manually.

Performance management software

The key to motivating your team is making them feel like they are truly contributing to the whole process. Performance management tools are designed to keep your team engaged, and their performance at high levels.

Officevibe

One of the hardest responsibilities of team leaders is ensuring that everyone is interested in what they are doing, and is genuinely motivated to work toward business goals. Usually, managers handle this by scheduling one-on-one meetings, which are unhelpful — and awkward — more often than not.

Officevibe sends automated weekly surveys to each team member. They take less than two minutes to accomplish, and there is an option to answer them anonymously so your team will feel completely free to speak their mind.

You can also directly respond to their feedback and start a conversation with them so you can better understand and accommodate their needs.

15Five

15Five understands the powerful benefits of employee feedback, which is exactly why it leverages this to bring out the best performance from teams. 15Five takes away the hassle managers experience when dealing with individual or team issues by streamlining the entire process.

15Five provides a painless way to perform weekly check-ins with your team, view their objectives, and schedule quick one-on-one meetings. Your team can focus on their work without worrying about being unable to contribute to the team.

Human resource management system

If you want your business to be successful, you need people. You can find tons of hiring platforms online, but the difficult part is actually managing the information about them once they’re part of your team. This is what HR management apps are built for.

BambooHR

As the name implies, BambooHR is a human resources tool for managing your team. BambooHR provides support from onboarding new hires to creating employee reports. It keeps all employee information — from employee history to monthly salary — in a single database that you can access at any time.

BambooHR’s centralized system ensures that your workflow goes smoothly, and that you’re in tune with each member of your team. The app simplifies employee reviews, lets you send feedback, and helps you guide your team in improving their approach to work.

Gusto

Gusto simplifies the managing the information about your team. Its features include automated taxes, health benefits, and surveys. Gusto eliminates the need to manually compute for employee payroll so you have more time for growing your business without compromising your relationship with your team.

For new members of your team, Gusto has a new hire reporting feature, which includes submitting W-9 forms. Gusto keeps all of these in a single and secure employee file that’s easy to access, so you can onboard new employees without trouble.

How to implement an employee management system

Introducing administrative changes can be frightening for any organization. It typically means taking valuable time away from substantial work to deal with the necessary set up tasks of organizing, reporting, sorting, and transferring documents.

However, things are a little more efficient when implementing a new web-based system, since the process can be performed in increments.

The most important thing with adopting a digital management system is to get your team members trained in sessions that are easy, visual, and short. For example, Hubstaff’s quick start guide for owners and managers is only three steps long.

The next step is the actual implementation. Employees can gradually transfer documentation, tasks, assignments, plans, media and other data into the digital system as needed. That means that as soon as an employee needs a particular document or task, they can access it online and work on it from there.

Any documentation about implementing the system can be made available online so new users can easily get to speed on the employee management systems.

This strategy will ensure there is no overwhelming administrative work when adopting the new system. Introduce the digital system gradually when you’re transferring from a manual system. Once everything is in place, the hours spent by your team on tedious tasks will be significantly reduced.

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What are your thoughts?

With the many benefits that come with modern employee management systems, it’s hard to imagine why you wouldn’t try one. The sheer amount of time you can save by using these solutions make them an easy must-have for businesses of all kinds.

How about you? What employee management software do you use, and what is the main reason you use them?

We’re working hard to make comprehensive management solutions, so any feedback on improvements or features are welcome. Leave us your comments below.

Try Hubstaff today for a 14-day free trial and full access to a premium account.

This post was published Feb 19, 2016, and updated May 2019. 

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