Easing HR Workflows through Complygate HR Software

Problems Faced By HR

The year 2020 has certainly been a most challenging year for HR, and no one expected it. No HR expert could have foreseen the drastic changes in workplace and work habits that took place due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Global economy has collapsed, the recovery being very slow, and many of those who were once former employees are now in extremely stressful and dire situations. Even now, the full extent of the global impact on industry and its future implications are not known.

Even though the HR professionals are trying their level best to keep things aligned and steady, they’re facing a number of problems due to the sudden shift in work culture. Due to the additional responsibilities of handling crisis management, remote work management and keeping the business workflows steady, the HR professionals have to confront a number of stressful situations as well, most prominent of which are described below.

1. Employee health and well-being

Physical and mental health of employees have taken a serious toll due to the drastic shift in work culture ever since the Covid-19 pandemic took over the world. This is addition to the stress, anxiety and other health issues that were already there before. Even though leading organizations have been initiating wellness programmes for their employees and started providing benefits like security, extra perks and work flexibility, it does not seem enough as nothing has changed for much of the global workforce. And lack of proper communication channels to inquire workforce well-being in many scenarios is another related issue for which full resolution is yet to concur.

2. Remote Work Management

Due to the sudden and rough transition to remote work culture after Covid-19 pandemic, work progress was rough and improperly managed due to limited communication. There were few corporate remote work programmes before the pandemic, and many of the industries like banking and financial sector did not encourage remote working for employees. Now most of the organizations have built-up remote work models, and in many cases the remote working is marked by serious communication and strategic issues.

3. Latency due to Compliance, Laws and Regulations

Due to constantly changing employment laws which require drafting up of new regulations and supporting documentation along with proper implementation through relevant channels, the HR teams lose much agility, even though agility is not an inherent trait or skill of many HR teams. Considerable latency gets induced in business processes and workflows due to various set compliances and approvals, which eventually slows down the process of data collection, which is not recommended for a crisis situation. Due to the pandemic, this process became even more slow as there were extremely irregular and rough transitions to institution and implementation various laws and policies which organizational managements had announced in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

4. Employee Communication

Proper communication is critical to the management of the workforce and maintaining proper business workflows. Employee communication is another serious pain area since the pandemic, which was responsible for the HR professionals revaluating the entire work culture paradigm, including employee communication and meetings. Online communication tools like Zoom, Teams etc. can meet most of the communication requirements but are not enough to keep people and teams on the same page.

5. Employee Engagement

Employee engagement directly affects employee productivity, which is the ultimate goal of organizations. Due to remote working and challenges associated with working in a global pandemic situation, employee engagement becomes extremely difficult. Internal communication is little or even non-existent, so keeping all teams and personnel on the same page becomes difficult. One cannot follow a routine and sometimes even a systematic workflow. This impacts team morale on an extended timescale.

6. Management Changes

Management changes have become drastically affected or undergone hiatus due to the pandemic situation. In many of the organizations, the management have had a hard time keeping up with the global situation. The decrement is business due to Covid-19 has led to a big reconsideration of strategies and policies in organizations worldwide. This difficult situation has caused serious backlash among the management, decreasing productivity and tremendously impacting employee morale.

7. Training and Leadership Development

Even though training and leadership development is critical to workforce development in organizations, implementation of such programs have been affected due to the Covid-19 situation, partly because communication channels have also been affected. Organizations worldwide have also suffered staggering losses, amounting to billions of dollars, and budgets for employee training and development are almost non-existent in many companies. Thus, training and leadership development has considerably slowed down in organizations worldwide, even though online training has replaced much of the training programs, thus retaining some workforce morale.

8. Innovation

Technological innovation has considerably slowed worldwide down due to huge losses suffered by governments and organizations alike, culminating in economic collapse. Innovation in such an unlikely scenario is very difficult, even though many of the leaders in global technological advancement are still pushing ahead barriers and leaping forth. The blow to proper communication between organizations and governments is also a critical reason which has caused global innovation to come to a standstill.

9. Employee Recruitment and Retention

Employee recruitment was one of the first things that was affected as a result of the pandemic. As worldwide productivity came to a grounding halt, organizational management estimated worldwide cuts in business, resulting in massive layoffs across the globe. This eliminated the question of employee recruitment across the globe. Employee retention was somewhat less affected in larger firms as they had to keep the status quo, but is a major issue in SMEs, many of which are facing an uncertain future.

Effective HR management is necessary for employee productivity as employees are an organization’s best asset. Organizations investing in their teams enjoy fast and quick growth and outmanoeuvre any competition as compared to those who do not. Additionally, effective HRM is essential in creating a unique workplace culture, maintain standards, motivates employees and maintains proper flow of communication between management, teams and key stakeholders. This also eliminates any uncertainty among the employees. Knowledge of common HR issues is essential for furthering workplace development, meeting business goals and pushing the bar up.

Problems Faced By SMEs Due to Covid-19

Covid-19 pandemic has been the single greatest source of stress for almost the entirety of global population this year, and the damage has not yet abated. The world has been left overwhelmed at the tremendous loss of life and the staggering loss of economy on a global level. The economies of most countries has been hit very hard, while there are serious survival issues across a majority of the third-world nations. The SME sector has been hit particularly hard, and this has led to an extreme uncertainty amongst its employees and management as to what the future would be like.

Some of the top challenges faced by the SMEs are as follows:

1. Zero External Funding and Investments

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the freezing of all external funding and investment to most of the SMEs. This will have a drastic impact on the SMEs in taking care of their legal obligations, wages and other financial expenditures. Constant lockdowns have also interrupted their chain of business resulting in massive business losses and layoffs.

2. Cash Crunch

The global pandemic has culminated in a serious shortage of cash, as future business opportunities have been thwarted or put on an indefinite hold. Operational difficulties arising immediately after the spread of the pandemic are another factor resulting in a shortage of money for the SMEs.

3. Impact of government’s protectionist policies

Government policies aimed at protecting the public due to enforcing social distancing norms and lockdowns have led to a further decline in SME business prospects and opportunities. These policies have gone against interest of small and medium business corporations, resulting in further losses and making employees jobless.

4. Fear of shutting down

Constant and extended lockdowns have forced many of the SMEs to reconsider their prospects and their future. SMEs are the foundations of the economy of nations across the globe and an essential factor in pushing economic development across the globe.

5. Employee health and well-being issues

SMEs have reported a drastic fall in employee health and well-being due to the drastic uncertainty in the future of those organizations as well as their employees. This led to an increase in stressful situations and to the overbearing concern of future employability as well as everpresent family demands. Many of the small organizations have exhausted their resources and are burnt out completely.

6. Low prospects of recapitalization

Igniting further business prospects for SMEs would like an extensive and a planned recapitalization strategy, with constant monitoring of timely profitability. This calls for a necessary business structure makeover. In the present scenario, recapitalization prospects are low and extremely risky.

7. Keeping up the global technology race

The prospects of keeping with global technological innovations for SMEs in the contemporary scenario are low, even though small business corporations have trying hard to leverage technology in their business and stay at par with the changing times.

8. Work-life balance

This is a major challenge for SMEs. The major difficulties leading to this issue are capital acquisition, staying afloat while staying sharp on the lookout for opportunities, ensuring proper business management and workforce workflow and maintaining proper work-life balance.

9. Fall in credit ratings

SME creditworthiness has taken a serious hit due to the non-compliance of debt payments, thus resulting in incrementing considerable risk for moneylenders to this sector. A good turnover and high business returns are a distant possibility in the contemporary scenario, and the Covid-19 crisis is far from over yet.

10. Employee recruitment and retention

The drastic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in big layoffs in SMEs the world over to keep the chances of staying afloat alive. As the situation has not improved yet, employee recruitment is low if not non-existent in such organizations. Moreover, their rate of layoffs also creates an impression on approachable and employable candidates, thus reducing chances of finding employees for hireable positions. Retention is also difficult because an employee is forced to consider his / her situation in a badly performing SME which is laying off employees vis-à-vis the possible prospects available at other organizations.

The post-pandemic challenges faced by SMEs are seemingly gargantuan, and their management have to be tough and ruthless to be able to effectively channelize and work on business prospects and opportunities. Better approaches to conduct business meetings, presentations and catering to clientele have to be focused on and implemented. Work and family commitments must be given equal priority to be able to do both to the best of one’s abilities.

Work and business progress must go from being defensive to limited time through auxiliary tasks. Remodelling the SME strategy and imbuement of cash flows are necessary to ensure business continuity, reinvigorate the economy and more. Lastly, an extremely positive attitude and resilience are required to stay focused on the challenges and overcome them, through various means amongst which Marketing can definitely help keep the spirits high. As per many reports on popular social media portals, people managing and operating SMEs are cheerful and resilient by finding new and innovative ways to reach customers online, by switching to adjustments while conducting business and by trying their level best to meet family obligations simultaneously.

Roles and Responsibilities of HR in a post-Covid World

Most organizations across the globe have already started gearing up and planning for future operational responses to ensure business continuity in the post-COVID-19 scenario. This, experts believe, can be brought about by building communication, trust and transparency between key stakeholders and the workforce which may then lead to delivering value and restoring productivity.

There are a lot further adjustments which have yet to be made by the organizations, especially on their business strategies and plans. Employee engagement is required more than ever if organizations intend to be resilient and regain productive work culture. As per the HR experts at Deloitte, change agents have a crucial role to play in this scenario, mostly assisting employees in coping up with feelings of uncertainty, isolation and constantly not being in the loop. Social distancing has further made the situation complicated and access to resources, standardized implementation of protocols and engagement difficult. All these issues have compounded existent problems for HR professionals.

When these challenges are considered along with their implications, it becomes imperative that the HR must play a crucial role in mitigating the organizational challenges caused by a severe disruption of organizational workflows. The HR need to handle this post-Covidsituation with utmost attention, care and diligence as most of these issues are related to people.

As per HR experts, new HR roles can include the following task-oriented actions:

Counselling

It is absolutely inevitable that the HR professionals have a two-pronged communication with employees and offer proper counselling sessions to all whose who can use expert help in dealing with sudden changes in their lives due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Effective counselling can help employees deal with fears, uncertainty, anxiety and any other stress-inducing mental issues.

Need for support

HR professional must sense any need for support required by employees, as most of them do not want to be viewed as needy for any kind of advice. This trait of recognizing employees requiring support through constructive advice to boost morale is a must-have in HR managers, who can then further advice line managers on dealing effectively with their employees as far as any sensitive subjects related to post-Covid scenario, like job security, impact to workforce etc., are concerned.

Maintaining Organisational values

Workforce order and organizational values must be maintained despite any negative emotions harboured by the workforce as maintaining a sense of order has the greatest impact on psychological safety and well-being. HR managers must also encourage employees to call out any unethical behaviour from among the workforce.

Employee recognition

Employee recognition in the time of Covid-19 crisis shows organizational regard for productive employee performance, while sending strong motivational signals to the rest of the workforce. In this scenario, the HR must beef up their employee recognition efforts to reward deserving employees and motivate the rest to emulate this performance.

Employee engagement

New engagement opportunities must be provided to the employees for motivation and improving productivity as this unprecedented time of change has brought about a lot of disruption which has left the workforce aloof and confused. Technology can be used to effectively bridge the gap.

Workforce training and development

Educating, training and equipping the workforce with the right set of skills must be continued through proper channels in this situation, either by having interactive online video discussions or chat-based discussions on relevant company posts. Workforce training and upskilling is an important way employers can show appreciation for the workforce performance. Learning and development initiatives make the employees feel important and valued as well as fill important knowledge gaps within the company.

Employee wellness

More focus and emphasis needs to be out on employee wellness and physical and mental health. Organizations can provide holistic health-based benefits for all aspects of well-being to their employees as a means of introducing wellness programmes.

Policy development

Organization need to have an improved system of managing various company workflows and process. This calls for a new and improved policy structure aimed at business continuity and growth. HR professionals must plan for Covid-19 like exigencies in the future and plan policy development and structure accordingly. Also, policies on workplace flexibility, remote working and contract-based staffing must be included, reviewed and amended periodically.

The Way Ahead

HR leaders must work on the lines of a human-centric approach, whether a Covid-19-like situation is there or not. The above steps may not work for all kinds of organizations, so it is up to the experts to determine the most feasible approach to maintain business continuity or organizations.

Complygate HR Software

Complygate is an interactive HR software made for easing up HR-based workflows and enabling proper, effective and fruitful collaboration between the organizational management, various stakeholder teams, managers and employees. Complygate HR software enables productivity by automating and speeding up HR workflows, solving business challenges and managing various employee parameters. Management and resolution of pain areas is also made simpler through insightful representation of various employee-related analytics based upon performance, attendance and various other reports. Complygate HR Software automates your processes, saves time and ensures that your organization’s key decisions are made faster and more efficiently.

With Complygate HRMS software you can easily manage the following core HR workflows:

- Recruitment and onboarding

- Timesheet Management

- Expense management

- Leave Management

- Employee Profile Management

- Analytics-based dashboard

Recruitment and onboarding

Complygate HR Software ensures that you hire the right talents for your organization by:

- automating the processes of applicant tracking and screening.

- integrating HR modules and pipeline management through interactive analytics-based dashboard.

- automating interview scheduling by syncing interview details directly to your calendar, and allowing you to perspective candidate profiles to help you identify the most suitable candidate for available roles.

- allowing you to send out offers on time.

- making your onboarding seamless and hassle-free.

- helping you to hire perfect candidates seamlessly and easily.

Timesheet Management

Complygate HR software allows you to easily to automate your time management functionalities through its easy to use interface by:

- allowing you to clock in and and out-times or directly enter hours worked.

- allowing you to submit your weekly timesheets for manager’s approval, which can be done at the click of a button.

- helping you to set up work hours and overtime.

- making your tasks easier by providing built-in reminders to remind employees of their most important tasks and ensure they stay on top of it.

- easing reporting and employee management.

- helping you with important and insightful information regarding employee attendances trends, costs and RoI.

- ensuring your employees make the best use of time by helping them track work progress and thus stay ahead of themselves.

- assisting your employees in making only the most-informed business decisions.

Expense Management

Complygate HR software simplifies your employees’ expenses and reimbursement management by:

- allowing your employees to record their official business expenses in a digital and hassle-free way and saving time spent on manual documentation of expenses.

- allowing your employees to manage their expenses in a smooth, hassle-free way.

- enabling expense recording in an automated way by allowing your employees to capture expenses and upload receipts using our CSSP, keeping them secure future references.

- enabling easy report generation by letting your employees generate comprehensive automated reports to inform you of their expenditure trends, thus keeping you informed and in better control of company expenditures.

- letting your employees get instant approvals by filing claims online and then having their managers approve them instantly at the click of a button after which the claims are already on their way to the payroll office.

- keeping your employees aware of expense trends through the dashboard by allowing them to view past expenses, history and outstanding amounts so that they have better control over their expenses and reports and thus keep track of things.

- ensuring better control and transparency by allowing you to monitor projects against specific schedules and timelines, thus letting you stay on track.

- allowing you to Customize approval settings by handling expense approval request from incumbent managers and team leads who may be predisposed.

Leave Management

Complygate HR software helps HR teams and line managers to keep track of leaves taken by employees and overall employee leave entitlement by allowing you to:

- stay on top of your teams’ progress and see who’s off by using the shared calendar, thus ensuring that you make the most of time and stay in the loop without having to find things out.

- optimize and control your leave management by keeping eyes on employee absence seamlessly thereby improving employee productivity.

- ensure self-served Employee scheduling by allowing them access to their accounts to check balances, request time off and see the schedules of their colleagues and managers.

- focus on improvement by letting the software record things like sickness leaves, holiday offs and other absences like maternity leave easily without having to do it yourself, thus focusing more on productivity.

- analyze all recorded data regarding employee absence, leave and holiday entitlement at your fingertips, accessible from anywhere.

- see things ahead in time by easily working out remaining leaves of your team from the dashboard and ensure that team work stays on schedule by managing future team leaves and optimizing team performance.

- Empower yourself and your employees by letting all stay on top of all information like policies, book leaves and sick time, upload supporting documents – all from the same place and in a transparent way.

Employee Profile Management

Complygate HR Software has a built-in Complygate Self-service Portal (CSSP) that lets your employees to take care of many different HR-related aspects, as explained below, that normally an HR rep would have to complete:

- bolster employee engagement right from the start by passing over to employees some of the responsibilities like filing and checking details, documenting tasks and checking holidays.

- make communication great and seamless between employees by letting them manage their profiles and access any required information.

- ensure your staff is available and not occupied on trivial employee documentation matters by reducing burden on them through the employee self-service portal, thus ensuring staying ahead of schedule by ensuring staff productivity and availability as required.

- support Employees and allow them to help themselves to any requested information, submit requests online and seek instant automated approvals to their requests through the use of Complygate’s Employee Profile Management software.

- empower Managers by helping them stay on top of schedule by receiving customised alerts and notifications for key tasks and project updates right from the dashboard.

- share information fast through Complygate’s online portal.

- streamline communication between employees with real-time updated organisation charts, contact lists and other information.

- make use of the centralised portal by bringing employees together and ensure the highest standards of productivity within your workplace environment.

Analytics and Dashboards

Complygate HR Software assists you in making better business decisions about workforce management, be it hiring, diversity, performance & compensation, and more. Our analytics and data-driven workforce planning tools deliver real-time insights giving you a 360° view, as elucidated below:

- make strategic, insightful and proactive decisions through a variety of HR analytics reports generated using Complygate HR Software in a few clicks.

- assist HR teams and management through Complygate’s software’s built-in advanced analytics module by making use of comprehensive and critical insights about your daily business parameters and resources.

- help your employees manage their data in one organized and secure HR database without them having to worry about data loss.

- make seamless data-driven decisions by using easily-generated reports through Complygate HR Software.

- save time and money and advance your game using advanced analytics and features of Complygate HR software.

- track your data and maintain full control over employee records from anywhere.

- strategize your decision-making by optimizing your HR workflows and freely focusing on important issues of your organization.