5 Obstacles to Tackle with HR Software

Conquer your HR challenges with the right HR management systems.

Human resource (HR) management teams have been through a lot over the past couple of years and the everyday challenges faced by HR personnel are more complex than ever.

Thankfully, HR management software can make many obstacles easier to tackle in the long run.

There are many options to choose from that offer different functionality, integrations, and price points, so it helps to understand the key issues you’re looking to address through an HR system and how the different solutions on the market can help.

Read on to learn our top 5 challenges that can be overcome through HR software implementation and how YourShortlist can help you quickly narrow down your search for a new system.

Why Your Business Needs an HR Management System

Managing staff can be challenging in any environment, but the COVID-19 pandemic ramped up the difficulty for many organisations. Now, HR personnel have to contend with issues like managing working from home (WFH) and hybrid-working arrangements.

Many companies have also been faced with significant employee resignations or at least difficulties in keeping up team morale. 

Meanwhile, HR teams have had to contend with a shift toward the use of new technologies to help with areas like benefits administration management, recruitment, staff performance reviews, and more.

It’s no surprise then that the adoption of HR management software is on the rise, and it can be essential to an organisation’s success.

A 2021 international survey by Information Services Group (ISG) found that 46% of companies were using an HR SaaS platform or hybrid solution, whereas only 20% were doing so two years prior. Plus, nearly two-thirds of companies “say they are achieving measurable business value from their investment in HR SaaS platforms,” ISG notes.

If your company has yet to leverage modern HR systems or if you’re struggling with your current setup, here are 5 reasons why it might be a valuable investment: 

1) Facilitating Flexibility

One of the biggest challenges right now is for HR teams to facilitate flexibility. That can mean helping employees with WFH or hybrid-working arrangements. It can also mean staying flexible in terms of shifting resources around, such as if staff schedules are in flux due to health reasons or headcount changes.

A strong HR system can help in this regard by automating scheduling, making it easy for employees to request time off, and giving employees remote access to the resources they need to get their work done from anywhere.

“While there are many changes taking place, the biggest shift of all is the move from HR technology to work technology. This means that everything we now buy must feel useful and important as a tool for getting work done,” says a report from HR industry analyst Josh Bersin.

2) Boosting Employee Wellbeing

Another current challenge is making sure that employees are satisfied and motivated, given the significant personal and professional pressures that exist from trying to navigate life during a pandemic.

It’s more important than ever to make sure that employees feel connected and supported, especially if they are working from home and rarely interact with their co-workers in person.

A 2021 study from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), in association with Workday, a finance and HR software provider, states that “55% of people professionals in the UK, and 50% of those in Ireland, agree that supporting employees’ mental health and wellbeing has become more difficult due to employees working from home”.

HR management technology can help in this regard, such as by making it easy for employees to access benefits like counselling. Even seemingly small things like simplifying requests for annual leave can benefit their well-being as it makes it easy to arrange time away from work to rest, recuperate, and recharge their batteries.

3) Supporting Skills Development

Many employees have re-evaluated their careers recently, which has led a lot of workers to seek out new jobs that require a different set of skills.

So, to encourage employee retention, HR teams may have to put more emphasis on helping employees develop new skills and progress their careers within their current organisation rather than looking elsewhere.

HR software can help overcome this challenge, by making it easier to access training, whether someone’s in the office or WFH. HR technology can also help facilitate transparency in areas like staff performance reviews so that employees know what they need to do to progress in their careers.

4) Getting Actionable Data

Even if companies have workforce management software in place, such as systems that make it easy to manage staff schedules and benefits administration, there’s often room for improvement in terms of bringing data together.

If a company has too many HR tools that don’t communicate with one another, let alone other types of systems like finance tools, then it can be hard for HR teams to make informed decisions.

For example, a 2020 global HR survey by PwC found that only 39% of systems “say they have dashboards that can give users the data that’s the most valuable—enterprise-level insight on which employees are critical for future success based on past performance, skills and competencies”.

So, HR teams may want to look for new HR systems that have more robust data analysis capabilities, easy reporting features, and integrations with other systems you already have so that you can control your data and leverage analytics more easily.

5) Managing Time

Lastly, HR teams often have to overcome the challenge of getting everything done efficiently. The more time that staff can save on administrative areas, the more time they can focus on strategic HR priorities, like supporting employee wellbeing and skills development. 

“Hyper-automation is the idea that anything that can be automated in an organisation should be automated…Although the concept of hyper-automation has been adopted in some HR use cases such as payroll, recruitment operations and service management, HR leaders should expand hyper-automation across various HR functions,” notes Gartner.

So, consider looking for HR tools that automate areas you may not have expected, thereby freeing up even more time. For example, some HR systems can automate document management, which can help with both staying organised while also saving time on paperwork. 

Find the Right HR System for Your Needs

HR systems make it easier to manage the many complex challenges of the profession, but there can be some growing pains when adopting a new HR system, especially if your chosen solution is designed for a different scale of business or you already have too many disparate HR functions that don’t integrate well with the new system.

Choosing the right HR software for your business is an important decision that takes careful consideration, so YourShortlist can help you choose with confidence by quickly matching your business to a bespoke shortlist of providers from our growing database of over 2000 technology Partners. 

We help businesses save time and money when comparing the hundreds of options on the market by narrowing down their choice to a bespoke shortlist of the best HR software solutions and providers to meet their needs.

Choosing new HR software for your business is an important decision that takes careful consideration, so YourShortlist can help you choose with confidence by matching your business with a shortlist from our growing database of over 2000 technology Partners. 

Start the process today by speaking to us about your free, no-obligation shortlist of HR system providers, or get in touch about the benefits of joining the YourShortlist Member Network.