As the continued impacts of COVID-19 are felt across businesses, HR leaders are facing a need to rethink the nearly 15 million-strong workforce that moved to a new remote working model. This includes reconsidering employee planning, management, performance and experience strategies through their HR platforms for the continued future of how people work in the UK.
At this point, it’s worth reviewing your HR system to make sure that you can support dispersed teams while keeping productivity and motivation levels high throughout your company.
The post-pandemic lockdown world has created a massive shift to large scale remote work, whether businesses have been prepared for it or not, and in this article, we’re going to look at the features that you should look for when choosing an HR platform to support your remote working teams.
Make HR policies and documents accessible with ease
It can be challenging to keep on top of all the new HR documentation, and any forms staff are signing to agree to updates, new policies or anything else. Like Natural HR, a cloud-based HR system will give you a central place where employees can view policies and access the latest information, including company updates.
With Natural HR’s document management features, you can easily keep track of who has read and acknowledged your new and updated policies, no matter if they’re at home or the office, and as a result, the HR team will be able to reduce the need to deal with numerous separate silos of information and data.
Natural HR’s online system has a built-in document library to store company documents, making them easily accessible by you and your team.
Identify the training needs of your staff
By incorporating online learning into your HR software, through a learning management module like the one included with Natural HR, staff members will access online training opportunities at a time and location convenient to them. For staff working from home, it gives them the same advantages as those in the office.
A complete HR system, like Natural HR, will automatically track the training needs of all your employees throughout the duration of their careers and allow you to fill in a skills gap present within your business. Your HR software will not only track when employees have completed the learning but can support you in monitoring ongoing performance levels, so you can spot high achievers or identify additional training needs and implement solutions.
Natural HR’s Training and Development module have built-in features to help you support the professional development of your staff.
Boost your recruitment, and support remote onboarding
As we work through the changes of employment, you may find that offering flexible working options may open you up to a new pool of suitable candidates who will be eager to benefit from a flexible working pattern.
With Natural HR’s recruitment module, not only will you be able to automatically share job vacancies to jobs board and manage applications via your mobile phone, you can allow successful candidates to upload their details and documentation before they’ve even walked through the door on their first day.
Remove multiple silos, and integrate recruitment, onboarding, payroll and management into an all-in-one system.
Allow HR to manage a repository of up-to-date data securely
It’s crucial to ensure everyone’s details are up to date, from their contact and banking details, and with a cloud-based HR platform, your employment history will all be accessible within a few clicks of the mouse.
At the heart of every HR team is access to confidential business and employee data used to drive all critical business decisions. For instance, Natural HR provides self-service options for management and your staff, so it’s easier to get staff to update their essential information (such as their address, contact information, emergency contact details) with a quick reminder via a notification or automated email.
ISO/IEC 27001:2013, ISO/IEC 27017:2015, ISO 22301:2012, PCI-DSS Compliant, and Cyber Essentials Plus your HR teams can manage their repository of data in a quick and secure manner.
Communicate effectively with your entire workforce
Communication can become more complex when some or all of your staff are working remotely, especially if they’re not used to working from home, but with a centralised HR system in place, you can quickly notify the team about HR updates that are relevant to them.
This could be anything from new homeworking policies and risk assessments to documents, health and safety forms they need to complete, or updates on how you record absence.
With Natural HR, you can send your team messages through your HR platform and multiple communication apps, like Slack and Outlook, through integration.
Allow team leaders to manage performance management and engagement
An automated HR system, like Natural HR, will help remind managers when appraisals or informal check-ins are due, informing them to have those crucial conversations and providing a central place where discussions about goals and personal development can be recorded and managed.
With our system, and its in-built surveying or employee engagement tools, you will understand how workers are doing through surveys that can give you accurate data to work with.
By running engagement surveys through your HR platform, like Natural HR, you’ll be able to link the data and outcomes of such activity with other metrics such as performance management measures which will help you determine which strategic initiatives you should be focusing on.
With performance appraisal software, you can empower your team leader to manage their team through reviews, library management, and more.
Adopting HR software for your business
To find out more about how Natural HR’s software can help support remote workers, you can book a free demo with a member of our in-house expert team to get a demonstration of the system.
